Namesakes
If you arrived at this site after searching for an Abraham Hyatt that’s not me, maybe you’re looking for one of these guys.
Here repose the mortal remains of ABRAHAM HYATT, one of that band of INCORRUPTIBLE PATRIOTS, who, by the valor, achieved the Independence of their Country, and transmitted to their posterity the fairest form of Government that human wisdom can devise.
The Sea Captain, The Farmer, The Town Clerk, The Deputy Sheriff: 1675-1820
Between the mid 1600s and the early 1800s at least seven Abraham Hyatts lived in New England. The earliest I can find was the captain of the frigate Castle, who “was present at meetings of the Governor and Council of New York” in 1675. Almost all of the other Abraham Hyatts were land-owning farmers living in Westchester County, New York, about 30 miles north of present-day New York City.
In 1731, one of the Abraham Hyatts lived in the town of Eastchester. He was 48 years old, the father of 10 children and the owner of several hundred acres of land, along with a home and other buildings. In June of that year, he became ill and wrote his will. In it, he charged his eldest son, 31-year-old Abraham, with the care of his widow and his other children. He also gave him about 100 acres of land along what is now Highway 22. There was an Abraham Hyatt who was made town clerk of New Castle in 1791, and another who died in 1883 at the age of 81, a “former captain of a sloop, deputy sheriff, collector of military fines,” according to genealogical records.
The Loyalist: 1777
When it came to the Revolution, many of the Hyatts in New England sided with the Revolutionaries. But an Abraham Hyatt who lived outside of Albany, New York, remained loyal to the Crown. In 1777 he and several of his sons, one of who was also named Abraham, enlisted with John Burgoyne, the British officer who invaded the colonies from the north. After Burgoyne’s surrender, the Hyatts ended up in Canada. Gilbert, one of the sons, financed the building of a settlement that came to be known as Hyatt’s Mills (now a town called Sherbrooke). I haven’t found out what happened to the elder and junior Abrahams (after years of property rights battles Gilbert died nearly broke) but Hyatt is a common name in the area today.
The Patriot & Relative: 1775
In 1775 a 22-year-old Abraham Hyatt was living in White Plains. He was the son of city’s constable and of all the historic Abraham Hyatts, it’s likely I’m related to this one. In July of 1775 the Revolutionary War was escalating quickly. Two months earlier the Second Continental Congress had convened and had formed the Continental Army with George Washington as its commander.
In July, Abraham met with about a 250 of his neighbors to sign an oath promising that they would “adopt and endeavor to carry into execution whatever measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress.” They didn’t have to wait long. The following year the war came directly to White Plains. On October 28, 1776, Washington’s troops clashed with the British in the hills surrounding the town.
Did Abraham fight in The Battle of White Planes? I assume so because a month later, the president of Continental Congress, John Hancock, signed Abraham’s military commission, making him a second lieutenant in the Army of the United States. He died at age 71 in 1820 (that’s his gravestone above), the father of eight children – including a son named Abraham – and the grandfather of yet another Abraham.
The Southerner: 1826
On March 7, 1826 (I was born on March 12), an Abraham Hyatt was born in Blount County, Alabama. By the 1850s he was the owner of several plots of land in a small valley bordered by green rolling hills. At that time, he, like most of his neighbors, owned no slaves. He was also the head of a large family; in 1866, seven of the 10 people living under his roof were women under the age of 20. When he died at home in 1894 (probably of tuberculosis), The Blount County News and Dispatch wrote that he was “a good citizen, an honest, industrious man, and had for many years been a member of the Antioch Baptist Church.”
The Rocket Scientist: 1958
Forty miles southwest of Blount County sits Birmingham, which is where another Abraham Hyatt grew up. He was born in the Ukraine in 1910 and arrived in Alabama when he was a young boy. I don’t know how he got the name; his brief biographies don’t say anything about his past except that he became a naturalized citizen in 1927.
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Special Committee on Space Technology, May 26, 1958
At the age of 23 he graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in aeronautical engineering. After World War II (he served in Europe as a Marine) he was one of the first people hired at a newly formed agency called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He worked there from 1958 to 1965, first as a director of the lunar launch vehicle program, and then as the head of NASA’s office of program planning and evaluation. After he retired in the mid-1970s, he moved to Southern California where he died in 1998.
In what is by far the oddest coincidence of all the Abraham Hyatts, his daughter’s maiden name and my mom’s married name is exactly the same: Sherry Hyatt.