Among the several lottery agents doing business in
the basement of Richmond’s Exchange Hotel in the1840s was Dudley Marvin Hoyt. Born
in 1812, Hoyt was a native of Lowell, Massachusetts who moved to Boston to join
his half-brother, Charles, who was the operator of a lottery agency. Unlike
today’s system of governmental appropriation, lotteries funded much of the
infrastructure of eighteenth and nineteenth century America - a time that
demanded improvements to support America’s industrialization and rapid westward
expansion. Indeed, a seminal point in Richmond’s own history was a lottery held
in 1767, where the prizes were lots and parcels in the newly formed town. Wharfs,
bridges, colleges, fortifications, and canals all over the country were financed
through lotteries licensed by local governments in the 1800s. Lottery agents
like the Hoyts charged a small commission to sell tickets and distribute
prizes.
After his Boston apprenticeship Hoyt moved again,
first to Norfolk and then to Richmond, bringing his knowledge of the lottery
business. Hoyt opened a “Prize Office” on the 14th Street side of
the basement of the Exchange Hotel in October 1843, and lived in an apartment
in the rear of his establishment. Hoyt had a good reputation in his business
dealings, and in a short biographical sketch by “a relative,” was described as
a perfect gentleman, “although his peculiarity of dress and appearance often
provoked remark” on the streets of Richmond. Another description of Hoyt agreed
on his fashion choices, noting, “He had a fine person, of which he seemed
particularly regardful, adorning it with a very outré and extravagant style of
dress, which excited much attention, and perhaps some animadversion.”
Hoyt set up his office at the Exchange Hotel for
good reasons. Not only was it a social crossroads of the city, but it was also luxurious
by Richmond hotel standards with an interior described in Lost Virginia (2001) as featuring, “marble floors, a large
vestibule ornamented with statuary, a ‘great hall,’ a ladies’ dining room, a gentlemen’s drawing rooms, a
dining room accommodating 300, reading rooms, and a ballroom, all surrounding a
landscaped central courtyard.” The hotel was one of the few bright spots in
Charles Dickens’ visit to Richmond in 1842. Despite his disgust with the
institution of slavery, Dickens had to admit the Exchange Hotel was ”…a very large and elegant establishment, and [we] were as well entertained
as travelers need desire to be.” He described the convivial atmosphere of the
Exchange with music and laughter echoing down its carpeted halls and
beautifully furnished public spaces: “The climate being a thirsty one, there
was never, at any hour of the day, a scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar,
or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors; but they were a merrier people
here, and had musical instruments playing to them o’ nights, which was a treat
to hear again.” Dickens must have known he was experiencing a degree of service
at the Exchange Hotel only made possible by the unseen enslaved who went about
their duties quietly serving, cleaning, and maintaining the opulent hotel.
Hoyt regularly ran newspaper advertisements for
the lotteries he was promoting and his ads, like his clothing, tended to be
more colorful compared with those of his competition along 14th
Street. Charles Wortham, Russell Bigger, and W.P. Turpin were all vying for
lottery business, but their advertisements never matched Hoyt’s overheated
prose that promised riches only a lottery ticket away.
HOYT is about to eclipse himself. He has eclipsed
everyone else in selling Grand Capitol Prizes, and is now about to sell
$75,000 for $20.00…You hear a lot about Prizes, but you know that HOYT stands
at the head of the present generation of Vendors. Talk about Capital Prizes! You
should never mention the subject without mentioning HOYT’S name with it.
A picture emerges of a successful businessman with flamboyant tastes in both clothing and ad copy, perhaps all part of the self-promotion that Hoyt felt was necessary to project himself above his growing competition. More lottery agents were appearing in Richmond, like J. F. Word, who established a shop on 14th Street across from the Post Office, and the improbably named Caddis B. Luck, whose “New Lucky Lottery Office” was under the Eagle Hotel a block away on 13th Street. Hoyt, like many other Richmonders, probably joined his fellow lottery agents milling around the Exchange Hotel Post Office where papers from other cities brought the news of the day. Deliberately resplendent in his flashy garb, Hoyt would have been easy to pick out among the crowd on the sidewalk who were chatting and smoking as they followed the news of the war with Mexico which began in May 1846 after the United States annexed Texas.
An 1846 lottery
ticket. From the WorthPoint online auction site.
Hoyt, if not a gambler himself, certainty understood the psychology of gamblers as he faced them across his desk when they came in and put down their hard-earned money on a long shot at great fortune. He no doubt observed the bitter regret in the faces of the losers when their ticket didn’t win. He probably had few illusions about luck and odds, about consequences of a misstep, picking the wrong number, and the looming specter of terrible loss. Because of this experience, Hoyt might have thought better than to gamble on what began as a secret relationship with a woman married to a prominent Richmond tobacco dealer, with the torrid exchange between Hoyt and William Myers’ wife exploding into public and leading to the death of one and the utter disgrace of the other.
Title page of An Authenticated Report of the Trial of Myers and Others, for the Murder of Dudley Marvin Hoyt… (1846). The book is available on the Internet Archive.
Virginia
Pollard was born in 1814 in Nelson County, the daughter of an officer in the
Continental Army who was later a prominent planter in Albemarle County. One
account described her as, “She is a lovely, talented, and accomplished woman,
and we well remember when, a little while ago, the admired belle became the
blushing bride of an envied husband.” She married William R. Myers in 1840 and
the couple moved to a home in Richmond on 7th Street. Myers was a
partner with his brother in the tobacco firm of Samuel S. Myers & Co. at 7th
and Canal Streets and was termed “a gentleman of the highest respectability,
moving in the first circle in the City of Richmond.”
The
relationship between Virginia Myers and Dudley Hoyt survive in an extraordinary
collection of letters, for the most part from her to Hoyt. There is an almost
complete absence of surviving letters from Hoyt to Virginia Myers, with one
notable exception which was intercepted by her father. “Have no fear of
writing…” she assured Hoyt in a letter written in September, 1846, “…for every
word is burned instantly.” This is in contrast to the more than 50 letters
she wrote Hoyt over the course of ten months, almost all of which were
recovered from Hoyt’s rooms at the Exchange Hotel and to Virginia Myers’ utter embarrassment,
published before the end of the year.
Near the end of that ruinous year of 1846, Virginia Myers
wrote to a friend in Baltimore to explain how her exchange with Hoyt began. “The
commencement of my acquaintance with Mr. Hoyt was under the following
circumstances.” Virginia said, “Up to this time, I had never exchanged a word
with Mr. Hoyt in my life.” She rather vaguely recalled Hoyt sent her a letter
and “the contents of this letter rendered it necessary that I should seek a few
words of explanation with him. I was reluctant to make this the subject of a
letter to Mr. Hoyt, and therefore I addressed him a note, ‘requesting to see
him at my own house concerning the matter.’” Recognizing they were nearing the
boundaries of propriety, Virginia Myers agreed to meet Hoyt formally at the
studio of a miniaturist, Mr. Morien, who at the time was painting Hoyt’s
picture. “From this time his visits to me were very frequent.”
These assignations with Hoyt and Virginia Myers seem
quite chaste by modern standards. Their correspondence was mostly about
Virginia’s real or imagined miserable marriage and Hoyt’s perpetually sympathetic
ear. Her emotional dependence on Hoyt and his deepening involvement with her
led to infatuation, and then passion. At the end of 1845 she sent Hoyt a small
keepsake, and wrote “…may I not, my best of friends, ask you to prize it as a
memento of one whose hours of darkness and sadness you have brightened by your
words of goodness, of kindness…”. By Spring, 1846, Virginia’s tone has
intensified: “My God! My God! What am in not suffering?” she wrote Hoyt,
“Agony, yes, tenfold agony. May I not still call you DEAR, dearest love? for
you are so in the fullest meaning of those words.” Virginia Myers and Hoyt
would occasionally meet at the Exchange Hotel, generally in a private salon
called Parlor 18. This tall-ceilinged room had interior shutters on the windows
that opened onto the “piazza” in the hotel’s central courtyard, affording
Parlor 18 a degree of privacy. On April 25, 1846, Virginia Myers wrote Hoyt,
“Good-bye, love, till to-morrow, when I will talk to you again. I will seal all
I have promised you with a dear kiss. Shall it not be two? Yes! I say. How
strange it is, I never loved to kiss anyone, save you, precious darling.” Virginia
Myers’ letters, printed and arranged chronologically, chart a downward path,
increasingly hysterical and fraught. Despite the desperate tone, Hoyt, perhaps
flattered by the attention, responded with sympathy and a growing desire for
Virginia Myers.
Later, when all was revealed and her letters published,
Virginia Myers understandably received much criticism about a letter she sent
her husband on September 8, 1846, while he was in New York City. In the midst
of her passionate exchanges with Hoyt, she wrote William Myers: “Oh! Dearest
Willie, how sadly, have I missed you! I really feel this morning almost too
gloomy to write, and yet this will tell you how fondly I have thought of you
since we parted. My darling husband, I do indeed love you very dearly, and
could you know every feeling of my heart, you would never doubt one so purely
yours.” She concluded the letter, “Now for a thousand kisses, and good bye, my
dear precious husband. With every assurance of devotion and affection, I am
unchangingly yours, Virginia.” One Richmonder, outraged by reading this letter
to William and its raging hypocrisy, later wrote “Does she call it a pure
heart, and an angel’s spirit where she says, in letter No. 55, ‘she
prays Heaven to take all her relatives from her, that she might be united with
Mr. Hoyt?’” The shocking passion voiced in the letters between Hoyt and
Virginia Myers was as loaded and damaging in Richmond public opinion as though the
two were physical lovers.
View looking west on Franklin Street, showing the Exchange Hotel
on the left with its bridge over the street to the Ballard House Hotel. From Richmond:
A Pictorial History from the Valentine Museum and Dementi Collections,
(1974)
As the Summer of 1846 passed by, Virginia Myers and Hoyt
had a growing awareness that their meetings, their sly signals to each other at
the theater, and their encounters at the Exchange were drawing unwanted
attention. “I left No. 18 at a most unfortunate moment, I fear, for I observed
several persons in the room opposite, whose faces I could distinguish for my
veil, also a servant in the Rotunda,” wrote Virginia. “Now I am afraid they
will speak of it…I can only hope you did not come out the same door I did, for
if you did, of course, it gave rise to remarks.” Eugene Pendleton was Hoyt’s
clerk and lived in a room in Hoyt’s office under the Exchange Hotel. He
recalled Hoyt asking him in late September if Pendleton had heard any reports
about him and Mrs. Myers, and if so, to tell Hoyt who it was as this sort of
thing had to be stopped. Hoyt sensed the enchantment between himself and
Virginia Myers was leading both of them into dangerous territory, perhaps
knowing the heaviest penalty would fall on him.
It was in that summer of 1846 that William Myers found a
note that had been slid under the door of his office. Myers read it, got on his
horse and rode home. He quietly entered the house through the basement and was
astonished to find Hoyt upstairs, as promised by the anonymous warning, sitting
in his parlor with his wife. Myers “remonstrated” with Virginia on the
“impropriety of her conduct.” Hoyt later visited Myers at his office and said
the note had been made up by some malicious person and Myers responded that no
matter who wrote the note, these visits must be stopped and Hoyt solemnly
promised they would be.
The anonymous note left for William Myers
Virginia’s father, Major John Pollard, recalled that in
June, Virginia and William Myers were visiting her parents at their home in Albemarle
County and on the 13th his wife observed Virginia writing a letter
to Hoyt. Major and Mrs. Pollard decided to let that letter go in the mail and
to intercept any reply, which soon came in the form of a letter from Richmond for
Virginia but addressed in a woman’s handwriting. Inside was a letter from Hoyt
to Virginia Myers, termed by Major Pollard “of a most improper character for
any gentleman to write to a married lady.” Because it was intercepted this is
the only surviving example of Hoyt’s writing to her, but the content is no less
intense and overheated than her letters to him. Hoyt wrote on June 18th:
“My dearly loved Virginia – While lying on my couch, where I had been from some
two hours, thinking of thee – much to my surprise and delight, your dear
sweet letter of the 13th inst. was handed to me….You well know,
dearest Virginia, how anxious I am to make you a happy woman, and I would willingly
give my life to accomplish it – would that but do it.”
Major Pollard intercepted Hoyt’s letter on June 23rd
and by the 25th was in Richmond with the sole purpose of confronting
Hoyt. That evening the furious Pollard found Hoyt in his office at the Exchange
Hotel, and demanded that he stop all communication with his daughter. Pollard
repeated the demand several times and in each instance Hoyt agreed, asking only
that the two letters be burned. Major Pollard said he would be back in Richmond
in two weeks but for the time being would retain any letters between Hoyt and
his daughter.
The next evening Pollard was standing in the Rotunda of
the Exchange Hotel and was surprised by his son-in-law, who said he and his
wife were returning from Albemarle and stopped at the Exchange. Major Pollard
went to Parlor 18 expecting to talk to his daughter and was astonished to find
her sitting side-by-side with Hoyt, who moved away suddenly when he saw
Virginia’s father appear in the doorway. Major Pollard left the hotel but was
back at Hoyt’s office early the next morning and roused him from bed. Taking
him outside and speaking with Hoyt on the 14th Street sidewalk, the
enraged Pollard “reproached him for his treachery.” He said that if this
persisted and caused a rift in his family between his daughter and her husband,
he assured Hoyt that he would kill him. Pollard returned to his home, thinking
Hoyt was sufficiently frightened that he would no longer trouble Virginia Myers
or intrude in her marriage, but at the same time took the precaution of preserving
the two damning letters.
James R. Pollard, Virginia’s brother, was not that confident that Hoyt had been frightened off and was no longer a problem. In mid-July, having been appraised by his father as to his confrontation of Hoyt, the younger Pollard said flatly, “I came down to Richmond to watch Hoyt.” He spotted the lottery dealer, walking in the cool shade of the trees of Capitol Square with Virginia Myers. James Pollard wrote Hoyt a note the next day and told him for the first and last time, to “desist from the course he was pursuing, and told him if he did not, his life would pay the penalty.” He later met Hoyt before leaving Richmond, but Hoyt assured James Pollard that now that he was fully aware of the effect of his association with her, he would avoid Virginia Myers both in public and private.
 |
The Exchange Hotel. Image from the Mutual Assurance Society
papers, pictured in Old Richmond Neighborhoods (1950)
Despite
his protestations, Hoyt was in an increasingly dangerous position as the summer
wore on. Among the many Richmonders who frequented the Exchange Hotel, was Poitiaux
Robinson, who was a keen observer of what was happening at the hotel –
especially between Holt and Virginia. Robinson said he had stopped by the bar
at the Exchange one day for “a snack” and happened to walk by Parlor No. 18. Glancing
in, he was astonished to find Virginia Myers sitting on a sofa with Holt beside
her and his head in her lap. Holt was also seen emerging from the Myers house
or meeting Virginia at the Exchange Hotel on several occasions. So rife were
the rumors that when they reached William Myers, he wrote to his father-in-law
in mid-September describing the deteriorating situation. William’s brother,
Samuel Myers, directed William’s carriage boy to bring him any letters Virginia
sent to the Post Office that were addressed to Hoyt, and when she was confronted
by Samuel, in a panicked rage, she denounced the letters as forgeries. Told of
all this, Major Pollard returned to Richmond, collected Virginia and her trunks
on Wednesday, September 23rd, and forced her to return to the
Pollard home in Albemarle County. She never saw Dudley Marvin Hoyt again.
On
the evening of Sunday, September 27th, Poitiaux Robinson spoke to
Hoyt about the rumors circulating around Richmond, but Hoyt seemed reserved and
reluctant to talk about the subject. Robinson mentioned that William Myers was
on his way back to Richmond and warned Hoyt that he should expect to be held
accountable for his actions toward Virginia Myers. Hoyt speculated aloud it
would all lead to his destruction. Nevertheless, he swore again, “before God,
on this Sabbath night, I am innocent of any criminality.” “Surely, said I,”
recalled Robinson, “…you have been grossly imprudent. How could you be so mad
as to walk home with Mrs. Myers the other night whilst these rumors are
afloat?” The last thing Hoyt told Robinson was that “If I have a friend in the
world, and are found to be in a dying condition, I take it as a favor from him
to interrogate me at this point, and I will then, as I do now, assert my
innocence.”
To the casual observer, nothing had changed in Richmond,
but for the increasingly uneasy lottery agent, the city must have seemed
smaller and darker. Everyone was spreading rumors of him and Virginia Myers, and
the fact she had been collected by her father and whisked out of the city only fueled
the speculation. Hoyt’s name was on everyone’s lips and he was becoming infamous
among the clientele and patrons of the Exchange Hotel. Both Hoyt and Virginia
Myers often spoke of their stainless innocence, and used the words often in
describing their status and condition. They carefully parsed the difference
between the emotional depths of their relationship and physical contact, each
calling themselves blameless and innocent, pure and without guilt. On the
streets of Richmond, this wasn’t the impression.
Hoyt had the Pollards calling for his blood, everyone at
the Exchange Hotel was chatting about his most personal business, and the
affair had the danger of affecting his livelihood. The lottery business must go
on, tickets had to be sold, money collected, and prizes awarded. Hoyt sat down to
compose the advertisement to run on the next day:
There seems to be a scarcity of money with all except the
patrons of HOYT. With them it is plenty. He is filling their pockets with
capitals, and each in turn will be served. All those who have drawn prizes and
those who have not should have tickets now. HOYT is in luck….
Dudley Marvin Hoyt could not have been more mistaken.
The next morning was Monday, September 28, 1846. At 6:30
AM, Hoyt woke up to a knock on his door. We can only imagine what his apartment
behind the lottery office looked like, but a newspaper article said it was
consistent with the Hoyt’s taste in clothes: “He was remarkable in his dress,
always in the extremest [sic] fashion, and his tastes were peculiar, as
strikingly exhibited by the furniture and decoration of his room.”
Into that exotically decorated space stepped a Richmond
businessman, William S. Burr. Hoyt, still in bed, propped himself up on one
elbow and looked at Burr, who introduced himself and said he was there on “a
very disagreeable piece of business” which he hoped, “could be happily
adjusted.” He gave Hoyt a single sheet of paper to sign, on which was written:
I, D. Marvin Hoyt, of the city of Richmond, do
hereby pledge myself to leave the said city forthwith, and never to return to
it, acknowledging at the same time the penalty for any violation of this pledge
to be the forfeiture of my life.
Richmond, Va., Sept. 28, 1846.
Hoyt, no doubt confused and probably hoping to God this
was all just an extremely bad dream, read the letter and looked up and said, “I
can’t sign this.” Immediately on Hoyt’s refusal and to his further
astonishment, two more grim men stepped into the room and joined Burr: William
Myers and his brother Samuel. They advanced close to the bedside and looked
down on the confused and frightened Hoyt, still holding in his hand the paper
Burr wanted him to sign. The three men in their black suits loomed over Hoyt,
and with the bed against the wall blocking the far side, there was no space and
no time to avoid whatever was certainly coming. Without a word, William Myers
reached in his coat pocket, produced a pistol, pointed it at Hoyt’s head, and
pulled the trigger.
End of part one.
- Selden
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