The Exchange: Passion and Murder in antebellum Richmond. Part Two

[The story continues -- read Part One here.]

All four men in Hoyt’s bedroom must have gasped as the pistol in William Myers’ hand misfired and the cap popped harmlessly. The multi-barreled revolver (popularly known as a “pepperbox”) was notoriously unreliable and a design described by Mark Twain as “…sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.” Not to be deterred by the inadequacies of his revolver and still determined to have his revenge, Myers pulled the trigger again, and this time the gun fired and hit Hoyt in his leg with the ball lodging in his thigh.  A third shot missed Hoyt entirely and lodged in the bed frame. The fourth shot hit Hoyt squarely in the forehead. The wounded man leaped out of bed and fell down a step onto the floor of his office. Seeing him shot in the head and bleeding heavily, the Myers brothers and William Burr must have felt their task complete. The trio left the moaning Hoyt in the pale gray gun smoke that drifted through the “Prize Office” and they stepped out into 14^th Street.

An advertisement from the 1846 Richmond City Directory for a “pepperbox” revolver of the type used by William Myers to shoot Hoyt. Myers may have purchased his weapon at Thomas Tyrer’s gun shop on Main Street.

Orlando Pegram was a clerk in a store next door to Hoyt’s office who had heard rumors about Hoyt and Virginia Myers, so when he saw the two Myers brothers pass by his window apparently on their way to Hoyt’s office he became curious and walked to the door. He soon heard gunshots from Hoyt’s, and a couple of minutes later, the pair went by in the opposite direction. “…as they returned, Col. Myers seemed very much agitated,” recalled Pegram, “but W. R. Myers appeared quite composed.”

Thompson Tyler, the assistant manager of the Exchange, was sitting in the hotel barbershop when someone ran in and said Hoyt had been shot and that he should come immediately. Tyler recalled when he went in Hoyt’s office he noticed two horrific details: there was a wide trail of blood leading into the bedroom and “I found a small tea-spoonful of something I supposed to be Hoyt’s brains, lying at the foot of the steps.” Hoyt was back in bed, wiping blood from his face when Tyler came in. “Tyler, old fellow,” said Hoyt, “it’s hard that an innocent man be shot down this way.”

By modern standards, the fact Hoyt survived being shot in the head, let alone was conscious and lucid seems remarkable. Handgun technology in the 1840s before the revolutionary designs of Samuel Colt became available was relatively crude. Hampered by metallurgical limitations, pistols could only fire a low-velocity lead ball where a modern pistol bullet, fired at that range, would have gone completely through Hoyt’s skull. Dr. E. H. Carmichael was sent for and later described Hoyt’s wounds in the terms of medical treatment of the 1840s: “I passed my finger into the wound, which was about 3-8 of an inch in diameter, and found the inner table of the skull extensively fractured, and many pieces of the skull driven into the brain…”. By trepanning, or taking out a section of Hoyt’s forehead, Dr. Carmichael was able to remove “13 or 14 pieces of the skull and part of the ball.” The piece of lead he recovered weighed 13 grains in contrast to the ball recovered from Hoyt’s bed, which weighed 59 grains. In comparison, a typical modern 9mm pistol bullet weighs 124 grains and travels at far greater velocity.

Remarkably, Dr. Carmichael “Found Mr. Hoyt perfectly sensible, calm and collected – informed him immediately of his approaching end, and the impossibility of his recovery – he was very cool and expressed his conviction that he would never get well.” Hoyt, uncertain of how much time he had, asked Thompson Tyler to immediately bring Richmond Alderman James Evans in his official capacity as Magistrate in order that Hoyt might make a sworn statement. Evans arrived and carefully copied down Hoyt’s account, reading each sentence back and confirming what was said. Hoyt slowly explained how his day had begun with the arrival of first Burr and then the Myers brothers, how he was shot and by who, and concluded, “While lying on the floor and not expecting to live many minutes, and in the presence of the two Myers’s, I said that I was innocent of any crime and the lady in question also and I now repeat the same, and shall, to the moment of my death.”

As Hoyt languished, the sensational story of his affairs and his shooting was spread by newspapers throughout the country. On October 10^th a headline in a newspaper in York, Pennsylvania, screamed, “THE BLOODY TRAGEDY IN RICHMOND – Hoyt not yet dead.” On the same day, the Cleveland Plain Dealer took a gentler tact and ran this headline at the top of the sensational news from Richmond: “Romance in Real Life – A Chapter for Married Men.” As the news spread and Hoyt slowly died, his thoughts always turned to Virginia Myers and he was determined that she not be made a pariah for what they had done. Hoyt was visited by Rev. William Norwood, the Rector of St. Paul’s Church as well as Reverend Dr. Moses Hoge of Second Presbyterian. Both men asked Hoyt about the state of his soul and his faith, and the bandaged Hoyt again swore to his innocence and that of Virginia Myers, only conceding to Norwood “that their conduct had been very imprudent, and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he said so…”

A majority of people familiar with the story of Hoyt and Virginia Myers felt that the pair had been wildly reckless in their attraction to each other, violating all societal norms of marriage and honor. Samuel Gleves was passing through Richmond on his way to Philadelphia, and wrote to his father in Buffalo Ford, Virginia, on October 8, 1846, commenting, “Thos. J. Hoyt [sic] who was shot by Myers a few days ago is from what I can learn dying. There is no sympathy at all for him in Richmond every one thinking he is guilty of the charge.”

Letter from Samuel Crocket Gleaves, October 8, 1846. From the Gleaves Family genealogical website.

William Burr and the Myers brothers were arrested and put in the Richmond jail, all three being charged with wounding Hoyt. Meanwhile, newspapers across America reprinted the stories of Hoyt’s shooting and agonizing decline, always linked to the salacious nature of the letters from Virginia Myers. The weakening condition of the dying Hoyt was also described in lurid detail.  The New York Daily Herald reported, “…the attending physicians pronounced Mr. Hoyt’s condition more critical than it had heretofore been, owing to a protrusion of the brain through the wound…Drs. Carmichael and Mills, replied to a question put by the Mayor, that they regarded the condition of the patient more critical than it had been – a fungus having formed on the brain.” The New York paper concluded, “Last evening Hoyt was a good deal worse.”

Marvin Dudley Hoyt lapsed into a coma and died two days later on October 9, 1846, still in the same bed he had gone to sleep in on the evening of September 19. The next day R. Tate Wicker, the Richmond Coroner, assembled a jury at Hoyt’s office to view the body and determine what was the cause of death. The scene was described in a Richmond newspaper: “The corpse lay in the room in which the wounds were inflicted. It is situated under the Exchange Hotel and is the back part of the room that was occupied by Mr. Hoyt as a broker’s office.” The coroner produced the unsigned demand to leave Richmond that William Burr gave Hoyt, which was found in the stained and tangled bedsheets. The paper was identifiable as the original document because of the blood on it. The Coroner’s Jury charged William Myers with murder and his brother, Samuel, and William Burr as accessories, their bail revoked, and new warrants were issued for their arrest.

This view is from the Times-Dispatch in 1895, but the Richmond’s “ancient Bastille” probably looked very much like this when William and Samuel Myers and William Burr were brought here after being arrested for shooting Hoyt.

Hoyt’s body was taken upstairs at the Exchange for a funeral service, perhaps back to the now-infamous Parlor 18 where he spent so many pleasant if furtive moments with Virginia Myers. A Baltimore newspaper described the scene: “The Funeral Services of the Episcopal Church…were read for the deceased (the late D.M. Hoyt) on Saturday evening at the Exchange, by Rev. Mr. Norwood. The scene was impressive. The deceased’s brother-in-law and sister were present – the latter had come from New York to see him die; she came too late to be recognized by him. Her extreme distress enlisted the earnest sympathy of all present.” It was reported that Hoyt’s body was sent to New York for burial, but an account of his murder published by a relative in 1847 specifies that Hoyt was buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. No record exists of Hoyt’s burial in either place, so it appears his grave has been lost.

October 12, 1846, was a Monday morning and Mayor William Lambert took his seat in the Hustings courtroom at exactly 11:00 am to preside over the trial of William and Samuel Myers and William Burr for the murder of Dudley Marvin Hoyt. Mayor Lambert called for Joseph Mayo, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Richmond, to be summoned along with the accused and their lawyers. Dr. E. H. Carmichael was the first to testify, and gave a summation of what he found when called to Hoyt’s lottery office early on the morning of September 28, followed by Dr. Mills, who spoke of assisting Carmichael in operating on Hoyt’s skull, and then Alderman Evans, who took Hoyt’s sworn statement as to what occurred when first William Burr and then the Myers brothers appeared in his bedroom that morning.

Resting on Mr. Mayo’s desk was a large packet of 50 letters collected from Hoyt’s room, which were all determined to all be in the handwriting of Virginia Myers except for one. Major Pollard handing over the letter that he intercepted from Hoyt to Virginia Myers provoked a debate in court as to its admissibility. Mr. Mayo, the prosecuting attorney questioned the relevance of an exchange that was more than six months old, then James Lyons of the defense rose to speak. “He claimed the right to introduce testimony to show the nature of the provocation his client had received.” Lyons then read Virginia Myers’ reply, revealing all her innermost thoughts, fears, and longings for Hoyt, and the contents of all the letters eventually became public knowledge. Ironically, Hoyt’s failure to destroy Virginia Myers’ correspondence led to the her downfall and disgrace. 

Six days later, the New York Herald devoted its entire front page to the text of the letters on October 18^th, allowing the entire population of the country’s largest city to weigh in on the death of Dudley Marvin Hoyt. The Richmond Enquirer was torn between news of the exciting trial ongoing in Richmond and accounts of a desperate siege in Mexico. “The public mind is so fully engrossed by the painfully interesting trial now in progress, and the thrilling and glorious deeds of our soldiers at Monterey…we therefore throw down our pen and devote the whole of our columns to the details of each subject.” The whole country was riveted to the story of the lottery agent and the unfaithful wife.

Richmond City Hall (demolished 1874). The trial of the Myers brothers and William Burr was held in the Hustings Courtroom, inside the three windows under the portico on the second floor.

Perhaps of all of Virginia Myers’ letters to Hoyt, even with their impassioned prose, the last one is the most wrenching.  It reflects her misunderstanding that Hoyt himself released the letters, and she begged to have them back. The letter was sent after he was shot and was dated the day Hoyt died. He never saw it.

       Having learned, through the medium of a friend, that all my letters addressed to you during the whole period of my acquaintance, have been placed in the hands of Dr. Mills, with directions from you to circulate them freely and extensively through Richmond, in order to show the public you were sought and seduced by me, thus increasing popular prejudice against me, you can surely imagine how I was shocked and astounded at this intelligence…You can imagine how I shrink from such an exposure of letters, written in such sacred confidence. Spare me this blow, at least, for I am overwhelmed with sorrow. Grant this my last and only request. You would not, surely, by such a course, lacerate more deeply the wounds already and forever inflicted on my peace, my reputation, and my hope. Virginia Myers.

To her dismay, Virginia Myers’ letters were not only circulated but were immediately collected and reprinted as a book, and by the end of October, the volume was being advertised for sale. “THE RICHMOND TRAGEDY – Just published in book form – price 12-1/2 cents – an authenticated report of the trial of Myers and others for the Murder of Marvin Dudley Hoyt. With the eloquent speeches of Council and ‘The Letters’ in full and with explanatory notes which furnish a clear and complete history of the case.” The publication was “Drawn Up by the Editor of the Richmond Southern Standard,” an apparently short-lived newspaper that was established the same year the story of Hoyt and Virginia Myers became public.  In the Preface, she is clearly described as the guilty party and was characterized as a seductress and responsible for the entire catastrophe: “A few short years, and she, who was surrounded with love, honor, and wealth, finds, as the consequences of her unpardonable conduct, herself a miserable outcast, her lover murdered, her father’s head bowed down with shame, and her husband arraigned as a common felon. Is it a wonder if she should become, what rumor has already made her, a raving maniac or a desperate suicide?”

On October 26, 1846, the Hustings courtroom was packed to hear Virginia Myers’ correspondence read into the record, and the next day was spent reading more letters, interspersed with new and damning evidence. A man named B. F. Mosby was called to the stand and admitted he was the anonymous author of a vaguely threatening note found in Hoyt’s papers which could have only accelerated the sinking sensation that the lottery agent was feeling: “Dear Sir: This letter is to inform you that the writer is in possession of a facet relative to your being in No. 18 on Tuesday with a Mrs. M. what you ware thare for NEADS no guessing. I saw Her come out of the room and then you come out. Her Husband will go north in a few days and they you can have a fair field and I hope you will have a good time of it…” The note was signed, “Yours until we meet,” but the signature had been cut out of the paper and written at the bottom of the note was one ominous word, “SPECTATOR.”

Despite his reputation as a gentleman and an effective and honest businessman, public opinion was against Hoyt. With the publication of the letters the salvation of the three defendants was ensured. “The Virginia public, in its high estimate of female virtue, deems the mental seducer as not a whit more of deserving of pity or mercy,” explained the Tri-Weekly Nashville Union, “…than the villain who effects the personal prostitution of the wife – and Myers will be acquitted.” Seldom were Americans treated to such displays of raw emotion and desire in print, and no matter who was seducer or seduced, everyone felt William Myers had been wronged. His brother and friend who came with him to exact righteous justice on Hoyt were viewed simply as concerned gentlemen who assisted in this honorable quest. Hoyt had been warned several times that his conduct was punishable by death, and once these warnings became public knowledge there was no turning back from the brink. The fact Hoyt refused to sign the pledge and flee Richmond as Myers had demanded was also cited as evidence that what followed was correct and fair. He had a chance, declined it, and there was nothing left but for Hoyt to pay the penalty that honor demanded.

At the end of the trial, “Mr. Mayo concluded the case for the prosecution, Mr. Lyons opened on behalf of the defense.  His speech received profound attention from a large audience, and its conclusion was marked by an outburst of applause,” wrote the reporter from the Richmond Enquirer, who managed to squeeze into City Hall. The defendants were all acquitted. “The Courtroom was crowded almost to suffocation with spectators, who lingered through the long argument, full of anxiety for the result. When that was ascertained, such a burst of applause took place as we never heard in a court of justice. It was an irresistible impulse of public opinion, roused by the developments of the painful trial, which has been concluded. The entire community rejoices in the result.”

There also was a degree of fatigue in Richmond, worn out by the constant, raw emotion read into the record in the Hustings Court and immediately broadcast in print across the country. Chatter about the case was unceasing, and the city grew tired of becoming famous as a hotbed of infidelity and vigilante justice. A woman who signed her letter to the Richmond Enquirer only as “A Friend to the Unfortunate” denounced Hoyt and cried, “Are there none to condemn the breaker of so many hearts – the wrecker of so many destinies?” The same newspaper fervently wished, “We now hope that a veil will be drawn over this painful subject, and that pity will be extended to the misfortunes of one whose sufferings must have been cruel, indeed.”

The nineteenth-century news cycle moved on, and dispatches from the war in Mexico soon eclipsed any further news of Marvin Dudley Hoyt, now somewhere to the north in his unmarked grave. The Myers brothers and William Burr resumed their lives, and Virginia Myers continued her exile in Albemarle under the watchful eyes of her parents. At No. 3, Exchange Hotel, E. B. Pendleton took over Hoyt’s office and lottery business, and as a point of reference, advertised himself as “Successor to M. D. Hoyt.” In November 1846, a small announcement signed by William Myers appeared in the Richmond Daily Whig: ”NOTICE – I shall petition the next General Assembly for reasons to be set forth in my petition, for a divorce from my wife, Virginia Myers.”  Divorce was a rare occurrence in nineteenth-century Virginia, being far unusual in the past compared to today. It could only be granted by a formal application to and act of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In February 1847, the Virginia House of Delegates voted 24 to 73 to grant a decree of divorce to William Myers. “Mrs. Myers is hereafter to be known as Virginia Pollard, her former name.” The Virginia Senate passed the bill on March 9, 1847.

William Myers died February 8, 1851, at the age of 38, and his body was taken to his family’s mausoleum in Baltimore. His friend William Burr died seven years later and his unmarked grave is in his father’s plot in Richmond’s Shockoe Hill Cemetery. In 1865, the Daily Evening Herald in far-off Stockton, California, ran a tiny story that was a coda to a series of events that once shook the city of Richmond. Samuel Myers was the last of the men who stepped into Hoyt’s bedroom that September morning, determined to settle “some unpleasant business.”

An Old Notable – An old citizen died a few days ago in Richmond, of whom hardly a word was said, and yet, fifteen years ago, his name was on the lip of every citizen in connection with a tragedy which occurred. The citizen was Col. Samuel S. Myers, who was the only survivor of the Hoyt tragedy which occurred here. Hoyt, a lottery dealer, was shot and killed in the Exchange Hotel by William Myers, a brother of the deceased, who charged Hoyt with the attempted seduction of his wife. The two brothers and a friend named Burr were present at the tragedy, but all are dead now. All of the parties are of the highest standing. Colonial Myers had been wealthy, but was much reduced in means at the time of his death.

There isn’t a record of Virginia Myers’ reaction to her divorce and her return to her maiden name. Divorce was rare, and with the shame of that very public process and the invariable coverage in print, Virginia Pollard must have prayed the worst was finally over and that she could find some measure of happiness after the wreckage of her life in Richmond. Pollard family genealogies fail to record when she married a Dr. Theodore Parker, but they had two daughters, Mattie and Pauline. Mattie became a painter of some note, exhibiting her work at a salon in Paris. Research has failed to find exactly when Virginia Pollard Parker died, but a family history published in 1895 notes both she and Dr. Parker are both deceased. It is not known where she and her husband were buried.

The Exchange Hotel (right) was connected to the Ballard House Hotel with a walkway in this 1875 view on Franklin Street. Note the basement level along 14^th Street where Hoyt’s office was located. From the digital collection of the New York Public Library.

The Exchange Hotel was torn down in 1900, and with it Parlor 18 and its pleasant view through the tall windows into the hotel’s landscaped interior courtyard. Gone were the carpeted halls and marble floors, the chandeliers and the obsequious staff. The bar that Charles Dickens found so inviting was utterly erased as though it never existed. Dudley Marvin Hoyt’s Prize Office was hauled away with the rest of the debris from the Exchange, but the hotel probably kept the stories of the basement office with the odd room in the back until the end. “Our city post-office was on the Fourteenth-Street side of the Exchange Hotel for many years preceding its establishment in the present post office building,” recalled a history of the Exchange, written in 1900. “On that side of the hotel, too, a very sensational homicide occurred about 1844. Dr. Hoge, who at that time lived at the hotel, heard the statement of the dying man (Hoyt) and was a witness at the trial.” Today, the grid of streets in that area of Richmond has been completely obliterated, with only a short stretch of “Old 14^th Street” hinting at the warren of houses, stores, and businesses that surrounded the Exchange.

Dudley Marvin Hoyt must have felt that the downward path of his life in Richmond was inexplicable. He certainly would not have understood the acquittal of the three men so obviously responsible for his death. Responses to the verdict in other parts of the country where personal honor was less vivid, reactionary, or well-armed were also uncomprehending. The Cleveland Herald said only, “THE MURDERERS ACQUITTED - Myers and his associates, who shot down Hoyt in his own room in Richmond, Va., have been tried and acquitted. The Recorder, in Hoyt’s native Massachusetts, said, “No one contended they did not commit the murder, yet the feeling abroad is that the community overpowered the court, who rendered a verdict opposite to law, truth, and justice.”

The Port Gibson Herald and Correspondent in Mississippi wrung one last eye-catching headline out of the Richmond story as they attempted to explain the conclusion of the trial: “SEDUCTION AND MURDER – The Myers’ who shot Hoyt for the seduction of Mrs. Myers have all been acquitted.  They were tried for murder. The murderers had the sympathies of the public enlisted in their favor, and when that is the case, it is almost next to an impossibility to obtain a correct verdict and sustain the laws.” It was not easy to explain a sensational rupture in that thin veneer of the law that usually restrained the harsh and often bloody, misplaced code involving honor, love, and murder in the antebellum American South. Richmond, explained the Mississippi newspaper with monumental understatement, “…is not a community where the dearest rights and tenderest ties can be treated with impunity.”

- Selden. 

Click here to visit Part One of this story.