Hyde, Alfred

Born: 1825-06-10 Massachusetts

Died: 1895-10-02 Brooklyn, New York

Flourished: 1857 to 1858 Alton, Illinois

Alfred Hyde, merchant, was born in Ware, Massachusetts. At the time of his 1850 marriage to Fanny E. Rice, Hyde was employed as a clerk and was living in Spencer, Massachusetts. The following year, Hyde’s wife and their infant son died, and in 1852 Hyde was an insolvent debtor. He worked in a mercantile line for several years in the vicinity of Binghamton, New York in about the mid-1850s, and in 1854 his name was linked to a New York City agency that represented a purportedly fictitious Washington, DC bank called the “Merchants’ Exchange Bank of Anacosta”. In about late 1855 Hyde moved to Cleveland, where he married Martha Jane Hurlburt (Hurlbut) in February, 1856; within a few months she filed for divorce. Shortly thereafter Hyde went to Chicago, where he and an associate were arrested in August 1856 for possessing and circulating bills of the American Exchange Bank, Georgetown, an institution which allegedly existed in name only. Hyde was released on bail and fled Chicago, but was arrested in Washington, DC early in 1857 and brought back to Illinois to stand trial in the Chicago Recorder’s Court. He was found guilty on February 27 and was sentenced to four years in the Illinois State Penitentiary at Alton. On March 4, while being transported by train from Chicago to the penitentiary, Hyde met Abraham Lincoln, with whom he discussed his case and the possibility of a pardon, and a year later Hyde wrote to request Lincoln’s help in securing a pardon. Governor William H. Bissell pardoned Hyde in October 1858, on the condition that he permanently leave Illinois. Evidence suggests that following his pardon, Hyde settled in Brooklyn, where he lived under the name William Alfred Hyde. At the time of his incarceration in Illinois, Hyde described himself as neither a member of a church nor of a temperance society.

Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2011); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Spencer, Worcester County, MA, 43; Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2013); The National Ægis (Worcester, MA), 25 August 1852, 3:6; Evening Star (Washington, DC), 28 October 1854, 3:6; New York, U.S., State Census, 1855, 29 June 1855, Chenango, Broome County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2013); Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 12 February 1856, Cuyahoga County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer (OH), 3 July 1856, 3:3; Evening Star (Washington, DC), 9 August 1856, 3:1; Chicago Daily Tribune (IL), 9 January 1857, 1:4; 21 January 1857, 1:4; Virginia Massey, ed., Annals of Cleveland 1818-1935 (Cleveland, OH: n.p., n.d.), 40:1:86; The Daily Democratic Press (Chicago, IL), 10 January 1857, 3:1; 28 February 1857, 3:1; Illinois Department of Corrections & Predecessor Agencies, Register of Illinois Prison Records, Illinois State Prison (Alton), 4:330, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Alfred Hyde to Abraham Lincoln; Daniel S. Dickinson to Abraham Lincoln; Pardon, Document ID: 132019, Hyde requested Lincoln's assistance in obtaining pardon, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), https://lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=141553; New York, U.S., State Census, 1865, 20 June 1865, Ward 9, Brooklyn, Kings County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2014); Lineage Book National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: Judd & Detweiler, 1936), 150:130; The Brooklyn Citizen (NY), 3 October 1895, 5:5.