Robert Barlow Hoyt
Robert Barlow Hoyt was born on 10 August 1923 in New York. His parents were Reynold Barlow Hoyt and Elizabeth Terriberry, and his Social Security record names them both. He grew up at Pelham Manor in Westchester County, where his parents lived on Bonmar Road from about 1925. At home he went by his middle name, Barlow, which had been his grandmother's maiden name. A Barlow Hoyt ran in the Pelham school field day in June 1938. In the 1940 census he is "Barlow", sixteen, in his father's house with his mother, his sister Betty, eighteen, and a live-in servant, Mirande Goshe, fifty-six, who was born in Alabama. Betty's full name was Elizabeth Terriberry Hoyt, the same as their mother's, and a Massachusetts vital record names her with both parents.
His grandfather George Hall Hoyt died in Manhattan in October 1938. George had been president of L. W. Habra Co., a firm of leather merchants, and his will left his holdings in it to Barlow's father. It was the business Barlow's family would lose after his own father's death.
He married Joan Dalrymple of New Rochelle, probably on 26 April 1946. Their son Robert Reynold Hoyt, called Bob, was born in April 1947, with his grandfather Reynold's first name for a middle name. In July 1948 a "Mrs. Barlow Hoyt" appears in Pelham society news. By April 1950 the young family was living with Joan's mother, Beatrice Dalrymple, at 59 Meadow Lane in New Rochelle. The census lists Robert B. Hoyt there as her son-in-law, twenty-six, and marks him as a student. Joan was twenty-five and Bob was two. Two more children followed in the 1950s, a son, Gary, about 1954, and a daughter, Susan, about 1956.
Bob described his father on a podcast in 2024. By that account Barlow had been a sickly boy who grew into a man who "fancied himself this jazz player." He played boogie-woogie piano, which Bob detested, and he wanted to be a beach bum who played piano. At his own father's cocktail parties he would ask, "Dad, can I play the piano?" and be ignored. Bob said he drank and was mean when he was drunk.
Reynold Hoyt died in January 1953. Bob said his grandfather's old partners then "outfoxed" his father and "just took the company away." The family moved to Pleasantville, New York. By Bob's account his father had not brought money home for three years. On 1 April 1956 the family arrived in St. Petersburg, Florida, twenty-eight hours after leaving New York, and Bob said "we picked up my old man in the city" on the way out. In Florida, Bob said, his father went to work as a factory hand for General Electric.
The marriage to Joan ended, though the date of the divorce is not known. She married again, and by 1980 she was Joan D. Kennedy. Barlow's mother died at Pelham in October 1968, and her obituary named him as her son "Robert D., of St. Petersburg, Fla." He married again himself, to a woman named Donna. He died at Largo, in Pinellas County, Florida, on 26 October 1998, aged 75, and the St. Petersburg Times carried his obituary on 28 October. It names his wife Donna M.; his daughters Eileen Stafford, Susan Thomas and Kathleen Reese; his son Gary Hoyt; and William and Gilbert Henzler, very probably Donna's sons. His eldest son Bob does not appear among them, and whether the printed notice itself left him out is not known.
Children
Sources
If Robert Barlow Hoyt is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Robert Barlow Hoyt (1923-1998)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/robert-barlow-hoyt-1923-1998-439e91.