In Memoriam—P. R. Hoy. 
Ixxv 
PHILO ROMAYNE HOY, M. D. 
[Late President of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.] 
BY JOHN G. MCMYNN. 
This eminent physician, surgeon, scientist and citizen was 
born in Mansfield, Ohio, November 3, 1816. The Hawey fam¬ 
ily [Hoy] is of Scotch origin, and history locates the clan on 
the Orkney Islands and in the northern part of the mainland. 
At the battle of Flodden, in 1613, so disastrous to the Scotch, 
William Hoy was taken prisoner and was sold [as the custom 
was] to an English family. Eloping with his master’s daugh¬ 
ter, they went to Ireland, and among their descendents were 
three brothers, who having become involved in difficulty with 
a public officer, escaped by taking refuge in a ship, about to 
■convey some Scotch Covenanters to America in 1756. 
From these brothers the Hoys of this country are descended 
and among their descendents was Capt. William Hoy, the 
father of the subject of this sketch, who commanded a company 
of New York volunteers at the battle of Plattsburg. Soon 
after the close of the war of 1812, Capt. William Hoy, with 
his family, moved from Washington county, New York, to 
Mansfield, Ohio, where his son, Philo Romayne, was born, in 
the log house which his father built. His boyhood was spent 
amid the privations and hardships of pioneer life. He had the 
training that hard work imparts and thus possessed advantages 
of which so many young of the present time are deprived. The 
schools of half a century ago are called poor when compared 
with those of the present day, but this comparison will hardly 
bold when applied to the boys of then and now. 
After obtaining the best education the schools of his native 
town afforded, young Hoy, at the age of twenty, commenced 
the study of medicine with Dr. Alexander McCoy, where he 
