The only son of Epaphras Hoyt (1765-1850) and Experience (Harvey) Hoyt (1772-1833), Arthur Wellesley Hoyt of Deerfield, Massachusetts, trained to be a civil engineer. He grew up on Deerfield’s main street in a house built ca. 1713. In 1857 he bought land facing the town common and built an extravagant Italianate house. To create a spacious lot, he took down an existing house and shop and moved two other shops. The house, valued at $4000, was the most expensive on the street when he sold it in 1863 after his wife died. One of his two children, Charles Arthur Hoyt, lived to adulthood.