During my studies I always had a nagging curiosity about where my ancestors would have been and what they were doing during major historic events. Were some of my ancestors famous knights going on the Crusades? Were others soldiers during the Napoleonic wars? Were any involved in the American Revolution or the Civil War? If so, who’s side were they on? Were they “johnny rebs” or did they wear Union blue? Did any of my family meet George Washington or Robert E. Lee in person?

I’d hope that I would see the name “Hoyle” show up as I studied. Maybe a famous general, a pioneer like Lewis and Clark, maybe a soldier at the Alamo. Every time I picked up a history book, I’d look at the index to see if my surname was listed. There seemed to be lots of Howes, Hoyts, and Holts in the indices, but never a Hoyle.

I was so happy the first time that I heard the expression, “According to Hoyle.” I had no idea what it meant, but my mother (Patricia [Jarvis] Hoyle) told me that anyone using the phrase meant “this is a fact” or “that’s the rule.” She further explained that it referred to “some Englishman (Sir Edmond Hoyle) from hundreds of years ago” who defined and wrote a book about all the rules of various card games and the expression caught on and remained fairly common, especially among older people.

Of course my elation at first hearing about this famous person with my last name was quickly deflated. When Mom said, “I don’t think we’re related to him” I was so disappointed. I’d finally found out that there was a really famous person named Hoyle, only then to discover that I was probably might not related at all.

Instead of that news discouraging me, it made me only more determined to find out if I did have any famous ancestors. What I found over the years is that most were not famous in the modern sense, but many were notable and honorable in their service to their countries and for their accomplishments in so many other meaningful ways.

In the 1950s afternoon TV was made up of soap operas (some like “General Hospital” are still on the air), cheapy game shows like “Queen for a Day,” Liberace’s daily show, and lots of old black and white movies from the 1930s and 1940s.

One day a movie came on called “According to Mrs. Hoyle” starring Spring Byington (”December Bride”). I was overjoyed and so excited. I couldn’t wait until it came on. The actual movie was very short (one hour), wasn’t really that good, and I can’t remember anything about it except for Miss Byington wearing those dowdy clothes and hats that older women wore in those days. In spite of those facts, I still enjoyed watching it with my mother. I’ve not seen it again and do not know that it even exists any longer.

I often wondered if other kids that had relatively unusual names felt the same way.

I asked my mother if we might have been related to the person shown in the movie. No, she said, it was just a fictional character and a made up story that used a catchy title based on the famous saying, “According to Hoyle.”

Even though the movie was basically a time waster, I was still excited that our family name was in the title of a Hollywood movie. For years later, every time I saw Spring Byington in a TV show or movie, I would immediately be reminded of that wonderful afternoon watching TV with Mom.

She explained to me that those were my ancestors – people who had lived, as she put it, “In the olden days.”  She coudn’t tell me much because it wasn’t her side of the family, but she pointed out that the names “Peter” and “John” seemed to be repeated each generation.

To say I was fascinated by this document would be a gross understatement. Although it was already quite battered, and so fragile that I was unsure if I should even hold it in my hands, Grandma Hoyle assured me that it was OK if I touched it.  As far as she knew it had no particular monetary value. When she asked me if I would like to have it to take home and keep, I was overjoyed and excited to get it. Grandma gave it to my mother and asked her to keep it for me until I got older. ”Maybe he could bring it up-to-date someday,” Grandma suggested. I assured her that I would and have worked hard to keep that promise since then.

Perhaps this website will be the payoff to that promise because, believe it or not, I simply can not remember any thing else that my grandmother ever gave me.

Remnants of that old document may still exist somewhere. Maybe someone from another descendant branch of the family might have a pristine copy of the document. Over the years it was kept by my mother until she finally turned it over to me in the 1970s. By then, time had really taken its toll and the original document was well beyond any stage of restoral. In the early 1990s I was able to make a reasonable copy of that document and kept it on a computer file. The original scanned photo file was unfortunately lost (along with dozens of scanned-in historic family photos) when my hard drive was stolen in 1998.

Perhaps someone in another branch of the Hoyle family that lived in Tennessee during the mid-1800s will have a copy.  If so, I hope that their copy is still in reasonably good shape and can be photographed or scanned to share with the readers of this website.