Birth place unknown, Harriet Randolph King was christened Ruth Ann, but changed her name to Harriet Randolph at the age of thirteen. As a child, she traveled extensively with her mother (Mary Ann Butler), who was married three times, her last husband being John King. Harriet King married a Baltimore merchant, Alpheus Hyatt, and for a time lived in Washington, where her son was Born on April 5, 1834, and named after his father. Harriet R. Hyatt had one other child, a daughter named Ida, while two other infants died earlier. After a few years, the family returned to Baltimore where they lived on an extensive estate on the edge of a-town called "Wansbeck."
Any other information known about Harriet R. Hyatt is scanty. She took her son, Alpheus Hyatt II, on a tour of Italy in 1858. She was very active in volunteer work during the Civil War, and established diet kitchens in Baltimore and Harpers Ferry for the soldiers, to correct some of the extremely poor sanitary conditions. She set up temporary hospitals to care for the wounded after the disastrous battle of Gettysburg, and used family funds to support them. She demanded an interview with President Lincoln to protest the conditions under which the soldiers suffered, and because of her stubbornness, gained the President's ear and sympathy.
In her later life, she again traveled abroad, and lived to an old age.
From the guide to the Harriet Randolph King Hyatt Papers, 1863-1903, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)
