History
Radford's First Governor
Radford proudly calls itself “The Home of Two Governors”. John Dalton, the more recent one (1978-1982), is still well remembered and very much alive in the minds of those who grew up with him. The memory of the City’s other favorite son, however, has faded. Of course, the name is still around. Overlooking Wildwood Park from the east stands the “Tyler Inn”, built in 1941 as a prestigious hotel in anticipation of coming growth triggered by the new Radford Arsenal. Every time you drive past the university towards Exit 109, you use Tyler Avenue. You even pass by Governor James Hoge Tyler’s house, Halwyck, on the way. But who is this prominent Radford citizen?
Governor James Hoge Tyler
James Hoge Tyler was born in 1846 at Blenheim, Caroline County, as the son of George and Eliza Hoge Tyler. His mother died at childbirth, and he was raised in Pulaski County by his maternal grandparents General James Hoge and Eleanor Howe Hoge at Hayfield, at stately mansion that later became to be known as Belle Hampton. It is still standing and very close to here, just a short drive from Fairlawn following Belspring and Highland Road.
At age 17, in 1863, filled with patriotic fervor, the young Tyler enlisted in the Confederate Army. He was with Lee at Appomattox but did not surrender. Instead he chose to delay the unavoidable by joining Gen. J.E. Johnston in North Carolina, who surrendered two weeks later. The Confederacy was lost, but James H. Tyler had found his taste for politics.
Like so many of Radford’s “great men” (Dr. John B. Radford, General Gabriel C. Wharton and others), it was love that brought Tyler to the City. In 1868, he married Sue Montgomery Hammett, the daughter of a wealthy landowner in East Radford (still called “Central Depot”). With his marriage, he joined the ranks of the small local elite that would dominate the future development of the City. They had eight children, with names such as Edward Hammet, James Hoge, Stockton Heth, and Belle Norwood – names familiar to us today from street names and other institutions. (This doesn’t mean those streets are necessarily named after them, but shows the prominent family connections.)
When Tyler became state senator in 1877, he moved his family to Radford where he would live until his death in 1925. Tyler’s career in Virginia politics was stalled during the 1880s, a time when the “Re-adjusters” ruled in Richmond. The “Re-adjusters” consisted of conservative Democrats, Republicans, and African-Americans seeking a to re-adjust (meaning to reduce) Virginia's immense prewar debt, by giving a part of it to the former portion of the state which constituted the new State of West Virginia. They also promoted increased public education funding and a level of racial integration previously unknown in Virginia. It was the popular backlash against these “radical” policies that spurred J. Hoge Tyler and James L. Radford (youngest son of Dr. John Blair Radford) to run on a conservative Democratic ticket, and return to Richmond in 1889.
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