Alvin Peterson Hovey

Alvin Peterson Hovey was born near Mount Vernon, in Posey County, Indiana on September 6, 1821. He received a common school education and was orphaned at the age of fifteen. Hovey was a bricklayer, schoolteacher, and a lawyer practicing in Mount Vernon. He was commissioned first lieutenant in the Mexican War, but saw no service. From 1850 to 1854, he served as circuit court judge and filled a vacancy on the State Supreme Court serving from May 1854 to December 1855. In 1856, he was named U. S. district attorney, served two years, and ran unsuccessfully in 1858 as a Republican candidate for Congress. He returned to military service at the outbreak of the Civil War and was commissioned colonel of the 24th Indiana. He served in Missouri, participated at Shiloh in Morgan Smith’s brigade of Lew Wallace’s division, and consequently was promoted to brigadier general. In late 1862, he commanded a division in Arkansas under General Samuel R. Curtis and a division of General John McClernand’s XIII Corps in the Vicksburg campaign. Hovey saw action at Champion Hill and won the praise of General U. S. Grant. In May 1864, he served a tour of recruiting duty in Indiana and returned to command a division of the XXIII Corps in the Atlanta campaign. He was given a thirty-day leave, and upon his return, was assigned to recruiting duty where he remained until the end of the war. He was brevetted major general July 4, 1864, and resigned from the service October 7, 1865. Following the Civil War, Hovey was sent to Peru in December 1865 as U. S. minister and remained there until 1870. He then returned to Indiana, where he practiced law in Mount Vernon and, in 1872, declined the Republican nomination for governor. He was elected to Congress in 1886; in 1888, he accepted the Republican nomination for governor and was narrowly elected. He died in his office in Indianapolis, while still serving as governor, on November 23, 1891. He was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in Mount Vernon.