George Theodore Hyatt was born on July 3, 1830 in Milton Pennsylvania. Hyatt moved to Gardner, Illinois in 1846 with his family. He became a teacher, and resided in Missouri when the Civil War started. He returned to Gardner to enlist in the Union Army, and was mustered in as a Sergeant in Company D, 127th Illinois Volunteer Infantry on September 5, 1862. Promoted to 1st Sergeant on March 10, 1863, he participated in the Spring-Summer 1863 Vicksburg Campaign, where he received the Medal of Honor for his bravery in combat on May 22, 1863 at the Siege of Vicksburg. 

Hyatt joined the 127th Illinois Infantry in August 1862, and was discharged in March 1865 for a wound received during the Atlanta Campaign.

May 22, 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered an assault on the Confederate heights at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The plan called for a storming party of volunteers to build a bridge across a moat and plant scaling ladders against the enemy embankment in advance of the main attack.

 The volunteers knew the odds were against survival and the mission was called, in nineteenth century vernacular, a "forlorn hope". Only single men were accepted as volunteers and even then, twice as many men as needed came forward and were turned away. The assault began in the early morning following a naval bombardment. 

The Union soldiers came under enemy fire immediately and were pinned down in the ditch they were to cross. Despite repeated attacks by the main Union body, the men of the forlorn hope were unable to retreat until nightfall. Of the 150 men in the storming party, nearly half were killed. 

Seventy-nine of the survivors were awarded the Medal of Honor.

Hyatt died May 7, 1900. 

GEORGE THEODORE HYATT

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