Archives West Finding Aid

Gordon Taylor Hyde was born on 9 July 1888 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father was Alonzo E. Hyde and his mother was Annie Maria Taylor. Gordon married Florence Ivins on 17 February 1917. The ancestors of the bride and groom were drawn from three prominent Utah families, some of whose members were well-known leaders of the L.D.S. church, viz., Orson Hyde, John Taylor, and Anthony Ivins. An active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hyde served in the bishopric of Salt Lake City's Ensign ward for thirteen years and was the ward's bishop for nine of those years.

Gordon was a succesful businessman having founded and having become president of two local businesses which were the Intermountain Brick Company and the White Hill Sand and Gravel Company. From 1932 until 1936 he worked as an assistant manager of the Federal Home Owner's Corporation in Utah. Like his father-in-law, Anthony Ivins, Hyde was very involved in Democratic party politics. A vocal proponent of New Deal policies, Gordon became embroiled in a 1938 Utah U.S. Senate race when he criticized the anti-New Deal sentiments of B.Y.U. President Franklin Harris who had solicited Bishop Hyde's support for his candidacy on the Republican party ticket. Subsequent to the election of Herbert Maw as governor of Utah, Hyde was appointed as chairman of the Utah State Finance Commission, a position which he held from 1941 to 1946. During Maw's re-election campaign in 1944, Gordon publicly repudiated the charges of J. Bracken Lee, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, and questioned Lee's moral character. He also took to task the editor of the "Deseret News" for abandoning the non-partisan policies of the L.D.S. church.

Gordon Taylor Hyde died on 26 September 1968.