Henry Sylvester Scovel was an American journalist and engineer, better known simply as Sylvester Scovel. He also was a Presbyterian minister, who served as President of the University of Wooster.
Background
Henry Sylvester was born on July 29, 1869 at Denny Station, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of the Reverend Sylvester Fithian and Caroline (Woodruff) Scovel, and a descendant of Arthur Scovell, who came to Boston about 1660 and settled in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1670. His father was a Presbyterian minister, son of a president of Hanover College in Indiana, who also became a college president, serving at the University of Wooster, in Wooster, Ohio, from 1883 to 1899.
Education
Scovel was educated in the public schools of Pittsburgh and the Michigan Military Academy, from which he was graduated in 1887. For a few months he attended the University of Wooster and spent portions of four years at the University of Michigan.
Career
Henry Sylvester Scovel worked as timekeeper in various blast-furnace construction plants. He later worked as an engineer in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
Although there is no record of his previous newspaper experience, his aggressiveness as a promoter of several enterprises in Chicago and Cleveland apparently led to his appointment in 1895 as correspondent for the Pittsburgh Dispatch and the New York Herald to cover the increasingly serious disturbances in Cuba. Here his activities proved so unwelcome to the Spanish authorities that they arrested him in Havana in 1896. By this time he had become a rather conspicuous figure, and after his escape from confinement he was engaged by the New York World.
During the next two years he made his reputation as one of the most brilliant actors in the drama of the Spanish-American conflict. For eleven months he lived with the insurgents, sharing all the hardships and dangers of their guerrilla warfare. With characteristic daring and resourcefulness he ran the Spanish military and police lines twenty times.
Finally on February 7, 1897, he was again captured by the Spaniards. This incident created considerable excitement throughout the country; many state legislatures passed resolutions demanding his release, and at the insistence of the Senate the United States government made such strong representations to Spain that he was given his freedom.
After accomplishing his particular mission in Cuba, he was sent by the World in 1897 to cover the Turco-Greek conflict, but when the tension between the United States and Spain increased he was recalled and arrived in Cuba just before the Maine disaster. When war was declared he was assigned to duty as correspondent for his paper, and he remained with the American forces until the evacuation by Spain in 1899.
His zeal for the news led him constantly to disobey army regulations. From 1899 to 1902 he served as consulting engineer to the Cuban customs service of the United States military government of the island.
This post he resigned to engage in various commercial promotion projects in Havana, where he died.
Achievements
Henry Sylvester Scovel was one of the most famous correspondents of the United States. He was well-known as a foreign correspondent for the Herald, a paper well-regarded for its reporting of international news. He provided the world with the information about the Spanish–Cuban conflict, reported on Spanish and Cuban troop movements, their strengths and weaknesses and the devastating effects of the Spanish reconcentrado policy. Scovel published an exclusive interview with Gomez that enraged General Valeriano Weyler, Spanish governor of Cuba, who responded by posting a reward for The World correspondent's capture.
Personality
Boyish in appearance and manner, daring and determined to the point of recklessness, Scovel could not be diplomatic.
Connections
Scovel was married on April 5, 1897, to Frances Cabanna of St. Louis, Missouri.
