William R. (William Reynolds) Eyster

Born in Johnstown, New York, on October 14, 1841, he was educated in New York and Pennsylvania, including study at the seminary in Allentown. He served in the Civil War with the 128th Pennsylvania Volunteers and later built a varied career that included teaching, studying law, editing newspapers, and writing popular fiction.

He is best remembered as a prolific dime-novel author whose works include Wild Nat, the Trooper and The Luckless Trapper. He also wrote under the pen name R. Hunt Wilby, and his fiction often drew on frontier settings and adventurous plots that appealed to a wide 19th-century readership.

Later in life, he remained active in journalism and public life, eventually living in Kansas, where he died in Topeka in July 1918. His career shows how closely literature, newspapers, and public service could overlap in his era.