In connection with public utilities is demanded the most efficient service and this the New Haven Gas Light Company finds in the efforts of Robert E. Wyant, who is now its superintendent and engineer. He made his initial step in the business world along this line and in fact has continued in this field throughout his entire active business career, most of the time being spent in Connecticut, although for a brief period he was in the west. His present position is one of large responsibility, including the direction of the efforts of three hundred and fifty workmen.
     Mr. Wyant was born in Orange, New Jersey, February 13, 1868, and is a son of the late Leonard N. Wyant, who was a native of New York and a representative of one of the old families of that state.
     He was engaged in mercantile business and was quite successful in his undertakings, his last days being spent in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he passed away in 1900, at the age of sixty-eight years. In early manhood he had wedded Mary H. Capen, a native of Massachusetts who belongs to one of the old families of that state of English descent. She is descended in the maternal line from the Coffin and Bridger families, both prominent and well known in early colonial days in Massachusetts and Virginia. Mrs. Wyant is still living and yet makes her home in New York.
     Robert E. Wyant was the fifth in order of birth in a family of six children. He supplemented his early educational privileges by study in the Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken and was there graduated in 1889 on the completion of a course in mechanical engineering. He started out to earn his own livelihood at the age of twenty-one years and his first position was with the Derby Gas Company of Derby, Connecticut. He entered that service with a view of learning all branches of the gas manufacturing business, accepting a minor position and from that initial point working his way steadily upward. Soon after entering the service of the company he was assigned to the electrical department as superintendent of the Derby Gas Company, where he remained until 1904 with the exception of eighteen months when he was superintendent of the Colorado Springs Gas & Electric Company in Colorado Springs, Colorado. On the expiration of that period he returned to Derby, where he resumed his electrical and engineering work with the company in whose employ he had formerly been. In December, 1904, he became connected with the New Haven Gas Company as superintendent and has since acceptably and successfully filled this important and responsible position. During this period the business has greatly developed and he now has three hundred and fifty employes under his direct supervision.
     On the 17th of February, 1892, Mr. Wyant was married, at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, to Miss Mary E. Reveley, a native of that place and a daughter of Henry R. Reveley. They have become the parents of two children: Robert R., who was born January 3, 1896, in Shelton, Fairfield county, Connecticut; and Charles, who has passed away.
     In his political views Mr. Wyant is a republican and gives stalwart support to the party but does not seek nor desire the honors and emoluments of office, preferring that his public service shall be done as a private citizen. His influence and aid, however, are always on the side of progress and improvement and he stands for all those activities which are a matter of civic virtue and of civic pride. He is a member of the Graduates Club, the New Haven Country Club, the Chamber of Commerce and various technical associations, while his re-ligious faith is that of the Unitarian church.