Silas Wright Burt was a civil service reformer and naval officer of the port of New York.

Burt was born in Albany, New York

Albany, New York

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

, the son of Thomas Burt and Lydia (Butts) Burt in 1830. In 1855, he married Jeanette Ferrell of Logansport, Indiana

Logansport, Indiana

Logansport is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, Indiana, United States. The population was 18,396 at the 2010 census. Logansport is located in northern Indiana, at the junction of the Wabash and Eel rivers, northeast of Lafayette.-History:...

. President Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...

 appointed him Naval Officer of the Port of New York in 1878 as a part of his efforts to reform the civil service structure there. After his term expired in 1883, President Chester A. Arthur

Chester A. Arthur

Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st President of the United States . Becoming President after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, Arthur struggled to overcome suspicions of his beginnings as a politician from the New York City Republican machine, succeeding at that task by embracing...

 appointed Burt to be Chief Examiner of the Civil Service System for the state of New York. President Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...

 reappointed him Naval Officer in 1885. He later served as Civil Service Commissioner of New York from 1895 to 1900.

His brother, James Burt

James Burt (broker)

James Burt was a 19th century Wall Street broker from Albany, New York and a former assistant commissary general of the state of...

, was also a customs official in New York as well as a banker.

Source