Peter Doyle

Peter George Doyle (June 1843 – April 19, 1907) was an Irish-born American transit worker, known for being an intimate companion of Walt Whitman from around 1865 to 1876, and to some extent to Whitman's death in 1892. Doyle also witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

Biography Peter George Doyle was born in early June 1843 in Ireland to Peter George Doyle, a blacksmith, and Catherine Nash Doyle, the sixth of nine children. He was baptized on June 16, 1843, in Limerick. He moved with members of his family to Alexandria, Virginia, in 1853, travelling through Baltimore which they reached on May 10. Doyle was not well educated. He grew to be around tall. Doyle's niece described him as "a homosexual".

Somewhere between 1856 and 1859, the Doyles moved to Richmond, Virginia, where Peter Sr. found employment at the Tredegar Iron Works. When the American Civil War broke out, Doyle enlisted in the Confederate States Army on April 25, 1861. He fought in several engagements of the war, including the Battle of Antietam, where he was wounded and he was discharged on November 7, 1862.

Doyle was an eyewitness to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. Whitman often rode Doyle's streetcar, they went on numerous hikes together, and wrote many letters, Whitman addressing Doyle as "boy" or "son", while Doyle signed his "Pete the Great". The historian Martin G Murray wrote that Doyle may have influenced Whitman's famous poem "O Captain! My Captain!", arguing that Whitman adopted a more conventional form to appeal to Doyle. Paraphrasing Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", John Burroughs described Doyle as "a mute inglorious Whitman".

Doyle is considered possibly the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life. Whitman's biographer Justin Kaplan wrote in 1980 that "Whitman extended himself with Peter Doyle farther than he had with any other man and at greater risk to his psychic safety." Their relationship has been described as a "romantic friendship", though its exact nature is unknown.