Land Of The Buckeye
David L. Boyd (1841 - 1919)
David L. Boyd (1841 - 1919)
David Lindsey Boyd immigrated from County Antrim, Ireland, after the end of the Civil War in the United States, to Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and was granted U.S. citizenship in 1875. We know that his parents were "James and Jenny Boyd", and that he was the youngest of a large family, and that the residence was at Spring Mount townland, in the Grange of Dundermot parish, near the village of Clough*. He brought with him his Masonic "demit", or certificate of membership, shown below.
Additional facts that may help lead to his ancestry:
As a younger son, farming the family land was not an option for David. In pursuit of gainful employment, he became a teacher in the National School system, where he taught at the Drumadoon school from 1857 to 1866. Samuel S. McLure, later a successful American magazine publisher, was a student of David Boyd's in Ireland. Writing in his autobiography of his early days attending a National School near his home he recalled that because he was malnourished and tired easily, he would have crying spells in the afternoon, and writes the following:
"I distinctly remember how kind the teacher, Mr. Boyd, was to me when these crying-fits came on, and how considerate the other boys were... Every few years each teacher in the public schools was required to spend six months in Dublin... I can remember when our teacher Mr. Boyd went, and how none of us much cared for the substitute... When Mr. Boyd explained to us boys that the war was between the Northern and Southern states of North America and not between North and South America, that was a great revelation to us... I have so often wondered in the intervening years what had become of this good and kindly man that I was very much pleased when Senator Brackett, at the time these memoirs first appeared, wrote me, "I suspect the school teacher whom you mention in your autobiography is my old time friend David L. Boyd, still living in Mt. Vernon, Iowa." I availed myself of the hint and was rewarded by the following communication from the younger Boyd...." (a letter from David's son William W. Boyd follows in the autobiography).
- David's son William Walter Boyd took a trip in 1895 back to Ireland, and wrote a little diary. The only useful tidbits are that he went to the townland of Spring Mount, in Grange of Dundermot parish near Clough, and visited "Uncle Robert" there.
- When my father (Donald L. Boyd, Jr.) was a young boy living in northern Ohio, he remembered that his father (Donald L. Boyd, Sr.) and grandfather (James Craig Boyd) once took a trip to Tecumseh, Lenawee County, Michigan to visit "a cousin". This was in the early 1930s.
- Collaborating with a descendant of Rose Anne (Boyd) Mellon (1829-1905) of Lenawee County, William R. Southard, we have put together our best understanding of the immigrant children of James and Jenny Boyd of Spring Mount Townland at Clough, County Antrim.
- I presume that our Ulster Boyds were some of the "planted" Scots during the plantation under English King James in the early 1600s, from the Boyds of Kilmarnock in Ayr. My dad remembered his grandfather had a little ditty that recited the towns in Ulster through which their immigrant ancestor travelled. The "Bally" names are difficult and foreign to us, and he couldn't remember most of them, but it ended in "Ballymena". In Correspondence with an amateur genealogist in County Antrim, who has done some local research for me, he opined that the Boyds of Spring Mount/Clough appear to be relatives of the Boyds of Ballyhutherland of that period (late 18th/early 19th centuries).
He was born on 5 December 1841 at County Antrim, Ireland. He was the son of James Boyd and Jenny (?). David Lindsey Boyd immigrated in 1868 to Marengo, Iowa Co., IA. He married Margaret Craig, daughter of Thomas Craig and Martha Smyth, on 8 December 1870 at Mt. Vernon, Linn Co., IA. David Lindsey Boyd died on 30 March 1919 at Mt. Vernon, Linn Co., IA, at age 77. He was buried in April 1919 at Mt. Vernon Cemetery, Mt. Vernon, Linn Co., IA.
*Clough is a small village adjacent to the Spring Mount townland, about seven miles north of Ballymena, in County Antrim. It is about a mile from the Springmount Bog, site of the 1914 discovery by W. Gregg, of Clough, of a set of six wooden wax tablets now known to have been created in the late 7th or early 8th century C.E. The tablets were found about four feet below the bog surface, while Mr. Gregg was cutting peat. These tables form a booklet with text from the Book of Psalms inscribed on the wax surface. The tablets are considered to be the earliest surviving example of Irish writing in the Latin script.
-- Wikipedia
