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About Colonel George Boyd
BOYD, George. (1779-1846) Colonel George Boyd was born in Eastern Maryland to a prosperous family in about 1779. His father, Archibald Boyd, Sr., was a Scotchman who came to this country before the Revolutionary War and practiced law in Maryland; Archibald was a brother of Walter Boyd of Boyd & Keen, bankers in London and Paris.
His early life was spent in and about Washington. He began his service at the Bank of the Metropolis, Washington, D.C. In 1805, he married Harriet Johnson, daughter of Joshua Johnson, a niece of Thomas Johnson, the first governor of Maryland, and a sister of Mrs. John Quincy Adams.
George Boyd, Jr., was truly one of the government's most faithful employees. In the fall of 1811, he was chosen private secretary to William Eustis, then secretary of war, and continued to fill the same position under his successor, General John Armstrong.
In August, 1814, Mr. Boyd was entrusted with private dispatches to the peace commissioners at Ghent. He remained in France until the spring of 1815, when he returned to America.
In October, 1816, he was appointed special agent of the war department, and ordered to Europe to purchase arms for the use of the United States; he had also received orders to purchase material to be used in the construction of the capitol building and the president's house, at Washington. His purchase of building material at this time aggregated over $19,000, principally in fine hardware -- such as brass hinges, gold-plated knobs and locks, carpets, etc.; also an invoice of $2,000 worth of foreign books for the use of the war department.
After transacting his business, he paid a short visit to his brother, Robert D. Boyd, and his uncle, Walter Boyd, in Paris. On his return to this country, he brought with him a stock of laces, which he opened for sale in Georgetown, D. C. On account of some change in the administration of the war department at this time, the government refused to fulfill its contract with him, by declining to accept a part of the arms which he had purchased. This involved him in financial ruin. After disposing of all of his property for the benefit of his creditors, he removed with his family to King George county, Virginia, near Port Royal.
On the seventeenth of December, 1818, he received the appointment of Indian agent at what was then called Michillimackinac. Fort Michilimackinac was an 18th century French, and later British, fort and trading post in the Great Lakes. It was located along the southern shore of the strategic Straits of Mackinac connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, at the northern tip of the lower peninsula of Michigan.
He left for his post early in 1819. Returning, he moved his family - wife and four children - from King George County, to Michilimackinac in the spring of 1820. There he resided, discharging his duties as Indian agent until 1832, when he was ordered to the Green Bay agency, succeeding Colonel S.C. Stambaugh.
Colonel Boyd arrived in Green Bay on the second day of June, 1832. In 1837, to the care of the Menomonee and Oneida tribes, the charge of the Winnebagoes and Brothertowns was added to his duties.
In 1840, after his long continuous service in government employ, he resigned his post, and on the fourteenth of August, 1846, quietly passed away, surrounded by his wife and family. He was known by all who came in contract with him, as a man of refined character, and generous to a fault.
Their married life was blest with a large family--eight boys and one girl. The sons who grew to manhood were John Quincy Adams Boyd, who entered the United States navy, attained the rank of lieutenant and died at Norfolk, Virginia, from yellow fever; Joshua Johnson Boyd, who also served in the navy, but resigned, came to Wisconsin, and became a fur trader, being murdered at Sturgeon Bay by an Indian in 1832.
His integrity bore the scrutiny of various administrative changes during his thirty-five years of official life.
George Boyd traced his descent from a younger son of the 3rd Earl of Kilmarnock, Scotland.
This reference in from a Wisconsin history.
"Samuel C. Stambaugh was appointed Indian agent at Green Bay by President Jackson, in 1831. He was the publisher of a county newspaper in Pennsylvania and was supposed to have received the appointment as a reward for political services, his personal character not being such as to commend him to public favor. His nomination was said to have been promptly rejected by the senate, on account of dissolute habits while at Washington with an Indian delegation in the winter of 1831--32. He was then sent out by the president as a special agent -- Col. George Boyd being transferred from Mackinaw (where he had served several years) to the vacant agency of Green Bay. Stambaugh's title of "colonel" was not conferred, it is believed, for military services ever rendered by him before or during his temporary appointment as agent."
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbum:@field(DOCID+@lit(lhbum7689adiv186))
Col. George Boyd, the successor of Stambaugh, was a gentleman of refined manners, the brother-in-law of President J. Q. Adams, and remained agent for several years. His papers are in the archives of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.1
"He was a man of superior intelligence, but extremely passionate,--which weakness sometimes involved him in personal difficulties with his neighbors, but never severed him from the true character of a polished and popular gentleman, both in and out of office. The descendants of Colonel Boyd are still residents of northeastern Wisconsin.
Note 1: 1 Agent Boyd's letter-book is a mine of interesting historical material. The portion covering the Stambaugh expedition, in the Black Hawk war, had been prepared and very fully annotated, for this volume of Collections, but a press of other matter crowded it out. It will undoubtedly be given in vol. xii.--Ed.]
"When Stambaugh was organizing the settlement’s defense, Colonel George Boyd stepped off a boat in Green Bay at the end of the summer of 1832. Until recently, he had been the Indian agent at Mackinaw Island. On June 5, as a part of an Indian Department reorganization, he had been relocated to Green Bay to take over for Stambaugh, whose nomination as Indian agenthad been rejected by the Senate on political grounds. “Several days before my arrival, one hundred & fifty Menomonie Warriors had been ordered in for the protection of the settlement. Three days since, a band of these Indians, amounting to 230, including women & children made their appearance at the Agency.”15 On June 22, Boyd held a council with the Menominees.With Black Hawk so close,he needed to know the tribe’s disposition.He knew of the unsettled business between the two peoples and asked if they would be willing to help in the fight against the Sauk.The pain of the massacre was still fresh among the Menominees.Grizzly Bear addressed the agent:“A nation has hurt us—I now ask for revenge from a nationwho has injured us—But you know we cannot fight with our fists—we have no guns, no arms or scarcely any implements of war—I wish to go fight them at least for a short heat.”16 Boyd admonished the chief, saying the tribe could only revenge itself if the President of the United States gave thempermission to do so. Grizzly Bear angrily replied that his people might as well return to their gardens, since the federal government would not help them. “Our enemies have taken the heads of men women & children, conveyed them to their lodges and danced the war dance over them—We ask revenge.”1
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Zq2um77ubLUJ:www.uwgb.edu/voyag...
Records indicate the Boyd's had eight sons, one daughter. Property in his name is recorded in "Early Residents of Monroe County, Wisconsin": BOYD,George; La Grange Township, Section 20, SE (93 acres), Residence.
[Herbert B. Tanner, Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. 12, Sketch of George and James M. Boyd, pp. 284-316]
- Military_service: Michigan Territory (Wisconsin), United States - 1832
- Residence: Washington, District of Columbia, United States - before 1818
- Residence: Calvert, Maryland, United States - 1830
- Residence: Calvert - 1840
- Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 1 2017, 2:25:06 UTC
- Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 1 2017, 2:25:06 UTC
From http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-33-02-0563
To Thomas Jefferson from Walter Boyd, 28 April 1801 London
Sir
If I were not convinced that your mind is still more elevated above the ordinary motives of human action than your high and important situation is above the common lot of humanity, I should not venture to address you, on the strength of the acquaintance which I had the honour to form with your Excellency upwards of Twelve years ago at Paris.—Presuming upon that acquaintance, I beg leave to recommend to the notice of Your Excellency, the Bearer of this letter, my Nephew, Mr George Boyd, who has, for these last three years been employed in the office of Mr Dundas, one of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State. The Change which has recently taken place in the Ministry, joined to the desire which my Nephew has long had to revisit his Native Country, has led him to leave this country—He is a young Man of good abilities and of the very best disposition. The experience he has acquired in this Country must be of service to him in any line of Business in which he may be placed in America. It would be highly flattering to him, and agreeable to me, if his abilities were found deserving of Your Excellency’s patronage and protection. Having just hinted this wish, I shall leave it with your Excellency, with the single assurance that if he shall be so fortunate as to merit Your Excellency’s favour, I am persuaded you will never have occasion to regret any mark of that favour which you may bestow upon him. ....
"TJ [Thomas Jefferson] also noted that the family wanted Walter to take his talented nephew George, ten years old at the time, and educate him."
- Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 1 2017, 2:25:06 UTC
- http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/BOYD/2010-04/1271625841
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Colonel George Boyd's Timeline
| 1779 |
1779
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Maryland, United States
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| 1804 |
1804
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| 1805 |
1805
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1806 |
November 21, 1806
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District of Columbia, USA
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| 1813 |
1813
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1816 |
January 13, 1816
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Washington, DC, United States
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1816
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1819 |
1819
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1820 |
1820
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Mackinac Island, Mackinac, Michigan Territory, United States
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