 1848 -
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| Name |
William Henry Boyd |
| Born |
Aug 1848 |
Newton County, Missouri  [1, 2] |
| Gender |
Male |
| Person ID |
I6844 |
Anderson Painter |
| Last Modified |
14 Jan 2022 |
| Father |
John W. Boyd, b. Abt 1822, Tennessee , d. Between 1851 and 1854, Missouri (Age ~ 29 years) |
| Relationship |
natural |
| Mother |
Melvina L. Henry, b. Abt 1828, Tennessee , d. Between 1860 and 1866, Texas (Age ~ 32 years) |
| Relationship |
natural |
| Married |
1 Jun 1848 |
Newton County, Missouri [3] |
| Family ID |
F2802 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family 1 |
Martha Jane Byrd, b. 10 Sep 1860, Missouri , d. 15 Jul 1946, Sweetwater, Nolan County, Texas (Age 85 years) |
| Married |
Abt 1887 |
| Last Modified |
14 Jan 2022 |
| Family ID |
F5600 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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| Notes |
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=boyd-trees&id=I056483
John H. Boyd
noted 23 February 2007
12. ITS PEOPLE THAT MAKE NOLAN COUNTY GREAT
William Henry Boyd was a cowman for the Goodnight-Loving cattle drives that went from Texas to Colorado. In 1868 he was a member of the funeral calvalcade that returned the body of Loving (killed in an Indian raid) from New Mexico to Weatherford.
Mr. Boyd, his wife, Melissa Ellen Hughes, and three children came to Nolan County in about 1880. They are listed in the 1880 census. They had two log cabins near Black Mountain in Mulberry Canyon, in the White Church community.
Melissa Ellen died in 1883 at the birth of a son, the fifth child. She was the second person buried at White Church Cemetery.
Mr. Boyd's second wife was Martha Jane Coffee. They had seven children.
The family broke land and built a house on Plum Creek in 1905. Boyd and two sons filed on the land, paying $1.00 per acre to the State of Texas. These homesteads are still in the Boyd name.
(This was submitted to the paper by Cate-Spencer Funeral home during the time of the centential for Nolan County in 1982.)
West Texas Trail Blazers
by R.C. Crane
W.H. Boyd has been a resident of Nolan County for over 50 years. He is well preserved, highly respected and has a large family connection.
(A footnote is added stating-These sketches were written about 1931. Mr.Boyd has since died. vg)
He came to Texas as a very small boy and grew up in Ellis and Dallas Counties. In 1881 he came to Nolan County and settled on Bitter Creek,buying a section of land from E.F. Henry, one o f the first county commissioners of Nolan County. He has lived in the same vicinity ever since .
He is a pioneer of West Texas. During the 1880's he drilled wells allovernorthwest Texas-i n Potter County, before the permanent locationofAmarillo was settled, in Floyd and a numbe r of other Plainscountiesbefore they were organized. His has been a life of variedexperien ces,but probably his outstanding experience occurred in 1867,when all westand northwest Texa s had only a few hundred people, outsideof soldiers atthe military posts, and when wild Indi ans roamed atliberty all over theregion, sometimes committing depredations almost insight o f the militaryposts. He tells interestingly of going with a trailherd of cattle fromGainesv ille, Texas, to Fort Stanton, New Mexico,under these conditions,with one of the very first h erds to make the trip.
But let him tell the tale:
In the fall of 1867, I became a cowboy to go with a herd of cattlefromthat place to Fort Sta nton, New Mexico. The herd was owned by a manbythe name of Bill Cloud, and the trail boss w as a man by the name ofBillBostick.
Cloud had a contract with the United States Government to deliver hisherdof cattle at Fort S tanton, New Mexico, the cattle to be rationed outatthat place to the Indians. We left Gaine sville in September, andtherewere two wagons in the outfit, and about twenty-four men, allto ld. I wasthe youngest one in the bunch, and I was not then old enoughto vote. EachWagon w as drawn by four mules. We left Gainesville with804 head ofcattle. You want to remember th is number, 804, so that wecan makecomparisons with the number of cattle we had when we got t o theend ofthe trail. Coming westward, we struck the trail of the oldSouthernButterfield S tage Line in the vicinity of Jacksboro. It wasplainlymarked all the way. All through Jack , Young and StephensCounties, wepassed ranches and ranch homes which had been temporarilyaba ndoned bytheir owners on account of numerous Indian raids throughthat regionduring the prec eding months. The owners of these homes hadbeen drivenaway from them.
Forts and camps were supposed then to be occupied by UnitedStatessoldiers, but there were n o soldiers at that time at Fort Belknap,CampCooper, Phantom Hill or at Fort Chadburne, whic h were all on theline ofroad we traveled, and the first soldiers' camp that we came across, wefound at Wilson's Creek in Shackelford County, near where FortGriffinwas afterwards esta blished.
Bill Cloud had been an old Texas Ranger and came with the herd as farasWilson's Creek, and t hen turned it over to Bill Bostick, the trailboss.At the Wilson Creek camp, the Trail Boss a pplied for soldierprotectionfor the herd, and was furnished a sergeant squad, consisting of thesergeant and six men. These went with the herd from there untilwereached the Middle Co ncho, twenty miles above the site of FortConcho,and there we camped for a week or ten days , waiting for anothersquad ofsoldiers from Camp Concho to go with us. The first soldier escort wascomposed of Irishmen, and they were a good bunch; but out ofConcho, wewere furnishe d a corporal and about twenty men who werealtogetherdifferent in type and make-up, from th e first squad. The cowoutfit didnot think much of this latter bunch, as they consisted of Dutchmen,Italians, etc., and we thought that in case of trouble withhostileIndians, the cow o utfit would have to protect the soldiers,rather thanget any protection from them.
The ruins of the old stage stands were then still to be seen all alongtheroad every fiftee n to thirty miles. Near the mouth of Dead Man'sCreek, afew miles northeast of the site of A bilene, a younger brother ofBillCloud and I-both of us mere boys-got after several buffalo , but itwas solate in the evening that the coming on of dark interfered andpreventedout get ting our meat. Men who had been sent ahead of the herdto locate acamping place, told us the y had seen two Indians in thevinicity where wewere chasing the buffalo; but we never believe d theirstatement, alwaysthinking that they sought to scare us into being morecareful in ou rmovements. At that time, the buffalo herds were justbeginning to comeinto that region fro m their northern grazing grounds.
In Mulberry Canyon, in Taylor County, the ruins of the stage standshowedthat it had been con structed of rock. In other places these hadbeenbuilt of adobe brick, and at other places, o f poles. The stageroadwhich we were traveling passed right by old Fort Chadburne, whose ruinswere at that time in a fairly good state of preservation, with theroofsstill in good shap e on the old buildings. We followed theoldButterfield Trail to the Horsehead Crossing on th e Pecos River. Atthattime John Chisum was moving his cattle from the Concho to New Mexico, andwas locating them in the vicinity of where Roswell, New Mexico, isnowlocated.
When his herd reached the Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos, they turnedupthe Pecos toward For t Stanton, and followed the route which hadbeenfollowed by the Goodnight and Loving herd pre viously crossing thePecosto the west side near the mouth of Delaware Creek, which ran eastwardalong the Texas and New Mexico line and emptied into the Pecos.
When our herd got in about fifty miles of Fort Stanton, we ran out ofsomeof our supplies, an d the boss went ahead with one of the wagons,andseveral men, to old Fort Stanton, to get th e supplies we needed.Whenthey reached Fort Stanton, they learned of the incident surroundingOliver Loving's fight with the Indians and his death.
At that time, all supplies reaching Fort Stanton were being hauled bymuleand ox teams by wa y of the Old Santa Fe Trail from Leavenworth,Kansas,and quite naturally, When they reached F ort Stanton they wereratherexpensive. When we delivered our cattle at Fort Stanton wedelive red1,160 head, 356 more than we had left Gainesville with. Wenever bought ahead or stole o ne, nor did the outfit knowingly pick upany strays. Theonly explanation of this increase i n the number ofcattle we had, afterdriving them over six hundred miles is that back inJack a nd Youngcounties the settlers had been driven away from theirhomes by the Indianraids and t heir cattle were left behind running wildon the old ranges.As our herd passed, these cattl e might, without beingnoticed, havefiltered into our trail herd. This was made possible byr eason of thefact that there were then no inspectors on the trail, andno need to cleanthe he rd from the time we left Gainesville until wereached Fort Stanton,New Mexico.
Our outfit stayed at Fort Stanton that winter, and in Februaryfollowingthrew in with the Oli ver Loving outfit to return to Texas. Atthat time,Goodnight was driving his stock cattle t o southern Coloradowhere he waslocating a ranch.
When Oliver Loving died from injuries received in his fight withtheIndians, his friends kne w that his remains would be carried backtoTexas for burial, so they had an old-style coffi n built out ofone-inchlumber, incased with tin. This coffin was put in a larger boxandbetw een the walls of the coffin and the box several inches ofbeaten-upcharcoal was packed, and t hus, the coffin was completelysurrounded byseveral inches of charcoal. This made the contai ning boxand all of itscontents large and heavy. In this manner, the remains ofOliver Lovin gwere brought back to his home in Palo Pinto County forburial.
We had no unusual experiences on the return trip, and there wasnothingindicated by our manne r of traveling that we were bringing backto Texasfor its last resting place the remains of o ne of theoutstandingcattlemen of the period and the region. When we got toLoving's old hom ein Palo Pinto County, the box was so heavy that it tooksix big strongmen to handle it, an d it was so large that it could not becarriedthrough the doors of the Loving home.
On the return, we saw large number of buffalos, and ate buffalo meatmostof the way back, esp ecially in the open prairie country. In theopencountry in the region where Winters is now l ocated, there weregreatherds of them. There is something rather peculiar about the way buffalograze while traveling or migrating. The buffalo does not, like thecow,move his head fro m side to side, or cut a very wide swath, butmovesstraight ahead, and eats the grass clean a s he moves forward,eating ashe moves with the herd.
When I came to Nolan County, James Manning was still running hislittlestore out on Sweetwate r Creek, about three miles southeast ofwhereSweetwater is now located. He was Postmaster a t the time, and I gotmyfirst mail there, though the Postoffice was soon moved to the presentsite of Sweetwater.
This store was first started in a dug-out, but when I came tothatvicinity, it was being cond ucted in a shack built of cedar poles.Thereis a fence between Sweetwater and where I live , which was built, inpart,of some of those poles which were in this old Manning store, the buildinghaving been torn down, and the poles used in fence construction.
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| Sources |
- [S1846] 1850 Newton Co., MO Census.
- [S3630] 1900 Nolan Co., TX Census.
- [S2571] Boyd Family Marriages in Missouri, Linda Boyd Lawhon, et al, BOYD, John W. / HENRY, Malvina, 01 Jun 1848, Newton Co., MO.
- [S1769] Texas Marriages - BOYD/BOYDE/BOYED/BOID/BOYT, Clan Boyd, International, BOYD, W.H. HUGHES, Ellen 24 Oct 1872 Cooke.
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