Newton Halsey Boyd

By Linda Thompson Robertson © May 2007

Newton Halsey Boyd

Newton Halsey Boyd was called “Halsey” by his family. Also sometimes known as Halsey Newton Boyd or N.H. Boyd, he was the oldest of the six children of James Hervey and Eliza Ellis Boyd. He was born May 21, 1845.

His first name may have derived from that of his father’s brother, John Newton Boyd (born July 4, 1814). Halsey may also have been named for the Rev. Leroy Jones Halsey, the dynamic young minister of Jackson’s first Presbyterian Church (where the Boyds were active members for many years) from 1843 until 1848 – and the first regular Presbyterian pastor in Jackson. The Rev. Halsey officiated at the marriage ceremony of James Hervey and Eliza Boyd. The Rev. Halsey later became a professor at Northwestern Theological Seminary in Chicago.

Halsey was the only Boyd son old enough to fight in the Civil War. He served in the Confederate Cavalry, Wood’s Regiment, 2nd Company F.

On January 10, 1872, Halsey Boyd married Mary Elizabeth Allen at the Methodist Church in Jackson. The Rev. C. G. Andrews, Methodist Episcopal Church South, officiated at the wedding.

Mary was born in April 1849 in Pennsylvania. Her father, John B. Allen, an iron worker in Philadelphia when Mary was a baby, was a native of Wales. Her mother Joanna was from New York.

By 1860, the Allen family was in Jackson. Mary was 19 years old. John B. Allen was employed as engineer at the State Lunatic Asylum in Jackson. Richard F. McGill was steward of that institution.  In 1860, Miss M. McGill, age 28, a native of Ireland, lived with Joanna Allen, so there was an early connection between the Allen and McGill families.

In 1873, Halsey and Mary Boyd built a frame residence on Boyd property just north of The Oaks (now the second house to the north of The Oaks and known as 835-37-39 North Jefferson Street). Unfortunately, they lost the house and lot at foreclosure sale in 1879. In February of 1876, Mary’s parents, John B. And Joanna H. Allen, had deeded her 80 acres in Section 1, Township 5, Range 1 West.

In 1880, however, Halsey and his family were at The Oaks with his widowed mother, Eliza Boyd. Halsey was working as a sewing machine agent. Mary was “at home” with four young children, and Halsey’s sister Susan (“at home”) and brother Johnny (“assistant librarian”) were also living at home.

By 1885, Halsey and Mary Boyd had moved to Fort Worth, Texas. They had four sons, Allen H. (born December 1872), James Halsey (born 1876), William T. (born November 1877), and Ellis Hempstead Boyd (born July 2, 1885, in Ft. Worth), and a daughter Leila (born May 1875).

In the 1910 Federal Census, Halsey gave as his occupation “cashier, railroad.” Halsey Boyd died of cancer in Fort Worth in November 1912 or 1913. Mary Elizabeth Allen Boyd died in Ft. Worth on December 26, 1928.

The children and grandchildren of Halsey Boyd:

One of Halsey’s sons, James Halsey Boyd, died young – at the age of six. He died of pneumonia on May 12, 1882, in Ft. Worth.

Allen H. Boyd married a native of Missouri named Emma E., whose parents were German. They had a son, Allen H. Boyd, born in the State of Washington about 1919. According to the 1920 and 1930 Federal Censuses, this Boyd family lived in Seattle. In 1930, Allen was a checker for a steamship company.

Members of the Boyd and Fry Families

Ellis Hempstead Boyd married Ivy (or Iva) Lee who had been born in Texas in 1893, the child of parents born in Kentucky. They had three children, Ellis H. Boyd, Jr., Priscilla Ray Boyd, and Betty Lee Boyd. In 1920, Ellis H. Boyd was an automobile dealer at Cash Boyd Motor Company in Ft. Worth. He died in February 1969.

Ellis H. Boyd, Jr. married Roxie Jenkins.  They had a daughter, Roxanna Boyd.

Priscilla Boyd married L. C. Bearer and moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma. They had five children:  Robert Lee, Annabeth, Michael Francis, Mary Susan, and Thomas Anthony Bearer.  Betty Lee Boyd married James M. Pennebaker and had three children, Priscilla, Beverly, and James Boyd Pennebaker.

Leila Boyd married Fred H. Fry (born in Mississippi in June 1871), a jeweler, and they had a son, Charles Halsey Fry, born May 1900. In 1900, Leila and husband and baby son were living with his mother, Caroline Fry (born June 1844), and his sister, Clara J. Fry (born September 1870 in Mississippi). Caroline Fry was a native of Louisiana; her father was born in Germany and her mother, in France. Fred H. Fry’s father was an Ohio native. Fred had a brother, Charles H. Fry, born in 1873, who worked for an automobile agency and was living with Fred and Leila in 1930.

The young Charles Halsey Fry died June 29, 1930, in Forth Worth, at the age of thirty. Fred H. Fry died May 10, 1955.