Friends, My Boyd origins are really fuzzy. The first Boyd that I know of is Robert "Lopaka" Boyd, born 1776-1785, according to some records, in Grenada, West Indies, as a citizen of Great Britain. Thomas Miles, Boyd historian, says Robert Boyd probably arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1791 or 1792. He was King Kamehameha's shipbuilder and constructed the first double-hulled canoe capable of withstanding cannon fire for the King's tiny navy. He died in Honolulu, Hawaii 17 Jul 1870 and is buried in Oahu Cemetery. Hawaiian records say he arrived in the Islands 1 Oct 1822...and that he was naturalized there 18 May 1844. His descendants were important figures in the cabinets of the Hawaiian royal families, and there is a better record of their lives...but the first Robert is an enigma still. Can anybody make sense of all this? Sandy Di Nanni ----- Original Message ----- From: "RichBoyd" <RichBoyd@SpeednetLLC.com> To: <CLANBOYD-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 6:48 PM Subject: [ClanBoyd] Boyd Migration Patterns > Below are the migration patterns of my Boyd family. Why not tell us yours? > --------------------------- > > > My earliest known ancestor John Boyd married Margaret Long in Boston, Massachusetts, 11 April 1731 but most of their five sons were born further west in Hopkinton in Worcestor County in the 1730s, 40s, and 50s. We are not certain where John came from but it was either N. Ireland or Scotland. He could have come with the 1718 migrations out of Northern Ireland but we don't know for sure. > > In the 1760s they all moved even further west to Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, where some of them remained. One line went > to New York. > > In the 1770s one of the sons, Abraham Boyd, moved up into Wilmington, Vermont, north of Shelburne Falls which today is a "hop skip and a jump" but in those days was a long journey. We are not sure why he went to Vermont except that he fought at the Battle of Bennington during the American Revolution, and may have like the area. > > One of his six sons (Luther) made the giant leap West sometime in 1822 when he landed in Ohio, near Columbus. He left Vermont in 1813 but doesn't show up anywhere until 1822 in Columbus, Ohio where he married Easther English. During the years 1813 - 1822 we don't know where he was. There was a Luther Boyd who fought in the war of 1812 but was listed as signing up in New York (which is another hop, skip, and a jump) from Vermont. We don't know if he was our Luther, but think it was. > > His son Luther Jr., stayed in Columbus, Ohio all of his short life but his son Richard Boyd went to Peru, Indiana where he lived most of his life and died in 1934. > > His oldest son, Albert Boyd carried on the westward migration and went to Des Moines, Iowa about 1900 where he married and had a son. > > Another son, my grandfather, George S. Boyd had the wanderlust and from the 1900s to 1929 followed the oil wells in Arksansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas for work. Most of his children were born in Louisiana and Texas. George S. and his brother John Henry Boyd ended up in Michigan which explains why I was born here. George came back to Michigan in 1929 after the stock market crash and during the Depression. > > My Boyd family left relatives all over New England from Massachusetts to Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and etc. Over the years (and especially with the advent of the Internet) I have met several of these distant Boyd cousins in many of the above areas. For more info see: > > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~confido/book2.htm > > Richard G. Boyd > Rogers City, Michigan > > > ==== CLANBOYD Mailing List ==== > RING OF BOYDS http://k.webring.com/wrman?ring=clanboydwebring&addsite > BOOKS http://clanboyd.info/books/forsale > http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=boyd-trees >