Harry Boyd and his wife, Dorothy, recently published their third historical reference work entitled “Tribute to Williamson County Heroes.” Harry Boyd is a Director serving on the board of the Williamson County Historical Society. He and his wife Dorothy live in Marion and have been residents of Williamson County for over 45 years, having moved from Saline County.
“Tribute”, is a large, four volume set that details over 8,600 men and women who served in the military and were buried in Williamson County. Harry stated, “The two requirements were that they did military service and had to be buried in this county. The rather extensive listings detail those who were in military service ranging from the Revolutionary War to current times. There were found to be five Revolutionary soldiers buried in the county, one of which was John Ellis, a free black man from N. Carolina who signed up for the Continental army on April 27, 1776. He is the only black Revolutionary war soldier buried in Williamson County and is buried near New Denison where his family lived for decades.
The books listing contain those from virtually every conflict that has occurred in our national history including the Black Hawk War, Mexican-American, Spanish-American, and on to current time. The set contains over 1,500 obituaries and approximately 9,000 photos.
The project was undertaken by the Boyd’s over roughly a four year time frame. Requests were made of family members to provide a photo of the soldiers, preferably in uniform. In lieu of photos of the individual, Harry and his wife visited over 240 cemeteries to take photos of the military markers on graves. He said that they wore out three weed eaters trying to clear areas around grownup gravesites.
On September 25th, 2014, Harry and Dorothy donated a set of his books to the Williamson County Museum Library and an additional copy of the set to the Marion Carnegie Library for reference purposes. Due to expenses, only five sets of the book have been printed so far, but the book is available for purchase at his cost, plus state tax, which he estimated to be around $250 per set.
This last work is the third publication for the Boyd’s. In 2000, they published an exhaustive volume called “Second in Name Only, “that details the history of the Second Baptist Church in Marion and its people. That work was followed by a large, three volume set around 2007 entitled “Williamson County’s Greatest Generation,” that specialized in those from Williamson County who served in WWII.
All of the Boyd’s works have been donated to our reference library by them.
Harry served in the U.S. Army during the peacetime of 59-61 and re-entered the Army a second time in 1961. He indicated that one of his primary purposes in doing so much research on military veterans was that so many of their sacrifices are often forgotten in time. How true that is, unfortunately.
(Article by Sam Lattuca, 9/25/2014)