Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/370

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BOYLAND
BOYNTON

Norway" (1886). "Ilka on the Hill-Top" was dramatized in 1884, and successfully played for three months in New York and for five months in other cities of the United States. Many of his books and short stories have been translated into German and Norwegian, and one of them into Russian.


BOYLAND, George Halsted, physician, b. in Cincinnati, Ohio, 19 Jan., 1845. He was graduated at Andover academy in 1862, and then spent some time at Yale. Later he studied medicine in Paris, and received, in 1874, his degree from the university in Leipsic for investigations conducted in the Wagner laboratory. During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-'l he served in the surgical corps of the French army, and was decorated for his services. He was the first to introduce salicylic acid made from carbolic acid, as an antiseptic, in the United States. Dr. Boyland has been a frequent contributor to the medical and scientific press of this country, and is the author of "Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army" (Cincinnati, 1875).


BOYLE, Jeremiah Tilford, soldier, b. 22 May. 1818; d. in Louisville, Ky., 28 July, 1871. He was graduated at Princeton in 1838, and, after qualifying himself for the law, he was admitted to the bar and began practice in Kentucky. When the slave-states seceded from the union, and Kentucky was in doubt which side to join, he declared in favor of the union, and was appointed a brigadier-general of U. S. volunteers, 9 Nov., 1861. After distinguished and patriotic services in organizing for defence against the confederate invasion that was threatened from the south, he was appointed military governor of Kentucky, and retained that office from 1862 till 1864, when he resigned his commission. From 1864 till 1866 he was president of the Louisville city railway company, and from 1866 till his death was president of the Evansville, Henderson, and Nashville railroad company.


BOYLE, John, jurist, b. in Botetourt co., Va., 28 Oct., 1774; d. in Kentucky, 28 Jan., 1834. His parents removed to Kentucky when he was five years old. He received a good education, studied law, and began to practise his profession in Lancaster in 1797. Elected to congress in 1803, he served three successive terms until 3 March, 1809. He was appointed governor of Illinois, then a territory, after leaving congress, but declined to serve, preferring the bench of the court of appeals of Kentucky. Of this court he became chief justice in April, 1810, and retained the place until 8 Nov., 1826, when he was appointed U. S. district judge for Kentucky, an office which he held during the remainder of his life.


BOYLE, John Alexander, soldier, b. in Baltimore, Md., 13 Mav, 1816; d. near Chattanooga, Tenn., 29 Oct., 1863. He became a Methodist preacher in 1839, his station being in Philadelphia and vicinity, where he had received his education. After repeated and prolonged trials he was obliged to give up the ministry because of failing health. Removing to Elk co., Pa., he became a lawyer and afterward an editor. He volunteered in a Pennsylvania regiment at the beginning of the civil war and soon rose to the rank of major, serving with zeal and honor in Virginia and Tennessee, and was killed in the battle of Wauhatchie.


BOYLE, Junius J., naval officer, b. in Maryland about 1802; d. in Norfolk, Va., 11 Aug., 1870. He was appointed midshipman in the navy from the District of Columbia in 1823, cruised in the sloop-of-war "Peacock" in the Pacific in 1827, and joined the Mediterranean squadron as a passed midshipman in 1829. He was commissioned lieutenant, 21 June, 1832. After nine years of sea duty on board the frigates "Delaware" and "Congress," most of the time in the Mediterranean, he served from 1843 till 1855 on different storeships and in the schooner "Bonito" of the home squadron. He was commissioned commodore, 16 July, 1862, and was in command of the naval asylum at Philadelphia in 1863-5.


BOYLSTON, Nicholas, merchant, b. in Boston in 1716; d. there 18 Aug., 1771. At his decease he bequeathed £1,500 to found a professorship of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard, John Quincy Adams being installed as the first professor, 12 June, 1806.—His nephew. Ward Nicholas, was b. in Boston 22 Nov., 1749; d. in Roxbury, Mass.. 7 Jan., 1828. After completing his education in 1773, he passed the next two years in travelling. He was a member of the loyalist association formed in London in 1779, returned to Boston in 1800, and presented Harvard university with a valuable collection of medical and anatomical works and engravings in 1810.


BOYLSTON, Zabdiel, physician, b. in Brookline, Mass.. in 1680; d. in Boston. 1 March, 1766. After a good private education he studied medicine under his father and Dr. John Cutter. He then settled in Boston, where he soon acquired considerable reputation and fortune. In 1721, on the reappearance of the small-pox in Boston, Cotton Mather directed the attention of the physicians to the practice of inoculation as carried on in eastern countries. Boylston at once became a believer in the system, and inoculated his son and two of his servants with complete success. His fellow-practitioners were unanimously opposed to the innovation and protested against it. The citizens also objected, and an ordinance from the selectmen was obtained prohibiting it. Dr. Boylston persevered, and was encouraged and justified in his course by the clergy. Out of 286 persons inoculated during the years 1721-2, only six died. The practice became general throughout New England long before it did so in England, much to his satisfaction. He was also a naturalist of considerable reputation, sparing no labor or expense in obtaining rare plants, animals, and insects, many of which, being then unknown abroad, were sent to England. In 1725 he visited England and was made a fellow of the Royal Society, to whose transactions he contributed several papers. He also published a paper on inoculation (Boston, 1721), and an account of the small-pox inoculation in New England and London (1726). See "Zabdiel and John Boylston," in the "New England Historical and Genealogical Register" (vol. xxxv., 1881).


BOYNTON, Charles Brandon, clergyman, b. in Stockbridge, Mass., 12 June. 1806; d. in Cincinnati, Ohio, 27 April, 1883. He entered Williams in the class of 1827, but, owing to illness, was obliged to leave college during his senior year. He took up the study of law, and. after filling one or two local offices, was elected to the Massachusetts legislature. While studying law he became interested in religion, qualified himself for the ministry, and was ordained pastor of the Presbyterian church at Housatonic, Conn., in 1840. Thence, after a stay of three years, he removed successively to Lansingburg, Pittsfield, and in 1846 to Cincinnati, and remained there until 1877, with the exception of his terms of service as chaplain of the house of representatives in the 39th and 40th congresses. For a time he was pastor of the Congregational church at Washington, D. C. He bore an important part in the anti-slavery controversy.