Col. William H. Boyd

Eric,

If you do any research on Boyd, maybe you will find out information regarding Boyd’s interesting relationship with my subject, John Mosby.

Of course, first off, Boyd was the one who ‘intruded’ into Mosby’s tryst with his wife Pauline at James Hathaway’s home where Pauline had been brought by Stuart’s cavalry to join her husband in Northern Virginia. Boyd and his men searched the house from top to bottom and found only a rumpled Confederate uniform (and perhaps undergarments) but no boots. Boyd questioned Pauline who was in bed with the bedclothes pulled up around her chin. One Union soldier’s recollection was that she was an articulate, handsome woman who had no use for ‘Yankees’. Despite all efforts, however, Boyd did not find his quarry and he and his men left the home taking Mosby’s horse with them (some accounts said that they took Hathaway as well). Disappointed, Boyd looked back at the house in time to see the lights in Pauline’s bedroom extinguished; what he did NOT see, however, was Mosby as he came back into the second story bedroom through an open window from a branch of a chestnut tree next to the house (I have seen the tree though the branch is long gone). Tom Evans, a Mosby expert, was of the opinion that the Major probably spent the considerable time that his enemies searched the house and grounds on his branch dressed mostly – or only – in his boots!

After the war, Boyd became Sheriff of Fauquier County during which time he and Mosby had a very disagreeable relationship which seemed odd since Boyd was considered one of the more ‘gentlemanly’ Union officers in Mosby’s Confederacy and Mosby was usually fair in his assessment of his former enemies. Yet he and Boyd came to blows (on Boyd’s part according to one press report) and Mosby challenged Boyd to a duel either because of that incident or because Mosby learned that his efforts against Boyd resulted in the former Union officer – while traveling in Pennsylvania – calling the former Confederate a ‘highwayman’. The general consensus of opinion is that in the end, Mosby ‘won’ the dispute because Boyd left Viringia but whether Boyd did so because of Mosby or for other reasons, I don’t know.

As an interesting souvenir of their feud, I have a copy of a letter Boyd wrote to a Northern newspaper in which he defended himself against what were obviously comments made by Mosby to another journalist earlier. It is a long letter in which Boyd makes no bones about his feelings about Mosby and those in his ‘set’ as Boyd calls them. It is well worth the reading.

To Mr. Adams:
The Wm Henry Boyd you speak of is different from the Col. Wm Henry Boyd in this article. I am Col. Boyd’s great-great grandson. He is buried at Glenwood Cemetery in Washington DC, within site of the Capitol. I have seen the headstone. He died in 1887.