My Genealogy Hound

William H. Boyce is a planter and cotton ginner of Montgomery Township, and has been a prominent and enterprising resident of Monroe County, Ark., since 1866. He was born in Jackson, Tenn., July 19, 1847, and is a son of Isham and Elizabeth (Tharpe) Boyce, natives respectively of South Carolina and North Carolina. Both removed to Tennessee with their parents when young and were married in Paris of that State, but afterward became residents of Jackson. Mr. Boyce died at Brownsville, Tenn., in 1866, at the age of fifty-four years, and his wife in 1853, aged thirty-four years. After the death of his wife Mr. Boyce married again. William H. is the youngest of seven children born to his first union and received his early education in the common schools of his native State. When the war opened he joined Company L, Sixth Tennessee Infantry, and for some time was with Gen. Bragg in Kentucky and Tennessee, participating with that general in the battles of Perryville, Shiloh and Corinth. Just before the battle of Murfreesboro he was transferred to Company G, Ninth Tennessee Cavalry, and was at the battle of Chickamauga and in many skirmishes. He was captured at Panther Springs, Tenn., January 24, 1864, and was kept a prisoner at Ball’s Island until just before the close of the war when he was released and rejoined his command and surrendered with it at Gainesville, Ala. Mr. Boyce has been very successful in his farming ventures and has an excellent lot of land, comprising 1,400 acres, lying seven miles northeast of Indian Bay. His land was almost wholly covered with timber, but with the energy and push which have ever characterized his efforts, he began energetically to clear his property and now has about 500 acres under cultivation. He keeps his cotton-gin running almost the year round and finds this a lucrative business. In 1869 he was married to Laura, a daughter of Capt. William M. Mayo, whose sketch will be found in this work, and by her became the father of ten children, three daughters only now living. Mr. Boyce is a Democrat, and his wife is a member in good standing of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He has one sister living, Georgia, the wife of John W. Gates, of Jackson, Tenn. William A. Tharpe, the maternal grandfather, was born in North Carolina, and died near Paris, Tenn.