Identification of Booth's body

[Steve]

(04-13-2019 08:20 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Sigh. . . . I am reminded of Harry Truman's quip in response to Thomas Dewey: "It's not what you don't know that bothers me, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

You're talking about the wrong James Boyd. Apparently you haven't read any of the articles I've linked/referenced on this issue. Guttridge has addressed this error:

Claiming that the Confederate Captain James W. Boyd's middle name was Waters, as Steers-Chaconas do, may to the reader seem a very small error. But this one has special significance. Most of the confusion springs from garbled family records. There was neither space nor necessity in Dark Union for the story of more than one James W. Boyd. It can be summarized here. First, James William Boyd of the 6th Tennessee Infantry, Confederate States Army, in February 1865 as a prisoner of war cut a deal with Secretary Stanton for permission to go home to Jackson, Tennessee, to take care of his seven motherless children. Steers-Chaconas are remiss in failing to mention that not only did Boyd refer to Caroline Boyd as deceased in his February 14, 1865 appeal to Stanton for a private interview, in December 1864, writing to William P. Wood, chief of the Old Capitol Prison, he makes clear that his wife had died. The proof is easily found in War Department records at the National Archives. Within twenty-four hours of his request for a personal interview with Stanton, Boyd was released. There his official record ends.

The other James W. Boyd? His middle name was Waters and he was born in Ireland in 1807. He became sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, in the 1830s. He fought a two-hours bare-knuckles fight in a horse pasture outside Purdy with a Joel Rowark whom he had wrongfully arrested for horse-stealing and the Rowarks swore vengeance. Their chance came during the Civil War when Boyd, accompanied by two Chickasaw Indians named Ollie and Ossie Feather, rode with the Union colonel, Fielding Hurst, and acquired a reputation for killing and torturing Confederate prisoners of war.

A rebel military posse ambushed Boyd near Sweet Lips Creek and hanged his Indians. Boyd escaped. On January 1, 1866, he was at the Jackson railroad depot awaiting the train for Nashville where he expected to sign on as a deputy federal marshal. There Joel Rowark's son killed him with a shotgun. Self-defense, the local sheriff decided and rewarded Billy with $500.

Certain “assassination experts” hoped that discovery of Captain James W. Boyd's grave in Tennessee would bolster their claim that he couldn't have been the man killed at Richard H. Garrett's farm in Virginia eight months earlier. They reportedly searched, and found nothing. We searched and, led by a descendant of Colonel Fielding Hurst, found James W. Boyd's grave, the stone half sunken but plainly bearing his name. And the date 1807-1866. This obviously was not Captain Boyd's grave, who was born in 1822. Moreover, nearby we saw and photographed stones that marked where the Feather brothers were buried, side by side.

What set the “experts” on a course of error? Robert Cartmell, a local farmer who periodically entered Jackson and picked up items of gossip, kept a journal. He learned of the shooting at the railroad depot but identified the victim as James W. Boyd, “who was a Lieut. in 6th Regmt of Tennessee Vol.” A Nashville newspaper reference to the shooting of James W. Boyd in Jackson on New Year's Day names his killer Rowark, but gives the victim no military title.(http://hnn.us/articles/3873.html)

Sorry Mike, I didn't see your response earlier to reply. Thanks for bringing it to my attention now.

Here's the newspaper account of James W. Boyd's 01 Jan. 1866 murder from page 2 of the 10 Jan. 1866 edition of the Memphis Daily Avalanche, first published in the West Tennessee Whig:



The West Tennessee Whig was published in Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee. The reprinted Whig article says that the James W. Boyd who was shot on 01 Jan. 1866 was "for more than twenty years past a citizen of this place, was shot and almost instantly killed, by Mr. William Rowark, a citizen of McNairy county." The paper identifies Roark as being from McNairy county because he wasn't a local from "this place", ie Madison county, where Jackson is located.

Doing a search of the 1860 census, there are only two adult James Boyds living in Madison county. One, the James W. Boyd born around 1822 who enlisted as a Confederate in the 6th Tennessee, captured, then released after taking the oath of allegiance following his wife's death, possibly to spy for the Union around the area of Tennessee and Kentucky where he lives. The second, a James David Boyd who was a little bit younger, born in 1835. Most importantly he was still alive until 1886, so couldn't have been killed in 1866. Here's a link to his FindAGrave page:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/138905760

I double checked with the 1850 census, just in case there was another James Boyd who had been missed in the 1860 census in Madison Co., but no such person could be found in that census either.

So, the b.1822 James W. Boyd in the 6th Tennessee is the only possible person the local newspaper could be talking about in its description of Boyd, even though it doesn't mention Boyd's military unit (or Roark's military for that matter).

That makes two different sources independent of each other which identify the same James W. Boyd as the man killed on 01 Jan. 1866!

Now to the Guthridge article you quoted. There was a James Boyd who was sheriff of McNairy county from 1836-1838:

https://archive.org/details/reminiscence...g/page/n25

I have no idea if the story of McNairy Sheriff James Boyd confronting/fighting Joel Roark is true or not, I couldn't find anything to confirm it, but that might be a too local thing to show up in an internet/newspaper search. I did confirm that the William Roark who shot and killed James W. Boyd in 1866 was the son of Joel Roark of McNairy county. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much biographical information on Sheriff Boyd like his age or even if he had the middle initial "W". Whoever he was he seems to have either died or moved on from McNairy county by 1850; there doesn't seem to be a James Boyd old enough to have been sheriff from 1836-1838 still living in McNairy county in 1850 and 1860.

However, I can confirm that Sheriff James Boyd was NOT a member of Col Fielding Hurst's 6th Tennessee Cav. (Union). There was only one James Boyd in the entire regiment. He was James T. Boyd who enlisted at age 18 on 14 Dec. 1863 (born c.1845) at Middleton, Hardeman County, Tennessee and who was born in Mississippi. I checked all the men with the surname Boyd in the regiment and none of them were old enough to have been a sheriff from 1836-1838. There are no soldiers with the last name Feather in the unit as well. There also doesn't seem to be anything like Guttridge describes with Indian scouts in histories of Hurst's unit as well:

https://books.google.com/books?id=rJvqlu...er&f=false