CHIEF:  Alastair Ivor Gilbert Boyd 7th Baron Kilmarnock

Richard G. and Jerri Lynn Boyd

568 W. Friedrich Street

Rogers City, Mich. 49779

Records of Sgt. John Boyd

FORT CUMBERLAND, NOVA SCOTIA ORDERLY BOOK

     Owned by Herbert H. Hixon of Medway, Mass.

Following the British capture of Fort Beausejour in Nova Scotia in 1755, and the expulsion of the Acadians, the Fort was renamed Fort Cumberland and was manned by troops largely from Massachusetts Bay to complete "mopping up" of the French inhabitants and put down such resistance as remained in the territory.

In the fall of 1759 a hundred or more men were collected from the southeastern
section of the Massachussets Colony to be transported to Fort Cumberland
under the command of Capt. Simon Slocomb.  They included men from Wrentham, Dedham, Medway, Medfield, Rehoboth, Roxbury and other near-by towns, and were detailed to form a part of the commands of Col. Joseph Frye and Col. Francis Brindly at Fort Cumberland.

The men were gathered at Castle William (now Fort Independence on Castle
Island in Boston Harbor) and transported from there in the schooner Two Brothers, the brig Industry, and other convoys, about the middle of September 1759, to Nova Scotia.

Fortunately a roster of the men sent forward at that time has been preserved.

John Boyd, a resident of Wrentham, Mass., was the orderly sergeant of
Captain Slocomb's company, and his official Orderly's Book giving a complete list of the men in the expedition and a daily record of what transpired at Fort
Cumberland for the year 1759-60, has been preserved and has become available for publication through the kindness of Herbert N. Hixon of Medway, Mass., its present owner, a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

The book was "Made and sold by William Nallis, Stationer at the Crown &
Scepter---facing St. Peters Church, in Grace Church Street, London", is
bound in parchment and remarkably well preserved as well as recorded in unusually good handwriting.

Orderly Sergeant John Boyd, who kept this record, later became quite prominent. He married Hannah Dean 6 Oct 1763, and had four children: Polly Boyd b. 11 April 1764; Bethniel Boyd b. 11 Nov 1765; Willard Boyd b. 12 June 1771 and Hannah Boyd b. 29 May 1777. Bethniel married Sukey Whiting and Willard married Betsy Whiting. ( as found on IGI sheets).

He became a captain in the Revolution, was a selectman of Franklin, Mass.,
in 1783, 1785 and 1793 and was a representative to the General Court in 18 00-04.  In later life he was known as "Colonel" John Boyd.

The Boyd orderly book supplements that Diary of John Thomas, of Marshfield,
MA  who was surgeon in Winslow's expedition of 1755 against the Acadians, and which was first published in The Register in October 1879, volume 33, page 383. The complete list of officers and men was published April, 1944, in NEHGS Register Vol. 98 starting page 102. [The New England Historical and Genealogical Society.]

(It should be told here that the French Acadians who were forced out of Nova Scotia after 1755, left that place and went to New Orleans, which was still held by the French.  Later their name shortened to "Cadians"  and still later they became known simply as "Cajuns" and their descendants still live in New Orleans and in the bayous of Louisiana today.  Richard G. Boyd)

NOTE: Use this data as a finding tool, just as you would any other secondary source. When you find the name of an ancestor listed, confirm the facts in original sources.

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