CHIEF:  Dr Robin Boyd, MA (Oxon); MB BS; LRCP, MRCS; DCH; AFOM, 8th Baron Kilmarnock

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   Adam Boyd of Pennsylvania

"BOYD, Adam, colonial printer and preacher was born in Pennsylvania, 25 Nov  1738.  He went to North Carolina  when a young man, and purchased the printing outfit of Andrew Stuart, who had set up the first printing press in Wilmington in that state in 1763.  Boyd issued here, on 13 Oct 1769, the first copy of the Cape Fear Mercury.  Boyd continued to edit the paper until sometime in 1775 or 1776,  when the scarcity of materials and other causes forced its suspension.  Boyd was a staunch Whig, and a member of the Wilmington Committee of Safety, and did much to advance the cause of independence, especially among the Presbyterians of the upper Cape Fear, who were much infected with Toryism.  He was a member of the Provincial Congress, which met at Hillsboro in 1775, and in 1777, was made chaplain of the 5th North Carolina Regiment.  In October of the same year he was made judge advocate of the 1st North Carolina Regiment.  He was of Presbyterian ancestry, and seems to have been a Presbyterian licentiate at this time.  He was secretary of the North Carolina Cincinnati licentiate (1783- 1787), and was ordained by Bishop Seabury, a deacon in the protestant Episcopal church on 18 Aug 1788.   He served St. James Church, Wilmington, North Carolina, for several years; and about 1790, he went to Atlanta, Georgia, and after a few years, went to Natchez, Mississippi, where he had received a grant of land from the government.  He did ministerial work here as occasion offered, and died here in 1803.  His work as a printer has been traced by Dr. Stephen B. Weeks in his "Press in North Carolina in the 18th Century.

"Governor Swain's Sketch of the Occupation of North Carolina by the British, in the North Carolina Union Magazine describes him as a true friend of liberty, "much respected, and was a leading member of the Committee of Safety."  Wheeler, in his Sketches of North Carolina, calls him an Englishman.  Colonel Andrew Boyd, of Octorara, writing to his mother-in-law of the war in the Southern colonies, mentions the report that the British have seized Wilmington, "where my brother Adam is."

"An Adam Boyd is listed as having been a lieutenant of Lancaster militia during the French and Indian Wars. "

Source: National Encyclopedia of American Biography, 1897, Vol. 7

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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