Marcus Boyd has been a WCGS member for several years. We are delighted to welcome him to the WCGS Board. He always brings something interesting to the table. He has some truly amazing talents for combining the latest tech with traditional genealogical content. I look forward to watching his story with us unfold.
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| Marcus Boyd, WCGS Treasurer |
Hi Marcus. Please share some highlights of your personal genealogical journey including work, hobby and/or research experiences.
My interest in family history began in 2019, shortly after the birth of my first child. Around that time, I watched the fascinating documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which brings the experiences of World War I soldiers to life through veterans’ firsthand accounts and restored archival footage. When I shared the documentary with my dad, he mentioned that my great-grandfather had served in the war—something I had never known. That revelation made me wonder, “What else don’t I know about my family’s history?” More than seven years later, I’m still asking that same question, and each new discovery seems to lead to another.
Along the way, I've traced my Boyd lineage to the early 1700s in Beaufort County and my mother's line to the Scots who came up the Cape Fear river to settle what is now Robeson (formerly Bladen) County. I've also found family members from Wake County (Hood-Anderson Farm) & one who spent time at Dorthea Dix hospital! I tend to gravitate towards researching my wife's family who received land grants in 1860s Nebraska. A few years ago I met the governor of Nebraska, Jim Pillen, at a family reunion where I created a 600+ person family tree.
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| Marcus and his massive family reunion tree! |
What is your genealogy super power?
I work in Information Technology (IT) and I'm always looking for novel ways to blend technology and genealogy. That led to an interest in mapping cemeteries. I've completed multiple projects where I combine drone data & amateur survey equipment to create custom maps of cemeteries. With two young kids, I do not get to spend enough time on this interest & look forward to doing more in the future.
What is the coolest/best/most exciting find you have made in your own research?
In the course of pushing the Boyd line back as far as possible, I found some interesting research that a distant cousin created. My (likely) seventh great-grandfather Robert Boyd lived in the early 1700s & stood trial for piracy in Charleston, SC. The report claims he was kidnapped & held prisoner by the captain but nonetheless was accused of piracy once the ship was captured by the authorities.
Who would you most like to spend time with and interview if you could zip back in a time machine for a day?
My wife's mother passed away in 2010 & I never met her. She could resolve several brick walls in my research. First, her mother was an immigrant from Scotland after surviving the Greenock blitz in WW2. I've questions about the passage from Scotland to New York that she would likely be able to answer. Second, I've been researching the circumstances of how my wife's parents met and she could easily answer those questions. Both parents are now gone and all that exists is family stories. I’ve made connections with their friends from the 1970s, conducted several interviews, and pieced together a picture of their social life in the late 1970s. The process felt more like a police investigation than a genealogical research project, but was very fun!
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