Joseph B. Boyd

(Born: 1820 - Died: February 26, 1854)

American autograph collector. A. H. Quinn notes a directory listing in 1840 for Jos. B. Boyd in Cincinnati, OH, as a watchmaker. According to The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 1965 (p. 75), Joseph B. Boyd was born in “New York City, son of John and Mary Boyd; died Maysville, Ky., February 26, 1854, age 35.” He appears to have moved to Cincinnati about 1837, and worked for silversmith Joseph Draper (1800-1864). By September 18, 1837, he was already collecting autographs, writing on that date to Mrs. Sigourney. He may subsequently have worked as a watchmaker or repairman. By about 1847, he had moved to Maysville, KY, where he continued to write letters to famous people requesting an autograph. (A letter of January 1, 1851 was written to James Fenimore Cooper. Boyd is listed in the preface dated August 1847 as being of "Mason" — the county in which Maysville, KY resided — in The History of Kentucky, by Lewis Collins.) The Southern Literary Messenger has a short notice in 1857: “The collectors of autographs have a good opportunity afforded them of filling up their portfolios in the offer of the executor of the late Joseph B. Boyd, of Maysville, Ky., to dispose of the large and valuable collection of this lamented gentleman. The list embraces a complete series of the Presidents of the United States, more than twenty of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, a large number of American authors, artists and . . . The papers are to be sold for the purpose of making some provision for the family of the deceased, left at his death in indigent circumstances. It is not often that such rare and interesting memorials are offered for sale in the United States, and to such antiquaries as are engaged in making up volumes of th Signers of the Declaration of Independence, the occasion is of peculiar interest. Letters addressed to the editor of the ‘Eagle,’ at Maysville, Ky., will meet with attention” (SLM, vol. XXIV, April 1857, p. 317). (Another Joseph B. Boyd, who lived in Cincinnati, OH toward the end of the Civil War, was a different person.)