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| Bill Myers responded on 21 January 2011 to information on this family website concerning one of his wife's ancestors, Joseph Boyd, reproduced below |
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Dear Tom McFarland,
From time to time I think of something that might be found on the Internet about our ancestors and set off searching. In looking for something about my wife's grandfather, Joseph Boyd, the link below appeared. http://math.uww.edu/~mcfarlat/pictures/wright1.htm I was delighted to see the two pictures of the members of the Annual Club of the Ten Dayton Boys. (We have a couple of similar photos.) As you may know, the story of the Club was quite interesting. A cousin of mine, August Brunsman and his wife Charlotte, of Dayton, created a wonderful digest of the minutes of the Club. With no success in finding a publisher, he decided to just go ahead and make it available on the Internet. Here is the link to their complete work: We have the gavel from the Club; it is made of ten different kinds of wood - the handle and the barrel being two, and the two faces of the barrel each containing four dowels, for a total of ten. It is our plan to donate it to the Wright Brothers' archive at Wright State University. On the May 1909 picture, Joseph Boyd is at the extreme left. Quite a bit has been written about how Dayton honored the Wrights at that time. The members of the Ten Dayton Boys were active participants in the event. The reason that Orville was not a member of the TDB? He was too young!! Meanwhile, I hope that the link to the story of the Ten Dayton Boys will prove of interest to some of the site visitors. Out of curiosity I thought I'd see what the Censuses say about Elijah Landis and his son Wilbur. I couldn't find anything in Montgomery County in the 1870 or 1880 but the 1860 (taken on June 4) says: Eligah [sic] Landis, 37, no occupation shown, and Catherine Landis, 22, are living in Crawford County, Ohio, Jackson Township, town of Crestline. They are residing there with J. Landis*, 37, clerk, and Ann M. Landis, 33. Each of the four is shown with Pennsylvania as their birthplace. *Josiah? The age is right. Seems strange that Wilbur Landis is not seen in the 1880 in Montgomery County (Dayton). He almost certainly would have been living there at the time. In that same paragraph (about the family of Joseph Landis, born in June 1784) the second last name, ". . . Hiram John (born 7 Nov 1828) possibly living in Mossilon, Ohio, in 1933 . . ." brings two questions to mind. Could that town actually be Massillon? And being born in 1828, was he still alive in 1933? Perhaps something that might not fall within your area of involvement, but I thought worthy of mention. Wilbur E. Landis (1862-1934) is mentioned in an article which appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on September 20, 1945, page 6, column 1, entitled "Last Survivor Recalls Days Of 'Ten Dayton Boys' Club As Wrights Sought To Fly." It tells the story of how Edgar W. Ellis, in 1886, suggested the idea of a "last man" organization to several friends, among them Loren, Reuchlin and Wilbur Wright. Ironically, of the ten members, Mr. Ellis himself turned out to be the last one, passing away in 1951. You are to be commended on the extent of information you have gathered and made available on the Internet. This family tree research can be daunting!! With kind regards, Bill Myers P.S. My wife's maiden name is Marianne Boyd. Her father was Everett M. Boyd, one of the three sons of Joseph Boyd and Anna Gagel Boyd. |