Captain John Theadore Boyd

Seems that  Captain John Theodore Boyd has a g-g-g-grandson who was 10 in 2002, making him about 16 now. Surely he or his father would know more about Kirby Cosmo Boyd!?

On the afternoon of April 14, during the launch of Brenda Niall’s book, The Boyds, at the National Trust property, Glenfern, in East St Kilda, there was what Niall calls ”one great moment”.

Ten-year-old Thomas Boyd, great-great-great grandson of Captain John Theodore Boyd, who acquired Glenfern in 1876, slipped without fuss into the drawing room, sat at the grand piano and played with serious and unselfconscious concentration.

The formalities were over. Gerard Vaughan, director of the National Gallery, had launched the book in the presence of Niall’s friends and family as well as about 40 members of the Boyd family, including Thomas and his twin brother, William.

People were mingling under the pine trees in the garden at Glenfern, chatting over champagne and tea and sandwiches – much as they would have done had Captain Boyd and his wife, Lucy, been entertaining 125 years earlier. A little girl, Niall’s great-niece, was playing with a large Labrador. Some took the opportunity to explore the house and pause for a few minutes to watch the blond head bent over the ivory keys.

Captain Boyd bought Glenfern for 3259, exactly the same amount as its owner, Thomas Watson, had paid 10 years earlier in 1866. The property included four acres of land and a well-established garden, orchard, vegetable garden and paddocks.

In The Boyds, Niall tells the romantic story of how Captain Boyd, known to the family as Theo, eloped with Lucy Martin, daughter of wealthy pastoralist Robert Martin, in 1857. Boyd was on the staff at Government House at the time but with no settled home and a meagre soldier’s income, Dr Martin did not consider him a good match.

However, when the deed was done he accepted the marriage with good grace. He gave Lucy a huge dowry of 5000 and made Boyd resign from his regiment. The young couple went to New Zealand, where Boyd looked after Martin’s business affairs. They settled on a sheep station and raised 11 children.

When the Boyds returned to Melbourne in 1876 and bought Glenfern, their eldest child was 18 and the youngest a toddler. They added an extra wing in the same gothic style to accommodate their large household and in 1884 built the fine stable block still standing at the rear of the house.

”It was not a quiet household,” writes Niall, ”though it was said that Captain Boyd could quell his unruly brood without raising his voice.” Someone in the family, Niall notes, recognised artistic talent in the teenaged Arthur Merric, as against his name and date of enrolment at Wesley College is a note recommending not extra maths or science but drawing lessons. He married Minnie a Beckett when he was 24.

After Theo’s death at Glenfern in 1891, his lonely widow invited her son, Arthur, and Minnie and their children to live with her but they preferred the simpler life at their home in Sandringham.

Throughout their lives, they dedicated themselves to their art but would not have survived financially without the support of Minnie’s mother, Emma a Beckett.

Little did they know that their marriage would found Australia’s most remarkable and well-known artistic dynasty. Their second son, sculptor and potter Merric Boyd, was born at Glenfern in 1888, the same year his mother painted in the drawing room.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/08/1019441516439.html