Landon Boyd

Landon Boyd's enslaved mother, Charlotte Boyd, gave birth to him on September 15, 1838, in Richmond. He rose to remarkable heights for a Black man in a white-dominated society., Governor Wyndham Robertson is believed to have been Boyd's father. Robertson enslaved both his mother and sister in Richmond, and Landon served on Governor Robertson's staff before the Civil War., Boyd enlisted in the U.S. Army during the war. In 1867 he was selected to serve on the petit jury to try former Confederate President Jefferson Davis for treason, but the charges were dropped before trial. He and his brother Gilbert were politically active in Richmond during Reconstruction, including efforts to draft a new Virginia constitution guaranteeing African American suffrage., Boyd served as an officer in the Freedmen's Bureau bank in Richmond and the Colored National Labor Union. He also was elected to the Richmond City Council and worked for the U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue., Boyd married Ellen McLane in 1868. After her death in 1871 he married Kate Gilmer., Boyd's family moved to Abingdon before 1880 to care for his aging mother. He worked as a brick mason, and Kate was a teacher and principal at the Kings Mountain School. They and their two daughters, his mother, his sister Jane, and other relatives lived on Nicholas Hill, the rise in front of you to the left. In 1881 Robertson sold land on the hill to the Boyds and it remains in the family today., Landon Boyd died November 10, 1899, and is buried in the African American section of Sinking Spring Cemetery., (captions) , By 1870, Boyd was the who president of the Colored National Labor Union. The Fifteenth Amendment, which gave Black men the right to vote, was ratified that year. Boyd served as a marshal for the Richmond parade celebrating the amendment's passage. - Courtesy Library of Congress, A two-part image of the petit jury empaneled to try Jefferson Davis for treason, ca. May 1867. The red circle indicates Landon Boyd. - Courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center