Draft:Thomas Duckett Boyd

Thomas Duckett Boyd (January 20, 1854 – November 2, 1932) was  the president of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge for 30 years, from 1896 until 1926.

He became known as "Colonel Boyd" in 1875 when he was elected Commandant of Cadets at the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy which would later become Louisiana State University.

Boyd's older brother, David French Boyd, had served on the original Seminary faculty when it was based in Pineville in Central Louisiana, under its first superintendent / president, William Tecumseh Sherman, who subsequently became the renowned Union Army General. David Boyd and William T. Sherman maintained a lifelong, close friendship.

From 1919 to 1920, Boyd was the president of the National Association of State Universities. From 1921 to 1922, he headed the National Association of Land Grant Colleges. He was an organizer of the Louisiana Education Association.

Early life

Boyd was raised in Wytheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, the ninth of ten children born to Thomas Jefferson Boyd and Minerva French Boyd. He was privately educated at the prestigious Howard Shriver School in Wytheville. When he was 14, in 1868, he was admitted as a sophomore to the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy where his older brother, David F. Boyd, was superintendent. The Seminary would  later become LSU.

Career

Professor

In 1872 he received his bachelor's degree from LSU. After a year of legal studies, he was named adjunct professor of mathematics. He was also during these years a professor of English literature, history, drawing, and engineering.

He was an interim LSU president in 1886 and in 1888 he became president of the Louisiana Normal School, a teacher training college in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He would remain very dedicated to the task of providing good training for teachers at all levels throughout his career as an educator.

LSU President and Legacy

In 1896 the LSU Board of Supervisors asked Colonel Boyd to return as President, a post that he was reluctant to accept, but he returned and held the position of President for the remaining thirty years of his long academic career.

At LSU, Boyd created the LSU Law Center and the Department of Education. He reorganized departments into colleges and supported agricultural programs. In 1904, he opened LSU to women. To encourage professional educators he organized teacher training institutes. He worked for successful passage of legislation guaranteeing public schools a stream of state funding through taxation.

In 1953 the LSU Board of Supervisors established the Boyd Professorship to honor the brothers Thomas and David Boyd. There have been 77 Boyd professors named since then. Boyd Professorships are the highest, most prestigious distinction awarded to a faculty member who has attained national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research or other creative achievement.

Thomas D. Boyd Hall, the LSU administrative building at the center of the campus, is named in his honor.

In 1935, Marcus M. Wilkerson published through the LSU Press *Thomas Duckett Boyd: The Story of a Southern Educator*. Wilkerson, a student at LSU and editor of the university’s newspaper, The Reveille, had begun work on the biography in the years before Colonel Boyd’s retirement and conducted extensive interviews with Boyd about his life and career. After Boyd’s death, Wilkerson was granted access to Boyd’s papers and journals to complete the biography.

Personal life

In 1882, Boyd wed the former Annie Foules Fuqua of Baton Rouge, and the couple had six children: Thomas Duckett Boyd, Jr. (1882-1964), Minerva French Boyd Howell (1888-1973), Annie Foules Boyd Grayson (1890-1979), Overton Fuqua Boyd (1892-1951), Henry Cecil Boyd (1895-1914), and Agnes Scott Boyd Pitcher (1896-1982).  Mrs. Boyd died a year and a half before her husband in Baton Rouge. The Boyds and all of their children, except Agnes Boyd Pitcher, are interred at Magnolia Cemetery in Baton Rouge.