(The following article was written by Kathryn Henry, reporter for the Clovis News-Journal, and appeared in the News-Journal last week.)
With a grandchild or great grandchild for every one of his 77 years, Frank M. Boyer, resident of Vatlo, lays claim to being the head of the largest Negro family in New Mexico.
He has been a resident of New Mexico 50 years and was a member of one of the survey gangs which laid out the city of Clovis. Tho aged man is well known to many of the early day residents of eastern New Mexico.
Son of former slaves in Milledgeville, Ga., he was the only one of his parents' 17 children who was born free.
After emancipation his family continued to live on the farm of the Boyer family, their former owners,and Boyer is proud of the fact that relationship between the white and Negro residents of that section of Georgia always has been good. There has never been a lynching within the borders of the county, he says.
Judge E. J. Kleckley, Georgia superior court judge, financed young Frank's education, paying his expenses until he was graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta.
During his college career, Boyer worked as proof-reader on the old Atlanta Constitution. He married Ella McGruder, now 74, who was graduated as a nurse from Haines Institute, founded by Miss Lucy Laney.
#24thInfantry | #BlackMilitary
Boyer served five years in the United States Army as a member of the 24th Infantry. While he was in the Army, he traveled widely over the territories which later were to become states of the union. One of the engagements in which he took part was the rounding up of Indian insurrectionists in the famous "Crazy Snake Rebellion” in the Creek Nation of Indian Territory where Henryetta, Okla., now is located. He helped lay out Fort Huachuca in southeastern Arizona, and took part in quelling a Navajo rebellion at Shiprock, Arizona.
After he returned to Georgia and was discharged from the Army, he decided to come back to the West. He and a companion walked from southwestern Georgia to Abilene, Texas, a distance of 2,176 miles. They "beat the freights" from Abilene to Texas, and then walked from Pecos to Eddy (now Carlsbad) In New Mexico territory. That was in 1899.
#BeatTheFreights
Boyer's first job in New Mexico was as driver for U.S. District Judge A. A. Freeman. They traveled by buggy and camped in the mountains when night overtook them en route from one place to another. Judge Freeman held court in Lincoln, Socorro and Las Cruces.
After he left Judge Freeman's employ, Boyer homesteaded on land that now is a part of the town of Dexter. There was a fine Artesian well on his property and he was so successful in growing alfalfa that he was later able to borrow $12,000 [300,000 today] on his property. The $12,000 went towards fulfilling Boyer’s ambition to establish an all-Negro county in New Mexico Territory. A site in Chaves county was selected and named Blackdom and at one time 800 Negroes resided in the community.
Boyer was justice of the peace then and has been a justice for many years since. He and some of his associates organized what he believes was the only Negro oil company ever formed, the Lincoln Oil Co. The former residents of Blackdom are now scattered from Dallas to the Pacific Coast, but some of the stockholders of the original Lincoln Oil Company still own 100,000 acres of land which now is under lease to the Gulf Oil Co.
Boyer was a cook for J. J. Hagerman, who established the Pecos Valley line, when Clovis was being planned and assisted when the survey of the city was made. There were 170 Negroes in New Mexico when Boyer arrived here.' He says the Negro population now numbers 12,000. One thousand New Mexico Negroes are members of the Negro Masonic Lodge of which Boyer is the grand corresponding secretary.
During World War I, three of Boyer's sons served in the United States Army. During World War II he had eight grandsons in service, six in the Army and two in the Navy. All of them became noncommissioned officers, and two still are in service, one in the Army and one in the Navy.
Elia Boyer in addition to mothering her own brood of 10 children and scores of grandchildren is a registered midwife, and has officiated at the births of so many children she does not remember the number. Like her husband, she always has been prominent in the affairs of her race. She Is an office in the state Negro Order of Eastern Star.
#WomenOfBlackdom | #EllaBoyer
