William Rufus Boyd, Jr.

Boyd was a printer at the Fairfield Recorder before law study in Washington, where he spent two years as secretary to Congressman Scott Field. After World War I he managed the national campaign of the League to Enforce Peace, the group led by former president William Howard Taft that sought American membership in the League of Nations. In 1946 President Truman gave him the Presidential Medal of Merit for his wartime petroleum work. He sat on the Texas Turnpike Authority from 1955 to 1959 and died in Teague, and the Handbook of Texas says he was buried at Arlington.

What the plaque says

William Rufus Boyd, Jr. (January 7, 1885 - November 6, 1959) Licensed to practice law at age 19; became Teague's first mayor at 21. Regional manager of U. S. Chamber of Commerce during World War I. Joined the American Petroleum Institute in 1920, rising to positions of executive vice president, 1928-1941, and president, 1841-1949. In World War II, as chairman of War Council of petroleum industry, he aided Allied victory. Married Gertrude Watson and had one son, William Rufus, III. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Fort Parker — 15 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 16 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 16 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.

More markers nearby

• Town of Teague — 0.8 mi
• Old Division Point Office for the "Boll Weevil" Railway — 0.8 mi
• Furney Richardson High School — 2.6 mi
• Ghost Town of Cotton Gin — 5.6 mi