WELCOME, RELATIVES AND FRIENDS!

Welcome to my genealogy website. My name is Garvin Harley Boyle.

ABSTRACT

In this website I provide for the download of a variety of files with information developed and/or collected in my forty-six years as a self-designated family historian for the descendants and relations of Thomas and Henry Boyle, who came to Canada in the immigration scheme of Peter Robinson in the early 1800s. Much of this information has been passed on to me by distant cousins who are also genealogical enthusiasts. I have posted family listings that include over 11.000 relatives. More will be posted later. The currently posted material includes work on many of my ancestors and their descendants including the surnames of BOYLE, RILEY, HIGGISON, DAVIS, TAYLOR, FOREST, STRINGER, McALLISTER, PERDUE. You will also find information here about my wife's family: LAMPINEN. And there are several more family trees based on ancestors of my relatives. These include the surnames of PARCHER, SMITH, PORATH, ROGERS, and BRISCOE. Thomas and Henry were, I believe, themselves descended from Sir Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork (1566-1643), and so I have done extensive work on the family of Sir Richard Boyle. Basically, if I think I am related, I have looked into it.

PURPOSE OF THIS SITE

I have designed the content of this website with a goal in mind that is, perhaps, a little different than you will find in most genealogical websites. I do not believe that digital copies of family records have any real durability. I think records printed on acid-free paper and stored in family closets (away from sunlight) will be significantly more durable. Documents written on papyrus and sheep's skin have lasted hundreds of years, or thousands. I remember the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by governments around the world to move hundred-year-old newspapers onto microfiche to save them, which microfiche have now disintegrated, outlasting the newspapers by only a few decades. And, as modern technology changes, old storage media are abandoned and without the associated electronic readers, it becomes unaccessable. In my quasi-Ludite opinion, the only way to leave an information legacy for your grand-children, is to print it and save it.

So, most of the documents provided via this website come in two forms. The first is PDF form, which can be taken to STAPLES or a similar office services company, printed on acid-free paper, cerlox bound, and put into your closet for your grand-children to find and read, long after the energy sources such as coal, oil and gas are used up and all of the current digital media are unreadable. (Personally, I expect this will happen in a few decades, at most.) I suggest you write your own family story, print it, and bind it into the family tree information you may find here about yourself and your family origins. The second format is Microsoft WORD 1997-2003 DOC format. This is the format whose features are most universally importable by all current word processing software. The PDF documents are not readily searchable by computer. The DOC documents are. You can use them to search for items of interest. More to the point: I am hoping that the internet search engine spiders will be able to 'crawl' the web right into these DOCs, and so index the 11,000 names. Then any person who Googles their own name, and who is in my files, will find themselves coming here. Unfortunately, not all documents can be made available in DOC format, at this point.

I present, within this website, over 600 pages of family history which I have written over the years and which are now available through this site. Twenty-nine years after publication, you can now download all issues of the BOYLE BULLetin, my hobby zine which has been catalogued in several national libraries around the world. Within this site you will find two family history booklets of over 100 pages each (one in BOYLE FMILY ORIGINS, and one in DAVIS), and many smaller essay. Also, I have about 200 unpublished pages written by others that I plan to transcribe and post eventually.

Please note that I expect this website will be augmented from time to time, as I find the opportunity to format more material. I have been enjoying this hobby for a long time, and nothing is ever finished. For a great deal of the information, I must confess, it is not my original work. Also, much of this information is in non-searchable form for a variety of reasons.

SCOPE OF THIS SITE

The following quartet of graphics will give you some idea of the scope of this site. 

The first graphic shows the 'Ancestry Fan' of my paternal grandfather, Henry Laurie Boyle. You see Henry Boyle, one of the brothers who emigrated from Ireland, and his wife Martha Reade, my great-great-great grand-parents, and their (presumed) father William BOYLE of County Cork, Ireland. I have a family tree for this ancestral root of my family. You also see a RILEY/HIGGISON family, I have contacted a source who has provided me with an extensive family tree for this ancestral root. Finally, you see the DAVIS family. In the early years of the DAVIS reunion my grandmother attended and recorded what genealogical information she could gather. I have an extensive family tree for this ancestral root of my family, which is largely the result of my grandmother's efforts.

Moving on to the second graphic, this is more of the territory developed by my paternal grandmother, Mary (Taylor) Boyle between 1930 and 1984. She was the self-designated family historian for the TAYLOR, FOREST, STRINGER and McALLISTER familes descended from these root ancestors, in addition to the DAVISs seen in the previous graphic. The TAYLORs included many authors in their own right who have published extensively in local news papers. I have an unpublished family tree which I provide here. In the 1950s and 1960s the FORESTs had an annual reunion which my grandmother attended as the official historian, and I have an unpublished family tree for this ancestral family. The STRINGERs had a large family. I have provided my grandmother's tree to a Stringer relative, Alan E. Bronson, and it has been published. I provide her contribution as a tree here. I also provide a small unpublished tree of the McAllisters. Virtually all of the material I have for these families (in addition to the DAVIS data) comes from my grandmother's labours.

This third graphic displays the mast-head logo for my hobby fanzine "The BOYLE BULLetin" which I published in the early 1980s. I am quite proud of this little piece of work. Of the original 100 subscriptions, several are now in the genealogical holdings of libraries around the world. After 29 years, here are the 483 pages of BOYLE tales, yours, free to be downloaded.

The fourth graphic is a ''Wordle" which incorporates many of the surnames of the large family descended from Sir Richard BOYLE, the First Earl of Cork. I believe that Thomas and Henry Boyle were descended from this Earl, or otherwise related to him, and so I have done extensive research into this diverse family. As you can see, there are many families-of-note connected to the family of the 'Great Earl'.

Not covered in the above graphics, my mother's side of the family (PERDUE) is a little less developed (and not for lack of trying), as is information about my wife's family (LAMPINEN).​

Unfortunately the above site map is unclickable. All of the above named pages are accessible via the menu bar at the top of each page.

DISCLAIMERS

 - None of the documents available on this site are for sale. All are offered free of charge.

- I offer no guarantantee of any kind whatsoever that any information in these files is accurate. It is the nature of the hobby of genealogical research that you are always working at the edge of what you know, and beyond the edge of what can be clearly documented. And, more to the point, while I have made reasonable effort to screen the data I collect, or the words I write, for fidelity and credibility, I have had little interest, and made little effort, in documenting the source and credibility of each fact as collected, as a professional genealogist should and would do. I therefore suggest you treat all information found in my files as a basis from which serious research can start, rather than as a factual or proven reference, or the results of serious research.

- While I have made substantial efforts to source all copyrighted material, after 46+ years of collecting, collating, and adjusting my information, I am not at all certain that I have accurately identified all of the copyrighted sources from which I have drawn. If anyone determines that I have included material in any document in violation of their copyright, please contact me and I will rectify it.

Last Update: 05 October 2012