Frank Boyer
*Frank Boyer was born on this date in 1858. He was a Black settler and teacher.
Francis Marion Boyer was born in Washington County, Missouri, the son of Henry Boyer, a freedman from Pullam, Georgia. His father was a wagoner with the army units during the Mexican-American War. As a child, he heard stories about New Mexico from his father. Young Boyer attended Morehouse College and Fisk University. While working as a teacher in Georgia, he married Ella Louise McGruder. She was also a teacher and a graduate of the Haines Institute.
After the Ku Klux Klan threatened him, his father encouraged him to move West. Boyer and two of his students traveled to the New Mexico Territory in 1896. He arrived in the Pecos River Valley in 1898 near the community of Roswell, where he worked in the courts. In 1901, Ella and their four children joined him in New Mexico. Boyer and twelve other African American homesteaders established the Blackdom Townsite Company in 1903. The idea was to create a self-sustaining community free from the problems of the South.
Boyer became president of the land speculation venture. He relied on his training to help reform the townsite board and make Blackdom prosper. Boyer and his family offered temporary housing to newcomers to help them get started and help the community grow. He secured an electric water pump, which helped him produce hay and alfalfa. He obtained his homestead patent in 1908. Greater rainfall during the 1910s helped Blackdom residents prosper.
As a couple, they made education a priority for Blackdom youth. The residents of Blackdom established a community school, initially housed in the church. The school ensured that Blackdom’s children would be educated. Boyer understood the importance of education and its connection to power and influence. He also realized that teaching black history was a pathway for empowering black children. He struggled to farm in the desert landscape successfully.
The return of desert drought and collapsing crop prices at the end of the decade prompted Boyer and his family to move to Vado, New Mexico, in 1921. Frank Boyer died on February 19, 1929 (aged 70) in Festus, Missouri.
