Jeremiah Boyle
General, Lawyer, Railroad President
Jeremiah Tilford Boyle (May 22, 1818 – July 28, 1871) was a successful lawyer and noted abolitionist. He served as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Biography
Boyle was born and raised in Mercer County (now Boyle County, Kentucky), and graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1838. He was the son of Judge and Chief Justice John Boyle, for whom Boyle County was named. He then studied law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He became a successful lawyer in Harrodsburg and Danville. Although a slave-owning Whig politically, he argued for a gradual emancipation of slaves as a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1849.
He married Elizabeth Owsley Anderson of Garrard County and raised seven children. For a number of years, he was engaged in business with his brother-in-law, William Clayton Anderson, a former United States Congressman. Boyle supported the Constitutional Union Party in the election of 1860.
“Jeremiah Boyle” enters the record as general, Lawyer, Railroad President. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jeremiah, Boyle and General can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14623609. VIAF identifies the subject as 1236147270542035700001. The Library of Congress control number is no2016110399. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1818, 1871, 1838 and 1849.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jeremiah Boyle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.