The William Kenneth Boyd papers include correspondence, diaries, financial and legal materials, writings, notes, student papers, photographs (including tintypes), and other materials related to the personal and professional life of Boyd. The collection is arranged into seven series.
The first series, Personal, includes family materials like diaries, financial and legal materials, and other family writings. The diaries were written by Boyd's first wife and his daughter. The second series, Correspondence, includes personal, History Department, and Library and Flowers Collection correspondence. Major personal correspondents include N.B. McDowell, Pat LeGrand, Marion Colley, and John Spencer Bassett. Of particular interest in the personal correspondence are some letters Boyd exchanged with prominent African-Americans, including W. E. B. Du Bois, in 1899. The History Department and Library and Flowers Collection correspondence discuss research and administrative activities in these two areas of Duke University.
The third series, Writings, includes published and unpublished articles and books by Boyd. The fourth series, Notes, includes research and lecture notes taken by Boyd. The topics of both Writings and Notes tend to be about Southern and specifically North Carolina history. The next series, Teaching, primarily includes student papers about Southern and North Carolina history. The Library series includes administrative papers from when Boyd directed the library at Duke. The last series, Photographs, features family photographs, most of which are tintypes in excellent condition.
William Kenneth Boyd was born on January 10, 1879, in Curryville, Missouri, the son of Reverend Harvey Marshall and Mary Elizabeth Black Boyd. He grew up in Weaverville, North Carolina. Boyd began attending Trinity College (later part of Duke University) in Durham, North Carolina in 1895, and he received an A.B. degree in 1897 and an M.A. degree in 1898. He served as an assistant to Professor John Spencer Bassett while he completed his M.A. degree, and he then worked as a history teacher at Trinity Park School, a high school on the Trinity College campus. From 1900 to 1902, Boyd was an adjunct professor of history at Trinity College.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1906, Boyd returned to teach at Trinity College. He had a strong interest in regional and southern history, and published extensively on these topics. Among his publications were A Selected Bibliography and Syllabus of the History of the South, 1584-1876 (with Robert P. Brooks), A Syllabus of North Carolina History, 1584-1896 (with J. G. deRoulhac Hamilton), The Federal Period, 1783-1860 (part of a three volume set on North Carolina history), and The Story of Durham, City of the New South. He also co-edited the South Atlantic Quarterly from 1919-1929, a journal founded by his mentor, Bassett.
In addition to his historical writing and teaching, Boyd actively collected materials for the library. Through the funding of the Flowers family, he made the Flowers Collection of southern Americana one of the pre-eminent collections of manuscript and research materials in the country. Boyd served as director of the libraries from 1930 to 1934. In addition to purchasing materials, he encouraged his students to look for materials in their own homes and hometowns that could be added to Trinity College's and later Duke University's collections.
Boyd died on January 19, 1938. He was married to Pat LeGrand from 1908 until 1924, when she passed away. The couple had one daughter, Mary Elizabeth, who married Duke history professor William B. Hamilton in 1938. William Kenneth Boyd remarried in 1931 to journalist Marion Colley.
