Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boyd, Mark (1805?-1879)
BOYD, MARK (1805?–1879), author, born in Surrey near the Thames, was the younger son of Edward Boyd of Merton Hall, Newton Stuart, Wigtonshire, a merchant and brother of Benjamin Boyd [q. v.] He mainly spent his childhood on the Scotch estate, which was near the river Cree. He afterwards pursued in London an active business career, and became London director of a Scotch insurance society, and a lively promoter of the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, and of other useful public undertakings. He travelled much in Europe. He published an account in the 'London and Shetland Journal' of a journey in the Orkney Isles in 1839. On 23 Dec. 1848 he married Emma Anne, the widow of 'Romeo' Coates, who had been run over and killed in the previous February. In 1864 Boyd published a pamphlet on Australian matters; in 1871 his 'Reminiscences of Fifty Years,' and in 1875 his 'Social Gleanings,' dedicating the first to the Australian colonists, and the last (from Oatlands, Walton-on-Thames) to Dean Ramsay. He died in London on 12 Sept. 1879, aged 74.
[Boyd's Reminiscences of Fifty Years, Dedication, vi, vii, and pp. 102, 310, 333, 336, 368, 397, 464, 466; Annual Reg. 1848, p. 216, 1879, p. 222; Gent. Mag. N.S. xxx. 648.]