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A HISTORY OF TEXAS AND TEXANS
By: Frank W. Johnson, 1914

See Also: William Carson Boyett: http://www.pbase.com/daveb/image/84590029/original

THOMAS PINKNEY BOYETT

This name is one that has been familiar and honored in Brazos County for a great number of years. Thomas P. Boyett has lived in that county half a century, was a boy-soldier in the Confederate army, has been closely identified with business affairs, and for the past sixteen years has held the office of city marshal at Bryan. It is said the city has never had a more conscientious citizen and officer than Captain Boyett. In the course of his career as marshal he had never drawn a gun on an offender, his firmness and his moral courage being sufficient to subdue the most obstreperous individual and to uphold the majesty of the law.

Thomas Pinkney Boyett was born in Tyler County, Texas on Billum's Creek, north of Woodville, August 10, 1845. His father was James T. Boyett, who was born in middle Tennessee of Scotch ancestry. The father first came to Texas in 1833, three years before the winning of independence, and became a permanent citizen in 1836. In 1863 he moved to Rock Prairie in Brazos county, and there spent the rest of his life. James T. Boyett, married Miss Martha Carson, whose father John Carson, was an Irishman, who was a large slave holder when the war broke out, and who died in Blanco County. The children of their marriage were: Robert, who died just after the war, after service as a Confederate; Captain Boyett; Mrs. Martha Gray of Bryan; James C. of College Station; Mrs. Phoebe Hearne of Bryan; and William C. of College Station.

Thomas P. Boyett was about eight years old when the family moved to Brazos county, and there he grew up, with limited advantages in the way of schooling, and at the age of seventeen in 1862, entered the Confederate army. He was in company C of the Fifteenth Texas Regiment under Col. Spaight, a regiment which was attached to Polignac's Division of the Trans-Mississippi Department. The regiment was in Arkansas, and also fought the Guerrillas in the Indian territory, in 1863 went to Louisiana, participated in the Red River campaign, and at Yellow Bayou Mr. Boyett and his company were captured. They were sent to New Orleans; there he remained prisoner about three months in the Picayune Cotton Press, until finally paroled. Returning to his command, he was soon given a furlough to return home, but rejoined the regiment in South Texas, and continued until the stoppage of all hostilities, early in 1865.

With the close of the war Mr. Boyett turned his attention to farming in Brazos county, but ill health compelled him to forego that occupation after a short time. During the reconstruction era he declined to take the oath of allegiance and for a number of months went about from one part of the country to another avoiding the provost guard. Finally he engaged in merchandising at Calvert, lived there for a year or two, returned to Bryan and soon went to Houston, where he was engaged for two years in the retail liquor business. Mr. Boyett then went out on the cattle trails, and for ten years was engaged in the varied duties of the range and trail, driving cattle from Texas to Dodge City Kansas, for General H. B. Stoddard, one of the best known cattle men of his tine. Captain Boyett, as foreman of the herd, made up his company and started the drive from the Vicinity of Brazos county, and almost invariably took the old Chisholm trail to the north. Eight different times Mr. Boyett followed that historic old route between Texas and the northern market. He never had any difficulty except as fall to the lot of every cattle driver, and never had any need for guns to defend the men or the cattle. When he finally left the cattle trail, Mr. Boyett engaged in the wholesale beer business at Bryan, and has continued in that line for the past twenty years. He is local manager of the Houston Brewing & Ice Company, and is one of the stock holder in the Interurban Railway and is owner of the American Steam Laundry. In other ways he has been an active spirit at Bryan, and takes a keen interest in all the measures for the advancement of the city and the welfare of its people. His political work has been done as a Democrat, and he has been city marshal of Bryan since his first election in 1896, that having been his first and only office.

Captain Boyett was married in Brazos County during the seventies to Mollie Wicker. Their children are Edna, who married Charles LaHatte of Bryan; Pearl, wife of B. H. Knox, of Bryan; Blanche who married F. A. Peters, of Humble, Texas; Ralph of Bryan; G. Ivy, of Bryan; Jennie, wife of Charles Ramsey, of College Station; and T. P. Jr., of Bryan.