Cornelius Boyle

thumbCornelius Boyle (1817–1878) was an American medical doctor from Washington, D.C., who attained the rank of Major in the Confederate Army during the US Civil War. Boyle was "trusted at the highest levels in the Confederate Army, and played some special role in the conduct of clandestine operations". he was named in conspiracies surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas F. Harney's April 1865 effort to bomb the White House. Historian Trish Kaufmann later commented it seemed he lived his entire life "in a whirlwind".

Pre-war Given his father's stature in Andrew Jackson's administration, it was noted that "by the time Cornelius grew up, there was money, position, glory - still he wasn't an idle person...an intensely proud man". Boyle operated a DC medical practice, popular among the political elite due to his United Irishmen father John Boyle's position as Chief Clerk and Acting Secretary of the US Navy. Upon his father's death, Cornelius Boyle successfully sued the United States for the salary it had failed to pay John Boyle commiserate with his role as Acting Secretary of the Navy.

Noted for his limp, Boyle treated senator Charles Sumner after he was caned on the senate floor in 1856, and treated President Madison's aged step-son Payne Todd for many years, being gifted the crystal flute of President Madison, likely as payment for his years of medical care.

In the years prior to the outbreak of war, Boyle served was noted as a "chief of good fellows and genial gentlemen" and served as director of the "Jackson Democratic Association" in 1860.

When William Byrne, a clandestine member of the KGC from Baltimore, After the war, Boyle requested and was sent an Oath of Amnesty on August 14, 1865, but it was never deposited with the government; Boyle preferred to travel to Mexico to assist many among the Confederate veterans and Knights of the Golden Circle with mapping out their plans for an alternate resolution with a confederacy running through Central America and the Caribbean,

He traveled there with Captain George M. Cayce, May Miles O'Bannon (daughter of Union Colonel Dixon Stansbury Miles and wife of CSA Major Laurens Willbrant O'Bannon), and wealthy landowner Eustace Barron, for whom he named his daughter. Their steamer, Vera Cruz, ran aground in North Carolina and Boyle was deemed instrumental in organising the safety of the passengers and return to New York to set off again on the steamship Manhattan. Boyle carried a letter of introduction for himself, to give to the former commander of the Confederate Navy, Matthew Fontaine Maury. Boyle wrote to his wife that William Quantrill was accompanying him, as a bodyguard of sorts, under the false name "Wilson" - one of several rumors that the notorious bushwhacker had survived his alleged death; one of five Confederate sympathizers he tasked with surveying and setting out the residential development.

Return to the US In 1903, Boyle's daughter FG Boyle arranged for the crystal flute crafted for James Madison, then owned by Boyle, to be put on display in the Smithsonian Museum, although it was subsequently purchased by Dr. Dayton C. Miller who gifted it to the Library of Congress. Returning to Virginia, Boyle took up running the White Silver Springs Spa in Fauquier, and in June 1868 invited the American Medical Association to hold their next convention on his property. His wife Fanny and infant child died in childbirth in 1869, less than a year after the birth of Eustacia. In the 1870 census, he listed himself as a musician holding $80,000 of real estate and $6,000 of personal objects. Boyle listed residents of his home including Thomas Atkins, who had drawn up the expansion draftwork for the Silver Springs Spa, as his "Clerk" and Martha Journey as his homekeeper, with a 10-year old Alice Courtney living alongside his own children. He also listed Robert Taliaferro and Davy Randolph as his black labourers. In Sept 1868, AH and Eliza Morehead filed a $35,000 lawsuit against Boyle for having enforced Gnl. Beauregard's prohibition on Eliza Morehead being allowed to cross and re-cross from DC into Virginia for three years during the war.

In 1871, following a petition signed by prominent physicians as well as Robert E. Lee, Boyle's DC property was eventually returned and he was permitted to re-enter the district. At some point he married Cherry Elizabeth Bethune, the daughter of Gen. James N. Bethune the man who owned and later held custody of the musician Blind Tom Wiggins, indeed one of Wiggins' songs was dedicated to Cherry. A fire engulfed the sulphur springs resort, and Eustacia later recalled how handsome her father had been holding her wrapped in a Chinese blanket on his knees during the fire.