Ella F. Boyd (1855-1923) was a teacher, an amateur geologist, an officer in the Boston Society of Natural History and the Agassiz Association, and a member of the Hyde Park school board for fifteen years.
She was born in Boston and moved with her family to Hyde Park after 1874, remaining here after her marriage to Fred Webster Boyd in 1879. She was a science teacher in schools in the Boston area. Ella was very interested in geology and studied with two professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She wrote several pamphlets on geological subjects, including one entitled “Geological Formation of Hyde Park.” She presented another paper, “Granites of Massachusetts and Their Origins,” at the Women’s Section of the World’s Congress on Geology meeting in Chicago in 1893.
Boyd represented the Agassiz Association in 1892 at the Mechanics’ Fair and also organized exhibits of the Association at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and gave lectures on geology which were credited with increasing interest in the subject. She died in 1923 and is buried in Fairview Cemetery.
