Clay County AlArchives News.....Boyd, Father and Children burned alive.  May 26, 1887
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Linda Ayres http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00031.html#0007674 March 6, 2023, 7:37 pm

The Tallapoosa New Era May 26, 1887
May 19, 1887
We understand that two negro children were cremated in their beds, Saturday 
night, somewhere in Clay County. This rumor is so vague and indefinite that 
would give no particulars.

May 26, 1887
The party of gentlemen who went on a picnic pleasure to Bluff Springs... The 
young men report the burning of a negro cabin and five of its inmates a negro 
man and four of his children near Bluff Springs of the night of their stay. 
They, with some others, were aroused from their dreamland by cries and went to 
the scene of disaster. They arrived too late to render assistance and stood 
powerless to help, gazing on the five bodies burning to ashes. To listen to 
their statement makes the blood cuddle. The cause of the fire, they say, was not 
known.

The rumored cremation of the negro children in Clay County, about which we wrote 
you last week has been confirmed. We have not been able to get full particulars, 
but learn that Berry Boyd, a man, and four of his children we could not 
ascertain their ages or sexes, all colored, were roasted alive in their cabin on 
Mr. Ed Blair's place, one mile from Bluff Springs, Saturday night, 14th inst., 
about ten o'clock. Boyd's wife, the mother of the children had gone to church, 
and the burning took place before she returned. The only known living witness to 
the horrible scene, except a babe, is a negro girl, the stepdaughter of Boyd, 
who says that he waked her up during the fire and pulled her out of bed telling 
her the house was burning, and to save herself. She ran out and tried to 
persuade Boyd to do likewise but he persisted in staying in the house, and acted 
as though he was demented, pulling the other children, who were in the house 
with him, first in one place and then in another. The stepdaughter seeing that 
he would not come out, rushed into the house, and snatched the youngest child, a 
mere infant, from his arms, and escaped just in time to save her own and the 
infant's life. This is the story as told by the stepdaughter, yet many people 
think that it is untrue, and that she murdered Boyd and the children, and then 
set fire to the house in order to conceal her crime. Her reasons for saving the 
babe, was because it could not testify against her, they say, and forever 
silenced all the others to prevent them from doing so. The stepdaughter has been 
heard to threaten Boyd's life on one occasion, when she was in a passion, yet 
nothing more than what have... [Rest Missing]

Additional Comments:
Berry Boyd married Eliza Maxwell in 1879 in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. 

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