Joseph Boyle

Summary

Joseph Boyle (1892–1974) was born on Beaver Island on July 15, 1892, to Ellen and Owen Boyle, and was christened at Holy Cross Church there. He had left the island by the time of his death; he died at Knox, Indiana, on May 19, 1974.

History

The Beaver Beacon’s May–June 1974 obituary notice is brief but names Joseph Boyle’s parents, Ellen and Owen Boyle, and both his island birth and baptism. Funeral services were held at a different Holy Cross Church, in Hamlet, Indiana, and he was buried in that town’s Holy Cross Cemetery — not the parish of the same name on Beaver Island where he had been christened eighty-two years earlier. The notice records that he was predeceased by three sisters, Mae, Sophia, and Emma, and a brother, Hugh, and was survived by two sisters, Nora Murray and Annabelle Collins, both then living in Chicago — part of the broader pattern of island-born Catholics who left Beaver Island for Chicago, Indiana, and other mainland cities across the twentieth century while retaining the island’s parish as part of their identity.

Evidence and limits

The obituary gives a Beaver Island birth and baptismal connection, parents’ names, and a full sibling list, but no independent civil, parish, or land record. No source found here connects this Owen-and-Ellen Boyle family to the separate Boyle households documented elsewhere in this archive — the Dan P. “Turner” Boyle farm on Sloptown Road, the Gibson family’s William and Hannah Boyle, or the Silver Top Saloon’s Willie Boyle.

Added 1 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes