He was the son of John and Ann (Taggert) Boyd, both natives of County Antrim, Ireland, who had emigrated to the United States in 1842.
William married Sarah S. Miner in Columbus in March 1852.

With the Civil War in full blaze, William enlisted in the US Army on Aug. 9, 1862, and was a member of Company H of the 103rd Illinois Infantry. Initially serving as a first lieutenant, he was promoted to captain and served for two and a half years. He is known to have been at Bolivar, TN in 1862 and at Vicksburg, MS in 1863.

During the Atlanta campaign during the war, in July 1864, William and his regiment were on a forced march from Fort Nickajack on the Chattahoochee River through Marietta and thence to Rosswell's Mills in Georgia. In his words, he stated:

I was compelled to fall out of the marching column on account of exhaustion, having become overheated to such a degree that sunstroke was threatened, recovering from this in a few hours sufficiently to join the command, which had halted for the night. On the second day after this (I think about the 15th day of July 1864), we crossed the Chattahoochee River at Rosswell Mills, and after crossing the River, I was exposed to a very severe Rain Storm, from which I took a cold, and upon the following day my left eye became inflamed to such a degree that I was unable to perform my duty in the field, and continued so until in November of that year, at which time my resignation was tendered and accepted upon the Surgeons Certificate of Disability. My case was brought before the Surgeons of the 15th Army Corps sometime in July, and upon their making an examination of the Eye, They agreed that nothing could be done for it, and that it would be better to puncture the eye and let the fluids out, but this I resisted and it was not done, and I have been saved from that disfigurement.

Completely unable to perform his military duties, William resigned his commission and was discharged from the Army on Nov. 11, 1864. He returned home to his wife and children. In the early years after the war, William learned the tragic news that his younger brother James Boyd, who had served in the Union Army and had returned home intact, was killed by lightning.

Also suffering from cancer of the liver, William passed away in Lewistown on New Year's Eve 1894. He was age 64. He was not buried for three weeks, until Jan. 23, 1895, presumably because of winter weather and frozen ground. He was placed beside his first wife in Oak Hill Cemetery, where second wife Lucy later would join them.

William Boyd