Boyns, Nicholas

The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.

Nicholas Boyns. Any community however large is the better off for the presence of a citizen of such commercial calibre and individual enterprise as Nicholas Boyns.

The time of his arrival on the scene which had been his permanent home for many years was 1871. In that year he landed in Kansas City, Missouri. His arrival made no particular stir, and he was practically unknown and his possibilities of work were unvalued. Deep within him he had ambition, energy and a long look ahead. The first employment which he was not long in finding was as clerk in the famous old department store of Bullene, Moore & Emery, now the Emery, Bird, Thayer establishment. He was with them just two years. He saved his money. There was more than natural economy and thrift in this saving. It was done with a purpose.

That purpose came to a concrete result when in 1873 he engaged in business for himself at the corner of Eighteenth and Muncie. His business during all these many years had been that of stone contractor. With all the disadvantages of limited capital and youth and inexperience he made good almost from the start, and for fourteen years was in business at the old location, in the meantime establishing a branch at Eighteenth and Central. At the latter place he subsequently put up his large building and headquarters. For this property he paid $40 a front foot and it is now valued at $250. For a number of years Mr. Boyns handled the Adams interests of Boston, Massachusetts, but these are now a small part of his work. He is one of the leading stone contractors in Kansas City, Kansas, and had furnished stone for some of the most important construction enterprises in and about the city. After the flood of 1903 he made it a specialty of furnishing stone for many of the larger buildings along Minnesota Avenue. Mr. Boyns is also a farmer and farms a considerable tract of land in and around Kansas City.

Mr. Boyns is an Englishman by birth and was born in the southwestern part of England, near Land's End, June 9, 1862. He was the fifth in a family of seven children born to Henry and Amelia (Williams) Boyns, both natives of England. His father was a tin mining expert. This is the only Boyns family so far as known in the entire world. Nichols Boyns received his early education in England, but on account of ill health he came to America at the age of fourteen and joined his sister Lizzie at Wytheville, Virginia. His sister subsequently married R. H. Crowgey, a prosperous farmer in Southwestern Virginia. While with his sister Nicholas attended school for eighteen months. He had come to this country with no special intention of remaining permanently, but his first experiences decided him and he resolved to grow up as an American.

For two years he worked as clerk in a grocery store in Maryland, and then sought the broader and better opportunities of the Far West, with what results had already been briefly outlined.

Mr. Boyns was married August 6, 1889, to Miss Rose Wade. She was born in Maryland. Their three children are Mary, Eaton and Helen. Mr. and Mrs. Boyns have taken great care in the rearing and training of their children and they have received good educational advantages.

Mr. Boyns is an active republican, and though he had never held office he had been solicited to become a candidate and had many times used his influence to further movements of public good. He is a member of the Grand View and River View Improvement Association, and of the Kansas City, Kansas, Mercantile Club. He was one of the organizers of the Security State Bank, and had since been a director. He was associated with a number of men, including Mr. Lee Vaughn and others in getting the improvement of Eighteenth Street and the street car facilities on that thoroughfare. Mr. Boyns in his business keeps about twenty-two men on the pay roll, and thus it is a factor in the city's prosperity. He and his family enjoy the comforts of a modern home at 350 South Eighteenth Street.

Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans

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