{"id":158300,"date":"2026-04-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=158300"},"modified":"2026-04-24T16:13:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:13:30","slug":"starke-miller-ole-miss-lyceum-chemical-lab-professor-edward-c-boynton-1860","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/starke-miller-ole-miss-lyceum-chemical-lab-professor-edward-c-boynton-1860\/","title":{"rendered":"Starke Miller: “Ole Miss Lyceum – Chemical Lab – Professor Edward C. Boynton, 1860”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Edward C. Boynton<\/strong> was a West Point graduate and Mexican War Veteran. He came to the University of Mississippi<\/strong> to teach largely because our Chancellor was F. A. P. Barnard<\/strong>. Barnard was a well known Scientist and Scholar, but even better for Boynton, Barnard’s brother was Commandant at West Point. Boynton really wanted to teach at West Point, and he figured if he could do a good job for Barnard, Barnard might recommend him to his West Point brother!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Boynton took an interest in photography, and he taught himself that art. We are indebted to the Professor for a god number of 1860 photos of the campus of the University, this one included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One later reminiscence of Boynton was, that he was a rough, Old Army Officer, who could give full vent to his feelings in language unfit for Ladies and Gentlemen to hear. And he did so on occasions when he was fully irritated. Sounds just like a few OLD Marines that I know! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more little bit of information about Boynton. He taught a Chemistry class, one or twice a week, at the Union Female College<\/strong> on University Avenue<\/strong>, here in Oxford<\/strong>. It was a Church sponsored girls finishing school, for young Ladies up to about age 18. I certainly hope the good Professor never got too irritated over there!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the War came, all the University students joined different Companies, from the University Greys<\/strong>, to Companies back home. The University closed in the early Fall of 1862 for a lack of students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before that, in the Summer of 1861, Boynton was caught writing letters sympathetic to the North. A mob was formed, with bad intentions, and a UM Trustee barely satisfied them by telling them that Boynton would be fired, and given 24 hours to vacate Mississippi, and that the Trustee would see to it he was put on a North bound train. That is indeed what happened. Boynton also had to promise he would not fight against the South. He did honor that promise, and he still got what he wanted out of the whole deal. He applied for, and got, a teaching job at West Point during the War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Edward C. Boynton was a West Point graduate and Mexican War Veteran. He came to the University of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124505,"featured_media":158301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33744],"tags":[7085,34342,34343,5,7067,4,10879,1337,655],"class_list":["post-158300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-starke-miller","tag-civil-war","tag-edward-c-boynton","tag-f-a-p-barnard","tag-mississippi","tag-ole-miss","tag-oxford","tag-starke-miller","tag-university-greys","tag-university-of-mississippi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1860-OleMiss-Professor-Edward-C-Boynton.jpg?fit=960%2C588&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124505"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158302,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158300\/revisions\/158302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}