As the original Gaelic-Irish clan of Ó Baoighill, Boyles have been a presence in Ireland from the earliest times.
Further influxes of Boyles came in later centuries in the form of ambitious Anglo-Norman adventurers, while a further strain came from the neighbouring Celtic nation of Scotland.
All their fates were inextricably entwined, and their colourful and often bloody tale is recounted here.
NAME variations include: Ó Baoighill (Gaelic), O’Boyle, Baoghal, Boile, Baole, Boghill, Bohill, Boylan.
Boyle Clan Mini-Book Excerpt
Boyles have produced their fair share of adventurers, no less so than the Canadian Joseph Whiteside Boyle, born in 1867 and who was better known as Klondike Joe Boyle.
Amassing a fortune from gold mining in the Klondike, he organised a machine-gun company, later incorporated into the Canadian Army, to fight on the battlefields of France and Belgium during the First World War.
He was also responsible during the war for managing to persuade Russia’s Bolshevik government to return the Romanian Crown Jewels to Romania, and was later awarded the title of ‘Saviour of Romania.’
He died and was buried in Middlesex, England, in 1923, but was re-interred fifty years later in his hometown of Woodstock, Ontario.
Speculation still abounds to this day as to whether or not the bold Klondike Joe had been involved in a love affair with the Romanian Queen, Marie of Edinburgh, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
