Remember When: Plum native William D. Boyce was founder of Boy Scouts of America

William D. Boyce was a school teacher, outdoorsman, lumberjack, coal miner and an enterprising publisher.

But he is best known as a founder of the Boy Scouts of America.

William Dickson Boyce was born on a farm in the New Texas section of Plum Township — later to become Plum Borough — on June 16, 1858.

Because of his rural upbringing, Boyce had a decided love of the outdoors. He, in fact, married a childhood friend, Mary Jane Beacom, 19, on New Year’s Day in 1884.

Beacom, who acquired the nickname “Rattlesnake Jane” because of her poker-playing skills, was an expert shot and rode horseback cross saddle.

William Boyce was a school teacher at age 16 and worked briefly as a coal miner. He returned to an educational setting by attending Wooster Academy in Ohio in the early 1880s.

Boyce, however, quickly got into the publishing business for newspapers in Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia.

He got a big break in December 1884, when he became a correspondent for the six-month World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans. There, he provided news stories on the expo to 1,200 newspapers across the country.

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Boyce made publishing deals in Chicago; Fargo, N.D.; and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

While in Chicago, he founded the Mutual Newspaper Publishing Co. in 1886. It provided advertisements and articles to more than 200 newspapers.

A year later, he founded the weekly Chicago Blade, an illustrated newspaper aimed at rural audiences. Within five years, the Blade had the largest circulation of any weekly publication in the nation.

Boyce had a veritable army of 30,000 delivery boys across the country that was a key to the publication’s success. He built the 12-story Boyce Building on East Dearborn Street in Chicago as his headquarters.

After becoming a multimillionaire publisher, Boyce took on the persona of a world traveler. While in England in 1909, he stumbled across what would become an event he was best known for en route to a safari in British East Africa, now known as part of Kenya.

Lost in a London fog, he came upon a youngster who led him to his destination. When he offered the boy a tip, the youngster refused, saying it was part of his duty as a “boy scout.”

Intrigued, he returned to London after his safari and picked up information on the organization, directed by British Gen. Robert Baden-Powell.

On Feb. 8, 1910, he founded and incorporated the Boy Scouts of America with two associates.

By June 1, John Alexander, a YMCA administrator from Philadelphia, was chosen to lead the national organization.

In the fall of 1910, there were 2,500 leader applications and nearly 151,000 youth inquiries.

By 1916, the Boy Scouts of America received a federal charter from the U.S. Congress. Little League Baseball Inc. is the only other federally chartered youth organization.

Boyce died June 11, 1929, and is buried in Ottawa, Ill.

Boyce Regional Park, a 1,096-acre facility operated by Allegheny County in Plum starting in 1963, bears his name.

Also, the Boyce campus of Allegheny County Community College, which opened Sept. 19, 1966, in Monroeville, is named after the Plum native.