Boyce, Francis Bertie

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Boyce, Francis Bertie

1844-1931

Francis Bertie Boyce (1844-1931), Anglican clergyman, was born on 6 April 1844 at Tiverton, Devon, England, son of Francis Boyce, accountant, and his wife Frances, née Dunsford. After studying at Moore Theological College, Liverpool, under William Hodgson and R. L. King, he was made deacon by Bishop Barker on 21 December 1868 and ordained priest on 19 December 1869. Boyce was stationed in western New South Wales, soon to be the diocese of Bathurst: he served at Georges Plains (1868), with Blayney attached (1869), Molong and Wellington (1873), and from 1875 at Orange. On 5 July 1871 at Georges Plains he married Caroline (d.1918), daughter of William Stewart of Athol, near Blayney. After two years in the industrial parish of St Bartholomew, Pyrmont, where he gained his first insight into slum housing, Boyce was appointed to St Paul's, Redfern. He was president of the New South Wales Alliance for the Suppression of Intemperance in 1891-1915 and leader of the New South Wales Council of Churches in 1911-17 and 1926-27. An ardent Imperialist, he was first president of the British Empire League in Australia in 1901 and also in 1909-11, and helped to bring about the proclamation of Empire Day in 1905.Boyce resigned his parish in 1930 and died at Blackheath on 27 May 1931. He was survived by two sons of his first marriage, and by his second wife Ethel Elizabeth, née Rossiter, widow of Captain Burton, R.N.R., whom he had married on 8 September 1920.
K. J. Cable, 'Boyce, Francis Bertie (1844–1931)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boyce-francis-bertie-5319/text8983, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 17 August 2016.

Redfern, NSW