Charles E. Boyland   

History of Kent County - Page 566 

Charles E. Boyland is the executive head of Boyland & Company, which conducts one of the leading insurance agencies in the city of Grand Rapids, with special attention given to fidelity and casualty of insurance indemnity. Mr. Boyland in his well ordered operations in the local insurance field is the virtual successor to the business of one of the oldest and most influential insurance agencies in Grand Rapids, and interest in his career is enhanced by the fact that he is a native son of Kent county and a scion of a family that was here founded more than half a century ago. Mr. Boyland was born in Wyoming township, this county, May 13, 1877, and is a son of Francis and Mary (Barry) Boyland, the former a native of Ireland, and the latter of Pennsylvania. The father having come to Michigan more than fifty years ago and having long been one of the representative business men of Kent county. Charles E. Boyland’s educational advantages were those afforded by the public schools of Grandville and what is now the Central high school of Grand Rapids. His ambition was to enter college and prepare himself for the legal profession, but the death of his father necessitated a change in his plans, as it became necessary for him to return to the home farm, with the work of which he had continued to be associated during his school vacations. He assisted in bringing about an adjustment of the affairs of the home farm and of the estate of his father, and at the age of twenty-three years he became a traveling salesman for one of the leading industrial and commercial corporations of Grand Rapids, that of the Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company, with which he was thus connected two years and which he successfully represented in a sales territory comprising Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. During the ensuing two years he was engaged in the lumber business at Rising Fawn, Georgia, and in 1905 he returned to Grand Rapids and initiated his alliance with the insurance business, in which he has gained distinctive success and prestige. Here he became associated with J. S. Crosby and Company in the general insurance business, and in 1917 he consolidated with the Holden and Hardy agency, who were the owners of the pioneer insurance business that had been founded by the late Honorable E. G. D. Holden, in the year 1859, and formed the firm of Holden, Hardy and Boyland. In 1922, Mr. Boyland acquired the Holden interests in the old established business, which he has since conducted under the title of Boyland & Company and which under his vigorous and progressive management has grown to proportions that make the Boyland agency one of the largest and most important of the insurance underwriting concerns in western Michigan. Mr. Boyland is a loyal and appreciative citizen of his native county and state and of his home city of Grand Rapids. He is liberal and progressive in his civic attitude, and is valued as one of the substantial business men of the fair "Valley City" of Michigan. Mr. Boyland was married June 2, 1908, to Miss. Mayme T. Pulte, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a daughter of Frank E. and Mary S. (Kortlander) Pulte, and they have two children, Joseph F. and Ruth E.