David Ross Boyd

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David Ross Boyd

David Ross Boyd (1853 - November 1936) was the first president of the University of Oklahoma. He was born in Coshocton, Ohio, and after obtaining a doctorate degree from the small Wooster University, he began his career early as a superintendent of the Arkansas City, Kansas school system. While there, members of the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma came to his schools to view the heating system that Boyd had installed. The Board was very impressed with him and chose him as the University's first president with a salary of $2,400. In addition to his role as University President, he would also serve as the professor of mental and moral science, as he was a devout Presbyterian. He brought his religion with him to the university where he held chapel services each morning which included Scripture readings and a brief, three-minute sermon. Around the turn of the 20th century, Boyd was both the president of the territorial university as well as the territorial Board of Education, making him the most prominent man in education in the area.

Shortly after arriving in Norman, he began a project for which he since become best known. He immediately began preparations for planting thousands of trees around campus, and began buying young trees from a bankrupt nursery in Wichita, Kansas. At first, the people of Norman were outraged; but when they learned Boyd was purchasing the trees and the water with his own money they became grateful. He reportedly planted nearly 10,000 trees in his first 18 months on the job and developed a campus nursery with more than 40,000 trees.

After the Oklahoma Territory became the State of Oklahoma, one of the first acts of the new Oklahoma Governor, Charles N. Haskell, was to replace many of the original faculty at the University. This included Boyd as well as Vernon Louis Parrington, the Harvard-educated professor who started the English Department and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. The Governor accused Boyd of being an "aristocrat, not democratic enough." Upon leaving the University of Oklahoma, he became the president of the University of New Mexico in 1912. He died in November of 1936.

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