Arthur Rollo Boyle (1899-1921)

Arthur Rollo Boyle reminds us that not all soldiers die from injuries. While serving on the USS Mississippi, Boyle contracted tuberculosis. He died from the disease at his father’s Braddock home on Oct. 15, 1921. He was just 22 when he was laid to rest at Allegheny Cemetery.
Boyle — who was nicknamed Dutch — was born on Sept. 3, 1899, the son of Charles Franklin Boyle and Irene Magee Boyle Young, both of whom lived into their 90s. His twin brother Loren Irwin Boyle also served in the Navy and died young, just four years after Arthur.
The Boyles were quite poor and not all that stable. The 1900 Census reports that the family lived in Clearfield County, with Charles Boyle working as a day laborer. By 1910, the family had moved to Pittsburgh, where they rented a house on N. Beatty Street. Charles Boyle found work as a “clock farmer.” In order to make ends meet, Charles’ mother lived with them, along with a nephew and two boarders.
At some point, the parents separated or divorced, and both remarried. It appears that Irene Boyle had some troubles; in 1906, she was sentenced to the County Workhouse on disorderly conduct charges.
Arthur Boyle joined the Navy, and began his service aboard the USS Texas on Apr. 6, 1917 as an apprentice at the age of 17. He then moved on to the USS Mississippi as a yeoman, and eventually became a chief yeoman. He received an honorable discharge, based on physical disability, on Aug. 5, 1921. At that time, he was hospitalized at the Naval sanitarium in Fort Lyon, Colorado. The navy had established a sanitarium for sailors with tuberculosis at Fort Lyon in 1906, as it was believed at the time that the dry climate was beneficial for patients.
Arthur Boyle married Nelle Campbell on May 6, 1920 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. They had one son, Robert Campbell Boyle who lived into his 70s. Nelle Boyle never remarried. Upon her death in 1947, her body was shipped by train from Florida to Pittsburgh in order to grant her final wish: to be buried next to her late husband.