Archibald Henderson Boyden was born in Salisbury, North Carolina, on January 29, 1847. A Confederate veteran, Boyden took up a new cause in the immediate post-war years: the advancement of the initiatives and messaging of the Ku Klux Klan. He was later a legislator, mayor, school board chairman, and manager of the Confederate soldiers' home. Boyden died in Salisbury on June 19, 1929.