Frank E. Boland James Paul Boland (1882 – 1970) and Joseph John Boland (May 27, 1879 – 1964) were early aircraft designers from Rahway, New Jersey

Rahway, New Jersey

Rahway is a city in southern Union County, New Jersey, United States. It is part of the New York metropolitan area, being 15 miles southwest of Manhattan and five miles west of Staten Island...

 who started the Boland Airplane and Motor Company.

They had set records for bicycle racing in 1898. Frank Boland was killed in on January 3, 1913 during an exhibition flight in Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

. They worked with tailless aircraft that were early predecessors of flying wing

Flying wing

A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft which has no definite fuselage, with most of the crew, payload and equipment being housed inside the main wing structure....

s. A scale model of their plane is in the Smithsonian.

In 1904, Frank and Joseph, started a business servicing bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles in Rahway.

In 1914, the Aeromarine Plane and Motor Company of Avondale, Pennsylvania

Avondale, Pennsylvania

Avondale is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,265 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Avondale is located at ....

, took over the manufacturing rights of all Boland airplanes and engines.

E.T. Wooldridge writes: "The Boland brothers were a relatively small, but extraordinary, part of early aviation history in the United States. Frank supplied the enthusiasm, ingenuity, and self-taught flying ability; Joseph provided the mechanical genius to transform ideas into some tangible, workable form; and James had the business sense so often lacking in ventures of that sort." Joseph died in 1964 in Frederick, Maryland

Frederick, Maryland

Frederick is a city in north-central Maryland. It is the county seat of Frederick County, the largest county by area in the state of Maryland. Frederick is an outlying community of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of a greater...

.

Legacy

During the 1997-1998 and 1998-1999 contest years, the Boland Brothers team, composed of a great-grand-nephew and great-great-grandnephew of the Boland brothers, competed in the National Association of Rocketry

National Association of Rocketry

The National Association of Rocketry is the governing body for the sport/hobby of model rocketry in the United States. It was established in 1957 by Orville Carlisle and G. Harry Stine and is currently headed by Trip Barber. It is the oldest and largest model rocketry governing body in the...

 at the regional and national levels, setting no fewer than two US model rocket

Model rocket

A model rocket is a small rocket that is commonly advertised as being able to be launched by anybody, to, in general, low altitudes and recovered by a variety of means....

performance records, and finishing in third place overall for the 1998-1999 season.