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The Floyd Family II. Chapter XIV.
When Col. John Floyd came out from Virginia in 1779
to take up his residence near Falls of Ohio, it is said a number of his
brothers and sisters journeyed with him or followed him. His correspondence
with Col. William Preston, the surveyor of Fincastle county, his lifelong
friend and an uncle of his second wife, Jane Buchanan, deals repeatedly
with the coming of a brother, Charles Floyd, who was with Col. Floyd at
the time of his death.
The parents of the pioneers, Col. William Floyd and his wife,
Abediah (or Abigail) Davis, were of Welsh descent, and the family tradition
that there is a strain of Indian blood in the Davis family is sustained
by old photographs of various descendants, while high cheek bones and blue
black hair are noticeable in some generation of each branch of the Floyd
connection. Abediah Davis Floyd, through her father, Robert Davis, who
acquired vast properties in Amherst county, Virginia, trading with the
Catawba Indians, according to the tradition, was a lineal descendant of
Opechancanough, brother of Powhatan, Princess Nicketti, the chieftains
daughter, marrying Nathaniel Davis, of Wales.
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Col. William Floyd had one brother, Charles Floyd, who
settled in Georgia, the forebear of Major Gen. John Floyd, of Georgia,
who was the grandfather of William McAdoo, former Secretary of the Treasury.
Col. John Floyd married in his early manhood a Miss Burwell,
of Virginia, who had one daughter, Mourning Floyd, and died shortly after
the birth of her child. Mourning Floyd married Col. John Stewart, of Georgia.
Ten years after the death of his first wife Col. Floyd married Jane Buchanan,
a kinswoman of James Patton, the Louisville settler, according to some
accounts.
Three sons were born to John and Jane Floyd, William Preston
Floyd, George Rogers Clark Floyd and John Floyd, who was a posthumous child,
born twelve days after his father's death. George Rogers Clark Floyd, who
was the only one of the three to remain in Louisville, the other brothers
going to Virginia, was an Indian fighter. His rank in the army is sometimes
given as captain and sometimes as major, but it is known that he commanded
a regiment at the battle of Tippecanoe. He was twice married, his first
wife being Maria Maupin. Their only son, John Floyd, went to Iowa to locate.
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Major Floyd's home was near Cherokee Park, where he died
in 1821. His declining health was due to the rigors of the campaign against
Tecumsah at Fort Harrison.
Major Floyd's second wife, to whom he was married in 1810,
was Sarah Fontaine, one of the nine daughters of Capt. Aaron Fontaine.
They had two daughters, Jane and Evelyn Floyd, and the
former has a grandson, living in Louisville. Clark Penn, the son of Col.
George Floyd Penn, of New Albany, the only known descendant of the
illustrious John Floyd, known to make his home here.
John Floyd, who went back to Virginia, married his cousin,
Letitia Preston.
He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and practiced
his profession for a time. Dr. Floyd was elected Governor of Virginia in
1828. His son, John Buchanan Floyd, was Governor of Virginia in 1850, was
Secretary of War under Buchanan in 1857, and was a General in the Confederate
Army. The first Gov. Floyd had a daughter, Nicketti, who married John W.
Johnston, United States Senator from Virginia, and she was the mother of
Dr. George Ben Johnston, of Richmond, Va., whose daughters, Nicketti and
Helen Johnston, often visit here at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Temple Bodley.
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Charles Floyd married Mary Stewart in 1773 in the Hanover
Parish church. Their children were pioneer settlers in Indiana. One son
was Judge Davis Floyd, prominent in the territorial history of Indiana,
while another was Sergt. Charles Floyd, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
who died on the trip to the coast and was buried at Sioux City, Ia., where
a handsome marble shaft marks his grave. This monument was erected by the
Floyd Memorial Association, the government contributing $20,000 toward
the monument and grounds, known as Floyd Park, commemorating Sergt. Floyd
and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Isham Floyd, another of the brothers, was killed by the
Indians on the Ohio river in 1787.
Nathaniel Floyd, the youngest brother, who married Mollie
Thomas in Louisville in 1793, was a soldier in Thomas Joyes' regiment at
the battle of New Orleans. After the war Floyd, with several companions,
walked through to their homes. He had a farm in the neighborhood of Anchorage,
but was living in Louisville at the time of his death in 1840. Two of his
daughters have descendants here. Abediah Davis Floyd married Richard Meriwether,
and after his death Henry Weaver, of Cincinnati, O. A daughter, Susan Floyd
Weaver, married Ernest Gunter, the well-known musician. Mrs. Gunter was
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much interested in the Floyd genealogy and was a member of the Floyd
Memorial Association. She furnished an old letter used in establishing
Sergt. Charles Floyd's connection with the Louisville family, a letter
written by one of his brothers, Nathaniel Floyd, to his sister, Nancy,
telling of Sergt. Floyd's death. This Nancy Floyd married George Rogers
and had a daughter, Nancy, who married Judge Wesley Phelps, of Bullitt
county. It is believed that the remains of Col. John Floyd repose on the
Phelps farm, on the banks of Floyd's Fork, just north of the public road
leading from Shepherdsville to Mt. Washington, and about one mile from
the former place.
A daughter of Susan Floyd Gunter is Carrie Gunter, who
lives in Ivanhoe Court. Ernest Gunter, her brother, makes his home in Kansas
City, a civil engineer.
Ann Eliza Floyd, who married George W. Bowling, is the
ancestress of Louisville people. Her son, J. W. Bowling, was the father
of Pearl Bowling (Mrs. Clay McCandless), and of Blanche Bowling. Mrs. Emma
Garvin Harlow, whose mother was Mary Bowling, is the mother of Edna and
Nora Harlow and Floyd Preston Harlow.
Elizabeth Floyd, an elder sister of Col. John Floyd, married
in Virginia, Charles Tuley,
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of a prominent family of Farquier county. The Tuleys decided to make
their way to the new settlement and arrived in Louisville in September,
1783. The Tuley family found the other side of the Ohio to their liking,
and the family was one of the most prominent and influential in New Albany.
The oldest son, William Floyd Tuley, married Jane Bell, daughter of William
Bell, of Louisville, having a son, John Wesley Tuley, who married Phoebe
Woodruff, daughter of Judge Seth Woodruff, of New Albany. Their son, Enos
Seth Tuley, came to Louisville to locate in 1857, and was postmaster of
Louisville. He married Mary Eliza Speed, of the pioneer Speed family, and
their children in Louisville are Philip Tuley, Dr. Henry Enos Tuley and
Thomas Speed Tuley.
Another descendant of the Floyds through the Tuley line
is Rose Tuley, who married Charles Earl Currie, of Louisville. Her brothers
are Lawrence and Walter Tuley of New Albany.
One sister, Abigail Davis Floyd, married in Fincastle,
Va., Thomas Smith, a Virginian, who was killed by the Indians in 1786 at
the storming of Brashear's Fort, near Beargrass creek. Their son was Major
Thomas Floyd Smith, born in 1784. He was ensign of rifles in 1813 after
serving as a second lieutenant in 1812, but he
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particularly distinguished himself in the indian wars. He was adjutant
to Gen. E. P. Gaines and led the storming party in attack at Ft. Erie.
He was breveted major and retired from the army in 1837, living in St.
Louis, where he died in 1843.
Major Smith married Emilie Chouteau, a Creole, and one
of the daughters of Col. Auguste Chouteau, surveyor of Louisiana, who as
a youth of 14, landed at the site of the present city of St. Louis, in
charge of the first party of colonists. Col. Chouteau, who superintended
the building of the first house in St. Louis, owned an enormous tract of
land in the heart of the city at his death, part of which was presented
to St. Louis as a park by his grandson, Capt. Thomas Floyd Smith.
Capt. Thomas Floyd Smith, born in 1832 at a Little Rock
army post, was appointed a lieutenant in the Eighth Regiment, United States
Infantry, in 1855, but resigned in 1858. He was captain of Washington Guards
in St. Louis and served under Gen. Frost in the campaign against Kansans
in 1861. His home was at Pewee Valley, and his wife was Blanche Weissinger,
a descendant of the Bullitts, and his children, who live in Louisville,
are Mayor George Weissinger Smith, who married Nell Hunt; Thomas Floyd
Smith, president of the
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Board of Trade, whose wife was Mary Bruce before their marriage; Amanthus
Smith Jungbluth and Nannie Smith, Mrs. Frank Carpenter.
Capt. Smith's brother, Louis Chouteau Smith, of St. Louis,
married his cousin, Mary Bullitt, daughter of Alfred and Minerva Beckwith
Bullitt. Minerva Beckwith Bullitt was the daughter of John W. Beckwith,
of Shepherdsville, and Mary Floyd Smith, the sister of Major Thomas Floyd
Smith.
Capt. Smith's sister, Philomena Smith, married Col. Charles
P. Larned,U. S. A.
In the possession of Thomas Floyd Smith are a number of
papers which belonged to his grandfather, Major Smith. One of these is
a letter written October 11, 1839, by Gen. Edward Pendleton Gaines, to
Major and Mrs. Smith, "respectfully requesting them to accept a portrait
of Edward Pendleton Gaines as a slender token of friendship and in remembrance
of unceasing admiration, cherished for twenty-five years, of repeated acts
of gallantry by which the then Lieut. Smith, of the First Rifle Regiment,
signalized himself and did honor to his corps and his country's service
in the defense of Ft. Erie— surpassed by none in the heroic enterprise,
displaying the untiring chivalry of a true-hearted patriot."
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Another letter, beginning "Dear Capt.," was written by
Gen. Zachary Taylor at Louisville on January 4. 1824, to Major Smith, dealing
with Indian wars, with the political situation and of Major Smith being
detailed to command a rendezvous to be established at St. Louis or Belle
Fontaine.
The Floyd monument in Shelbyville, which is a fine white
marble shaft, bears this inscription. "Erected by the Commonwealth of Kentucky
in Memory of Fourteen Brave Soldiers who Fell Under Capt. John Floyd in
a Contest With the Indians in 1783."
Although Col. John Floyd was killed April 12, 1783, his
will was not probated until 1794, owing to the delay in having survey made
of his lands—from the Virginia government. He gave all his lands on the
north side of Beargrass to his wife. To his son, Willian Preston Floyd,
he gave 2,000 acres on the south side of the creek; to his son, G. R. C.
Floyd, a tract of 4,000 acres in Fayette county, and to his unborn son
(Gov, John Floyd) he left 1,400 acres on Harrod's creek, ordering the property
to be held until the children were of age, and a division of his slaves
to be made.
To his brother, Isham, he left 200 acres of Floyd's Fork,
and to his brothers, Charles and Robert, 400 acres in any part of his lands
they
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might select on the condition that they complete his surveys and secure
patents on all his lands, and with this an equitable division of surveying
fees.
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