University of Virginia Library

JOHN FLOYD.

The received tradition in the distinguished Floyd family of Virginia
is that its progenitor, a native of Wales, was a very early settler in
that portion of the Colony known as the Eastern Shore. The name is
indeed of early record. Walter Floyd appears, with associates, as a patentee
of four hundred acres of land in "Martin's Hundred," on "Skiffe
Creek," April 24, 1632. Nathaniel Floyd patented eight hundred and
fifty acres in Isle of Wight County November 20, 1637; and John Floyd,
Thomas Hunt, Edward Bibby, and George Clarke were the grantees,
September 28, 1681, of Hog Island, containing twenty-two hundred acres,
upon the Atlantic coast, opposite the counties of Northampton and
Accomac. Walter Floyd was in all probability the father or grandfather
of the John Floyd last named, and the lineal progenitor of the subject
of the present sketch, but the connecting links have not been preserved.
The family account commences with three brothers (whom it is fair to
presume were the sons of John Floyd, as above): William, John ("who
went North"), and Charles Floyd, who migrated to Georgia, and was
the ancestor of General John Floyd, of Darien, in that State. William
Floyd removed to the county of Amherst, then a wild region, and
married there Abidiah, the fifth child of Robert and — (Hughes)

Best beloved of the Royal Governors of Virginia.

Davis.[13] Their eldest son, John Floyd, was born in 1751. He married,
in 1769, a Miss Barfoot, who died within a year, leaving an infant
daughter, who was taken charge of by the mother of Mrs. Floyd.
Soon afterwards John Floyd removed to the county of Botetourt, where
he engaged in teaching school, and writing in the office of the county
surveyor, Colonel William Preston, in whose family he lived. His
duties were unremitting; when his services were not demanded in the
surveyor's office, he was in the saddle as the deputy of the county
sheriff, Colonel William Christian. In 1774 he went to Kentucky,
where he located and surveyed for himself and others many rich tracts
of land on Elkhorn Creek, and within the present counties of Clarke,
Woodford, Shelby, and Jefferson. The service was attended with many
hardships and much danger from savage hostility. Colonel Floyd returned
to Virginia in 1776, soon after the Declaration of Independence,
and took command of a schooner—the "Phœnix"—which had been fitted
as a privateer by Dr. Thomas Walker, Edmund Pendleton, Colonel
William Preston, and one or two others. Sailing to the West Indies,
he took a valuable prize; but on his return, when nearly in sight of
the capes of Virginia, he was overtaken by a British vessel of war,
captured, and taken to England, where he remained in irons, a prisoner,
for nearly a year. He obtained his liberty through the sympathy
of the jailer's daughter, who stealthily left his cell unlocked. He
begged his way to Dover, where he was first concealed and then secured
a passage to France by a clergyman who was thus in the habit
of assisting American fugitives. Making his way to Paris, he was there
furnished by Benjamin Franklin with means to return to America. In
November, 1778, he married his second wife, Jane, daughter of Colonel
John and Margaret (daughter of Colonel James Patton) Buchanan.
Colonel Floyd remained in Virginia until October, 1779, when he removed
to his fine estate in Kentucky,[14] on Bear Grass Creek, six miles
from Louisville, where he built a stockade fort, which was known as
Floyd's Station. In 1783 he was a member of the first court of Kentucky,
which held its first session at Harrodsburg, and, in addressing
the body, ardently said that he felt that he had set his foot on the
threshold of an empire. He was a conspicuous actor in the stirring
scenes of the period. Alternately a surveyor, a legislator, and a soldier,
his services were essentially important to the infant settlement.
He was the principal surveyor of the Transylvania Company, and was
chosen a delegate, from the town of St. Asaph, to the Assembly that
met at Boonesborough on the 24th of May, 1775, to make laws for
the colony. Honorably acquitting himself in all stations to which he
was called, he finally met a violent death at the hands of the savages,
on the 13th of April, 1783. The county of Floyd, Kentucky, commemorates
his name. His third son,[15] John, the subject of this sketch,
was born in Jefferson County, on the 24th of April, eleven days after
the death of his father. Mrs. Floyd, after the death of her husband,
married, secondly, Captain Alexander Breckinridge, his successor as surveyor
of Jefferson County.[16] In 1796 young John Floyd entered Dickinson
College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as a student, but through the failure of
his guardian to meet his expenses he had to return home. He was fortunately
enabled to resume his studies in 1801. Returning home in his
twenty-first year, he married, May 13, 1804, in Franklin County, Kentucky,
his second cousin, Lætitia (born September 29, 1799), the tenth
child of Colonel William and Susannah (Smith) Preston. In October
following he entered the University of Pennsylvania as a student of
medicine, and graduated thence M. D. in April, 1806, and settled in
Montgomery County, Virginia. He was appointed a justice of the
peace in June, 1807; commissioned as major of militia in 1808; served
as surgeon in the Virginia Line, in 1812, in the second war with Great
Britain, and in the same year was elected a member of the House of
Delegates of Virginia. In 1817 he was elected to the United States
House of Representatives, and served ably in that body until 1829.
"He was," it has been claimed, "the efficient head of the Virginia
delegation. Others harangued more lengthily and learnedly, but his
opinions were most deferred to, and his moral influence the greatest.
`We laugh,' said a facetious partisan member, `at your Barbour's [P. P.]
hair-splitting, but we indulge in no such merriment when we feel the
glance of Floyd's savage eye.' " Mr. Floyd's influence in Congress was
not the result of his superior eloquence or learning, for in both he was
surpassed; it was a concession to a sound and practical judgment united
with a high and haughty courage, and, above all, an honesty that never
entertained the first thought of barter or compromise. Mr. Floyd was
elected Governor of Virginia by the Assembly, to succeed William B.
Giles, in 1830; and in 1831 was unanimously re-elected by the same
body, under the amended constitution of the State. The second year
of his administration is memorable as that of the tragic occurrence
known as the "Southampton Insurrection." On Saturday night the
20th of August, 1831, a body of sixty or seventy slaves arose upon
the white inhabitants of Southampton County and massacred fifty-five
unsuspecting men, women, and children in their beds. The leader of
this inhuman massacre was a negro slave named Nat Turner, about
thirty-one years of age, born the slave of Benjamin Turner, of Southampton
County. From childhood Nat was the victim of superstition
and fanaticism. He stimulated his fellow-slaves to join him in the massacre
by declaring to them that he had been commissioned by Jesus
Christ, and that he was acting under inspired direction in atrocious designs.
In the confession which he voluntarily made while in prison,
he said: "That in his childhood a circumstance occurred which made
an indelible impression on his mind and laid the groundwork of the
enthusiasm which was so fatal in its termination. Being at play with
other children, when three or four years old, I told them something,
which my mother overhearing, said it happened before I was born. I
stuck to my story, however, and related some things which went, in
her opinion, to confirm it. Others being called upon, were greatly
astonished, knowing these things had happened, and caused them to
say, in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had
showed me things which happened before my birth." His parents
strengthened him in this belief, and said in his presence that he was
intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from
certain marks on his head and breast. Nat, as he grew up, was fully
persuaded he was destined for some grand accomplishment. His powers
of mind being much superior to his fellow-slaves, they looked up to
him as one guided by divine inspiration. This belief he was assiduous
to impress by exercises of apparently religious devotion and by the
austerity of his life and manners. After a variety of alleged revelations
from the spiritual world, Nat claimed that on the 12th of May, 1828:—
"I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the spirit instantly appeared
to me and said that the serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid
down the yoke he had borne for the sins of man, and that I should
take it on and fight the serpent, for the time was fast approaching when
the first should be last and the last should be first; and by signs in
the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence
the great work; and, until the first sign appeared, I should conceal it
from the knowledge of men. And on the appearance of the sign (the
eclipse of the sun in February, 1831) I should arise and prepare myself,
and slay my enemies with their own weapons. And immediately
upon the sign appearing in the heavens the seal was removed from my
lips, and I communicated the great work laid out for me to do to four
in whom I had the greatest confidence." The massacre was laid for
the 4th of July, but Nat fell sick, and the design was postponed until
the "sign appeared again." Nat commenced the massacre by the murder
of his master and family—Mr. Joseph Travis—with whom he had
been living since the commencement of 1830; who was, Nat said, "a
kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me." Their first
victims they slaughtered in their beds with axes. The wretches procured
here "four guns that would shoot and several old muskets, with
a pound or two of powder." Nat then paraded his force at the barn,
"formed them in line as soldiers, and, after carrying them through all
the manœuvres he was capable of, marched them" on to further diabolism.

They proceeded from house to house, murdering all the whites they
could find, their force augmenting as they proceeded, till they numbered
between fifty and sixty men, all mounted, and armed with guns,
axes, swords, and clubs. They then started to Jerusalem, the county
seat, and proceeded a few miles, when they were met by a party of
the white inhabitants, who fired upon them and forced them to retreat.
Their force of forty strong stopped for the night, putting out sentinels,
but, being suddenly attacked by the whites, were thrown into great
confusion. Nat, however, escaped with a portion of his adherents; but
they were all hunted down save Nat, who supplied himself with provisions,
and, scratching a hole under a pile of fence rails in a field,
concealed himself for six weeks, leaving his hiding-place only for a few
minutes at a time, in the dead of night, to obtain water, which was
near. Finally he grew bolder, and ventured to the houses in the neighborhood
to gather intelligence by eavesdropping. He was at last discovered
by an accident. A dog, passing his cave one night when he
was out, was attracted by some meat in the cave, crawled in, and was
just emerging with it when Nat returned. A few nights after, two
negroes were hunting with the dog, and passed the cave just as Nat
came out of it. The dog, seeing him, barked, when Nat (thinking himself
discovered) spoke to the negroes and begged them not to betray
him; but, on making himself known, they fled from him. Knowing
that he would be betrayed, Nat left his hiding-place, and was pursued
incessantly until he was taken, about two weeks afterwards. Nat was
executed at Jerusalem, November 11, 1831.

Governor Floyd served most acceptably in that office until March 31,
1834, when he was succeeded by Governor Littleton Waller Tazewell.
He subsequently served for some time as Brigadier-General of the 17th
Brigade of Virginia Militia. Governor Floyd had been in feeble health
previous to his gubernatorial term, and his disease finally exhibited itself
in paralysis. But he rallied after the first attack, and hopes were entertained
that he would live for many years; but excitement, produced
by the unexpected arrival, on a visit, of his son, Dr. William Preston

Floyd, caused a return of the paralysis on the 15th of August, 1837,
which terminated his life, at the Sweet Springs, Montgomery County,
Virginia, the following morning. The gifted John Hampden Pleasants,
in an obituary which appeared in the Richmond Whig, August 24, 1837,
glowingly eulogizes the worth and services of Governor Floyd, whom he
characterizes as "a man gifted with the noblest qualities of our nature;
* * * scrupulously just, and even obstinately honest; one of the
very few public men of our country who died the same man he started
in the beginning of his career, and who ran his course without the imputation
or suspicion of tergiversation which springs from the fear of
consequences, moral or personal cowardice. He entered life a States-rights
man of the strict school of '98, and he battled for the cause
to the end, and died in the faith. An ardent supporter of General
Jackson, he renounced him the instant he conceived him to have deviated
from those principles to which he was not merely affectionately,
but passionately attached. His courage and honesty led him to scorn
to palter with his own principles and understanding; and thus, when
Nullification came on the stage, he adopted it as the doctrine of '98,
which Mr. Jefferson, with the concurrence of the old Republicans, had
pronounced the `rightful remedy,' and which they had actually carried
into practice at that era. He knew the unpopularity of the doctrine,
but his honesty was made of sterner stuff than to barter his opinions
for convenience or profit; and to his courage it was a matter of indifference
what were the odds he encountered.[17] None who knew Governor
Floyd well, could have failed to receive the impression that nature had
endued him with the qualities of the hero, and that the stage and the
opportunity only were wanting to have enabled him to shine among
those who dazzled mankind with deeds of chivalry and prowess. The
day has not long passed when some deemed the dark form of civil conflict
not remote; and it is within our knowledge that many who then
thought and feared had turned their eyes to him as the man worthy
of leading the rebels against Federal tyranny and usurpation to the
field. This brave and noble spirit is no more, and he deserves to be
mourned in sincerity by every good man and patriot—himself inflexibly
upright and a devoted patriot."

Governor Floyd was of a singularly handsome and commanding physique.
"In height and erectness of person, gait, color and straightness
of hair, swarthy skin, and, above all, his keen and dark rolling eye, he
was the personification of an Indian chief—characteristics accounted for,

perhaps superstitiously, in a popular legend which ascribes them to the
fact of his mother, before his birth, having been alarmed by a threatened
savage attack upon her residence." It will be recollected that he
was born a few days after his father had been slain by the Indians.
Mrs. Floyd survived her husband several years, dying at "Cavan," her
home, in Burke's Garden, Tazewell County, December 12, 1852. She
was a mate worthy of so chivalric a husband, and possessed mental
traits of a high order. They had issue twelve children, as follows:

• i. Susannah Smith, born March 4, 1805; died August 29, 1806.

• ii. John Buchanan, born June 1, 1806; died August 26, 1863; married
  his cousin, Sarah B., daughter of General Francis Preston;
  no issue; Governor of Virginia; Secretary of War of the United
  States under Buchanan; Major-General C. S. A., etc.

• iii. George Rogers Clarke, born November 25, 1807; died August 15,
  1808.

• iv. William Preston, M. D., born January 16, 1809.

• v. George Rogers Clarke, born September 13, 1810.

• vi. Benjamin Rush, lawyer, born December 10, 1811; married Nancy
  Matthews, of Wytheville, Va. (issue: i. Malvina, married Major
  Peter Otey, C. S. A.; ii. John; iii. Benjamin Rush).

• vii. Lætitia Preston, born March 13, 1814; married her cousin, Colonel
  William L. Lewis, of Sweet Springs, Va. (issue: i. Susan M.,
  married Alfred Frederick, of South Carolina; ii. Lætitia, married
  Thomas L. P. Cocke; iii. William J., married Miss Dooley,
  of Richmond, Va.; iv. John Floyd; v. Charles).

• viii. Eliza Lavalette Madison, born December 16, 1816; married Prof.
  George F. Holmes, LL.D., University of Virginia (issue: Mary
  Ann, Lætitia P., Henry H., Isabella, and Frederick L.).

• ix. Neickettie, born June 6, 1819; married Hon. John W. Johnston,
  United States Senator (issue: i. Lætitia F.; ii. Louisa B.; iii.
  Sarah B., married Henry Carter Lee; iv. Lavalette; v. William
  F.; vi. George Ben., a popular physician of Richmond, Va.;
  vii. Miriam; viii. Joseph; ix. Coralie).

• x. Coralie Patton, born June 26, 1822; died July 14, 1833.

• xi. Thomas Lewis Preston, born August 16, 1824; died Sept. 4, 1824.

• xii. Mary Lewis Mourning, born March 10, 1827; died July 26, 1833.

There is an excellent portrait of Governor Floyd in the State Library
at Richmond, Virginia. Floyd County, formed in 1831 from Montgomery
County, was named in his honor.

At the organization of the Virginia Historical Society, December 29,
1831, Chief Justice John Marshall was elected President and Governor
John Floyd First Vice-President. The last presided at several meetings
of the Society, and took the deepest interest in its foundation and mission.