Sunday, November 2, 2008

Descendants of David Floyd? - Part 1

David Floyd was the oldest brother of my great-grandfather Charles Augustus Floyd. I put a question mark after the title of this post because it is not certain that there are currently living descendants of David Floyd, but I recently discovered that at least one of his daughters may very well have living descendants.

Here is what is currently known about the family of David Floyd and his wife Zillah Kelly (Claywell Floyd Lovett – more on her three marriages later):

David Harriet Floyd
b. 1836, Illinois
d. ca 1867
& Zilla Ann Kelly
b. Jun 1839
d. 9 Jan 1914, Sipe Springs, Comanche Co., Texas
m. 23 Dec 1858, Dallas County, TX
| Eliza Ellen Floyd
| b. 1860, Dallas County, TX
| d. bef 1890
| & Mason W. Crum
| b. Mar 1852, Kentucky
| d. 1930, Hopkins, Texas
| m. 16 Apr 1880
| David Angeline Floyd
| b. 1863, Texas
| d. bef 1900
| & George W. Bingham
| m. 21 Jul 1884

It is apparent from the 1900 census that Eliza must have died by 1890, because Mason Crum and his new wife Anna married in about 1890. In addition to Mason and Anna’s daughters Audry and Alma, there is a third daughter, Sada, born in 1884 according to the census. Sada must have been Eliza’s daughter.

This was as far as the line had gone as far as we Floyd researchers knew. At one point when I was researching this family I took a little “detour” to find out who Zillah Floyd was. The item that initially aroused my curiosity was the 1860 census entry for her and David. [David died some time before 1870, when Zillah had already remarried to a man named Elihu Lovett. I am guessing that David Floyd died some time in 1867 or perhaps early 1868 because he appeared in the partition of father George Floyd’s land in 1867 and he witnessed the marriage of his brother Charles to Angeline Matlock on 13 Jan 1867. ] On the 1860 census, a young (5 years old) boy who is referred to as Noah Penny is shown living with David, Zillah, and their daughter Eliza. How was he related to this family? The first place I looked for clues, as I always do for the Floyds, was Eunice Sandling’s History of the Floyd Family, which stated that David Floyd married Zillah Claywell on 23 December 1858. I tried to find a Zillah Claywell with her family on the 1850 census for Illinois but could not; however, Claywells and Pennys did turn up in Sangamon County on that census.

Searches for Zilla(h) Claywell/Lovett and for Eli Lovett brought up several posts on genealogy discussion boards. As I started to track these down, it became clear that Zilla’s maiden name was not Claywell, but that she had married a Claywell and had son Noah from that marriage. Noah’s last name was actually Claywell, and he appears in later censuses under that name, but perhaps the census-taker associated him with the Penny family in Dallas County, which had also come from Sangamon County, Illinois. A little more searching revealed that Zillah’s maiden name was Kelley. By this time I had discussions going with two of her descendants both on the discussion boards and through e-mail, and I even ended up in one of those Texas two-hour-long phone calls with one of them. Eventually we straightened out Zillah’s marriage history. Zillah’s first husband was Warren Claywell, by whom she had son Noah; her second husband was David Floyd, by whom she had daughters Eliza Ellen and David Angeline; and her third husband was Eli Lovett, by whom she had children John Wayne and Emily Lucy. The first and third families and their descendants knew of one another’s existence, but did not know of the David Floyd family until we found one another online. Why was this? The 1900 census contained a possible explanation: both Eliza Ellen and David Angeline had died by 1900 (the census showed that Zilla had had five children, of whom three were still living, and those three were Noah, John, and Emily). I knew that Eliza had died, and apparently David Angeline (who married a George W. Bingham) had as well, which explained why I could not find her on the 1900 census.

I will continue on the fate of Sada Crum in the next post.

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