The Floyd family is the Illinois branch of my family tree and the first set of great-grandparents (George and Nancy's son Charles Augustus Floyd and Angeline Elizabeth Matlock) and great-great-grandparents (George Floyd and Nancy Finley) that I learned about, thanks to my cousin Paul, through whom I became acquainted with the Floyd family research of my second cousin Eunice Sandling and through her with additional research done on this family by Jim and Pat Dodd. I have to admit, it was awfully hard to find new information on this family. I located a couple of new children for George and Nancy's son Caswell Floyd (covered in the articles Alvin Cletus Floyd and Essie Maples, Finding a New Family, and Alice Floyd Ezell Bibb) and some descendants for son David Floyd (Descendants of David Floyd? – Parts 1 and 2) as well a brother for George back in Illinois, Henry Floyd; I believe Henry's presence was known by the other researchers but they had nothing to connect him to George, but later I found a land deed connecting the two as well as a marriage certificate for George and Nancy.
The Floyd family came with several legends; one seems to have been known by all the Floyd descendants and is covered in the next article. Another is recounted in the Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County, Texas (Chicago, Illinois: 1892, Lewis Publishing Company), which is the source of a lot of the information we have on the Floyds: "The grandmother of our subject [Charles Augustus Floyd, so this could have been George Floyd's mother or Nancy Finley's mother] was captured by the Indians, was held in captivity for several years, and was rescued, at a great expense, by her father." Publications of this type, while often containing a lot of material that may be of historical and genealogical interest, are usually largely vanity publications in tone and content and are generally not the most reliable sources of information. Another source of information was a family Bible that was apparently in the possession of my grandmother Eula Floyd Moore at one time.
Here are the outlines of what Floyd researchers know about the George and Nancy Floyd family. George Floyd was born in Vermont in 1807 and as a young man went to Illinois in around 1830, most likely after spending a few years in New York in between. The account in the Memorial and Biographical History makes no mention of Henry, but I think it is likely the brothers went together. On 30 November 1834 George married Nancy Finley, said to be the daughter of a John Finley of South Carolina. In 1846 George went to Texas and took a headright in Peters' Colony in the Dallas area and in December 1848 he returned with his family to settle there. They had five sons (to be covered in detail in separate articles): David Harriet (ca 1836 IL – ca 1867-8 TX), Charles Augustus (1840 IL – 1894 TX), Henry Oscar (ca 1843 IL – ca 1862 IL), Caswell Biankin (1845 IL – 1890 TX), and Alfred Byrum (1848 IL – 1913 TX).
Nancy Finley died on 5 February 1864 and George married a second time to Elizabeth Baines (maiden name unknown), a widow with a daughter named Maud. George and Elizabeth had two daughters, Mary Etta and George Harriett (if you are thinking that this family likes to give boys girls' names and girls boys' names, you are right, although I believe Harriet(t) must have been a family name). George Floyd died on 11 March 1880 and is believed to be buried next to Nancy in the Floyd-Taylor Cemetery in Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas.
I would welcome any additional information on this family. In particular there are several members of the family about whose fates I have no knowledge: Henry Oscar Floyd (other than his reputed death in Illinois), Elizabeth Baines Floyd (no date of death, though she was still alive in 1900), George and Elizabeth’s daughter Mary Etta), and Joe and Hattie Floyd Boyer’s sons Willie and Eugene.
George Floyd
b. 29 Sep 1807, Vermont
d. 11 Mar 1880, Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas
& Nancy E. Finley
b. ca 1816, Greene Co., IL
d. 5 Feb 1864, Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas
m. 30 Nov 1834, Greene Co., IL
|---David Harriet Floyd
|......b. 1836, Illinois
|......d. 1867
|---& Zilla Ann Kelly
|...... b. Jun 1839
|......d. 9 Jan 1914, Sipe Springs, Comanche Co., Texas
|......m. 23 Dec 1858, Dallas County, TX
|---Charles Augustus Floyd
|......b. 28 Jun 1840, Greene Co., Illinois
|......d. 4 Mar 1894, Dallas County, TX
|---& Angeline Elizabeth Matlock
|......b. 18 Nov 1847, Bowling Green, Warren Co., Kentucky
|......d. 11 Oct 1916, Dallas County, TX
|......m. 13 Jan 1867, Home of T.H. Taylor, Texas
|---Henry Oscar Floyd
|......b. 1843, Greene Co., IL
|......d. 1862, Scott County, Illinois
|---Caswell Biankin “Cass” Floyd
|......b. 1845, Greene Co., IL
|......d. 26 Oct 1890, Kleburg, Texas
|---& Mary E. Miller
|......b. Jan 1848, Illinois
|......d. 1916, Texas
|---Alfred Byrum Floyd
|......b. 1848, Greene Co., IL
|......d. 8 Jul 1913, Dallas County, TX
|---& Kate Clara Bass
|......b. 9 Jun 1860, Texas
|......d. 5 Jul 1959, Dallas County, TX
|......m. 22 Sep 1876, Dallas County, TX
George Floyd
b. 29 Sep 1807, Vermont
d. 11 Mar 1880, Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas
& Elizabeth J.
b. Aug 1829, Missouri
m. 1867
|---Mary Etta Floyd
|......b. 1867, Texas
|---George Harriett “Hattie” Floyd
|......b. May 1869, Texas
|---& Joe Boyer
|......b. Jun 1861, Tennessee
|---|---Willie F. Boyer
|---|......b. Jun 1894, Texas
|---|---Eugene H. Boyer
|---|......b. Sep 1896, Texas
Showing posts with label Miller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miller. Show all posts
Friday, February 6, 2009
Monday, October 13, 2008
Finding a New Family
The “new family” mentioned in the title above does not refer to a set of direct ancestors, i.e., the parents of a “brick wall” ancestor, but is located in a “collateral line,” in this case, the family of one of the brothers of my great-grandfather Charles Augustus Floyd. The brother in question is Caswell B. Floyd, who was born in 1845 in Illinois, married Mary Miller, and died in 1890 in Kleberg, Dallas County, Texas. The Floyds were one of the first families on whom I had any information, thanks to some outstanding Floyd family researchers, Eunice Sandling and the Jim and Pat Dodd family. It often seemed that there was very little I could add by way of research to what they had already done. They already had a family group for Caswell and Mary Floyd, which included five sons – George Albert, William Henry, Joseph Ira, Ollie B., and Charles Alford. However, Caswell ‘s death in1890 opened up the possibility that there were additional children born between the 1880 census and Caswell’s death in 1890.
The 1900 census showed an Alvin C. Long, born ca 1888, living with a Charles and Mary Long in Precinct 4, Dallas County, Texas, and I suspected that Mary Long was Caswell’s widow. I eventually got in touch with a descendant of Cletus Caswell Floyd, Alvin Cletus Floyd’s son, and the name Caswell and the descendant’s claim that the family was from Kleberg, Texas, made me positive that my guess was correct. However, this still is not the family referred to in this article.
When I did the census work for Charles and Mary Long, I found that in the 1910 census, Mary was shown as having given birth to 10 children, of whom 8 were still living. That meant it should be possible to find eight living children at that point in time, but at this point I knew only of Caswell and Mary’s six sons plus another son, Emmet, born to Mary and Charles Long. Emmet was born in 1893, at which time Mary was already about 45 years old, and in the 1900 census Mary was mistakenly shown as having had only one child, i.e., Emmet, so I guessed that the child not accounted for must have been Caswell’s child. After eliminating Floyd males from the Charles August Floyd and Alfred Byrum Floyd (Charles’ and Caswell’s youngest brother) families, there did not seem to be any additional male Floyds born in the early 1880s living on their own in the Dallas area. That left one possibility, a phenomenon known to many family researchers dealing with this period in history – 1880 to 1900 – who understand that one of the consequences of the loss of almost the entire 1890 census is the “lost daughter” – a daughter born in the early 1880s (so she does not appear on the 1880 census) who has already married and no longer lives with her family (so she cannot be found under her maiden name in the 1900 census).
My next step was to look for a young (less than 20 years old) married woman in the Kleberg area. There were several candidates, and for at least two of these it was indicated that one or both parents had been born in Illinois (the only reliable “distinguishing feature” I could use to narrow down the field), but I was actually able to find their maiden names with a little hunting, and none of them was the missing daughter. That was several months ago. About a week ago I was taking care of one of the more mundane genealogy chores, recopying quickly scribbled notes to put in the proper family binders. Probably about a year or so earlier (before I was very familiar with the Caswell Floyd family), I had hastily jotted down some information from Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Texas Archives (another plug for one of my favorite websites) – the transcript of the death certificate for a young woman named Alice Bibb who had died in the great influenza epidemic in 1918. Listed as her parents were C. B. Floyd and Mary Mills. At the time it piqued my curiosity, but I was not familiar enough with the family to be certain that this was Caswell and Mary. Seeing my notes a second time, however, gave me that jolt and then the rush familiar to so many genealogy buffs – this was the daughter I had been searching for! This was followed by embarrassment at my “senior moment” – forgetting that I had already “found” the daughter. I then remembered that her death fell within the right time frame to be covered by the Texas death certificates on the Family Search pilot site (another favorite website). A glance at the image of the original death certificate showed that Mary Mills was indeed actually Mary Miller, and Alice Bibb was Alice Floyd, the missing daughter.
In a subsequent article I will describe what I have learned about this family.
The 1900 census showed an Alvin C. Long, born ca 1888, living with a Charles and Mary Long in Precinct 4, Dallas County, Texas, and I suspected that Mary Long was Caswell’s widow. I eventually got in touch with a descendant of Cletus Caswell Floyd, Alvin Cletus Floyd’s son, and the name Caswell and the descendant’s claim that the family was from Kleberg, Texas, made me positive that my guess was correct. However, this still is not the family referred to in this article.
When I did the census work for Charles and Mary Long, I found that in the 1910 census, Mary was shown as having given birth to 10 children, of whom 8 were still living. That meant it should be possible to find eight living children at that point in time, but at this point I knew only of Caswell and Mary’s six sons plus another son, Emmet, born to Mary and Charles Long. Emmet was born in 1893, at which time Mary was already about 45 years old, and in the 1900 census Mary was mistakenly shown as having had only one child, i.e., Emmet, so I guessed that the child not accounted for must have been Caswell’s child. After eliminating Floyd males from the Charles August Floyd and Alfred Byrum Floyd (Charles’ and Caswell’s youngest brother) families, there did not seem to be any additional male Floyds born in the early 1880s living on their own in the Dallas area. That left one possibility, a phenomenon known to many family researchers dealing with this period in history – 1880 to 1900 – who understand that one of the consequences of the loss of almost the entire 1890 census is the “lost daughter” – a daughter born in the early 1880s (so she does not appear on the 1880 census) who has already married and no longer lives with her family (so she cannot be found under her maiden name in the 1900 census).
My next step was to look for a young (less than 20 years old) married woman in the Kleberg area. There were several candidates, and for at least two of these it was indicated that one or both parents had been born in Illinois (the only reliable “distinguishing feature” I could use to narrow down the field), but I was actually able to find their maiden names with a little hunting, and none of them was the missing daughter. That was several months ago. About a week ago I was taking care of one of the more mundane genealogy chores, recopying quickly scribbled notes to put in the proper family binders. Probably about a year or so earlier (before I was very familiar with the Caswell Floyd family), I had hastily jotted down some information from Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Texas Archives (another plug for one of my favorite websites) – the transcript of the death certificate for a young woman named Alice Bibb who had died in the great influenza epidemic in 1918. Listed as her parents were C. B. Floyd and Mary Mills. At the time it piqued my curiosity, but I was not familiar enough with the family to be certain that this was Caswell and Mary. Seeing my notes a second time, however, gave me that jolt and then the rush familiar to so many genealogy buffs – this was the daughter I had been searching for! This was followed by embarrassment at my “senior moment” – forgetting that I had already “found” the daughter. I then remembered that her death fell within the right time frame to be covered by the Texas death certificates on the Family Search pilot site (another favorite website). A glance at the image of the original death certificate showed that Mary Mills was indeed actually Mary Miller, and Alice Bibb was Alice Floyd, the missing daughter.
In a subsequent article I will describe what I have learned about this family.
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