CAPTAIN FLOYD
Most sea captains we read about made more than one voyage but that is not true about Captain Floyd. He made one and that was it.
The first Floyds to come to America were two brothers from Wales and they settled on the eastern shore edge of Virginia. One of those brothers had son named William. He married Abileah Davis, from Amherst County in central Virgnia who was of Indian decent. John Floyd was their son, and he was born about 1750.
Growing up on the Eastern Shore he became well acquainted with sea going people and with various types of ships. He married at age eighteen. His wife, fourteen years old when they married, died within the year. John left the Eastern Shore to begin life anew as a school teacher in Botetourt across the Blue Ridge Mountians in Southwest Virgnia.
When not engaged in school teaching, John clerked or“wrote in the office” of Col.William Preston the County Surveyor and he also acted as a deputy for Col. William Chrisian who was High Sheriff . Until 1773 he lived with Col. Preston at “Smithfield” which was then in Fincastle County.
At that time, the county embraced most of what is now Kentuckey and Col. Preston appointed John Floyd as a deputy and sent him to survey lands along the Ohio river.
Later, in 1775, when he returned to "Smithfield”, John Floyd became engaged to Jane Buchanon, daughter of Col. John Buchanan; grand daughter of Col James Patton and second cousin of Col. Preston.
After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, three gentlemen of the area decided to buy, of all things, a sea-going schooner named “The Phoenix”. Dr. Thomas Walker, Edmund Pendeleton and Col. Preston formed the company and they had the ship fitted out as privateer. They gave commnd of the ship to John Floyd .
One can only guess their purpose in getting in to the merchandise shipping busness, which was, at that time, in particularly the "privateering" aspect of it all, was suspect. It was about as close to piracy as one could get. It started during the time of Elizbeth I and continued, virtually unabated, until 1819 in most areas of Earth's troubled waterways.
The “Phoenix”, commanded by Captain John Floyd, started on a West Indies cruise and soon captured a merchantman with a rich cargo. Floyd, thinking, his fortune already made, decide to go home, but just before they came within sight of the Virginia capes, "The Pheonix" was overtaken and captured by a British Man-0f-War. Captain Floyd was taken, in irons, to England where he was held in prison for nearly a year.
The unbelievable part of it today – actions we have seen in a score of movies - insists the jailer's daughter obtained the key to his cell and let him out. He begged his way to Dover where he found a clergyman who, it seems ,was in the habit of helping in such situations. He concealed him until he could arrange passage to France.
The French people gave him bread and grapes and Dr. Benjamin Franklin, at Paris, furnished him means of returning to the United States.
John Floyd retuned to “Smithfield” to a joyful reception. Miss Buchanon broke off her engagement to one Col .Robert Sayers, and married Floyd in November 1778. They had three sons and one daughter. John Floyd was morally wounded in an Indian attack when he and his brother were retirning from Salt River to Floyd's Station. His brother got him on horseback and managed to get him home, but he died the next day. Ten days later his third son was born....his mother named him John.
That was April 24, 1783. Two hundred nineteen years ago.
Yet, it could do very well, I think, as a novel, a movie or TV special today.
A.L.M. November 26, 2002 [c631wds]
