James John Floyd
| John Floyd | |
|---|---|
Col. John Floyd
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| Born |
James John Floyd 1750 Amherst County, Virginia |
| Died | April 10, 1783 (aged 32–33) Bullitt County, Kentucky |
| Cause of death | Gunshot |
| Resting place | Breckinridge Cemetery St. Matthews, Kentucky |
James John Floyd (1750 – April 10, 1783), better known as John Floyd, was a pioneer of the Midwestern United States around the Louisville, Kentucky area where he worked as a surveyor for land development and as a military figure. Floyd was an early settler of St. Matthews, Kentucky and helped lay out Louisville. In Kentucky he served as a Colonel of the Kentucky Militia in which he participated in raids with George Rogers Clark and later became one of the first judges of Kentucky.
Floyd was born in 1750 in Amherst County, Virginia, to William and Abadiah (Davis) Floyd, descendants of Welsh immigrants. His mother was also of partial American Indian ancestry, and according to family tradition was a descendant of the Powhatan chieftain Opchanacanough. Another family tradition maintains that her brother was Evan Davis, the grandfather of Jefferson Davis. In Virginia the Floyd family operated a farm and made a decent living there, but the younger Floyd knew opportunity to do better was in the west.
At the age of 18 he married Matilda Burford, daughter of Daniel Burford, sheriff of Amherst County, but she died a year later during the birth of their daughter, Mourning Floyd. In 1770, at the age of 20, Floyd moved to Botetourt County, Virginia to seek employment. He worked as a teacher while living in the home of Col. William Preston. Preston, a prominent frontier Virginian, was the surveyor for the western part of Virginia then known as Fincastle County, Virginia, which stretched as far as the Mississippi River.
Floyd became a deputy surveyor under Preston, doing land survey jobs from time to time. When he was not working with Preston, he rode as a deputy sheriff with Daniel Trigg, working under Sheriff Col. William Christian of Botetourt County. Preston started receiving applications for land claims to be located and surveyed from veterans of the French and Indian War. In 1774 Floyd was selected to lead a group of surveyors into what is now West Virginia and Kentucky.
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