Benedict Dysart McMullen

From his unpublished manuscript, courtesy of Valerie Baugher:

Along with the fact that the McMullen House in Sinking Valley had been built of logs and loop-holed for rifle fire against Indians.

This last brought us nineteenth century children within touching distance of pioneer times. We knew there were no Red Indians left in Maryland - except maybe ourselves, for there was Indian blood in our mother's family, going back to Jamestown times. Indeed, one sister had the Indian name of Nicketti - pronounced Nick for short. Our maternal grandmother had the same name. Our grandmother, then in her 80s, lived in Richmond, but always spent the summers with us. Her husband, our grandfather, paid us an occasional visit.. He had just completed his third term as a United States Senator, but had failed for reelection for a fourth term.

In those days, U.S. Senators were elected by State Legislatures, and not by popular vote. He had been a State Judge in Virginia at the time of his election, and had been selected for the office with the understanding that the Senate would refuse to seat him.

This was because no one could become a U.S. Senator who could not take the Iron Clad Oath in which you swore you never had given aid or comfort to the Southern Confederacy. This our grandfather could not do, since he had been a Commissioner of Confiscation in the Confederate Government. So he went to Washington expecting to be told, "Here's your hat. Hope you have a pleasant trip home!"

When he appeared at the bar of the Senate, preparatory to taking his oath, Senator William Sumner of Massachusetts protested his right to take the oath required. It was well-known that Judge John W. Johnston of Virginia had held office in the Southern Confederacy and therefore could not take the Iron Clad Oath required of all aspirants to the office of Senator. Whereupon Senator Bayard of Delaware came to our grandfather's defence.

In the somewhat acrimonious debate that followed, Senator Bayard disclosed that early that year, the Congress had passed a special bill which had been signed by the President, and so had become a U.S. law, relieving Judge John W. Johnston of Virginia from having to take the Iron Clad Oath. This was as much a surprise to grandfather as it was displeasing to Sen. Sumner, who was inimical to him both politically and personally.

How it came about is worth retelling. At that time, in each Southern community, there was set up a Freeman's Bureau to look after the interests of manumitted ex-slaves. Along with the Bureau was a force of Union troops under the command of an Army officer.

One day, our grandmother was told there was a sick black man lying near her house. She investigated, had him carried into a cabin, and a nurse put over him, summoned a doctor, and when the man died some days later, had him decently buried.

This act, characteristic of our grandmother, had impressed the officer in command of the Army detachment, that he wrote a full account of the incident and sent it to the Congressman who represented his home Congressional District in Boston.

This Congressman, equally impressed, read the Officer's letter on the floor of the House of Representatives. The result was a bill, joined in by the Senate and signed by the President, lifting all his political liabilities, from Judge John W. Johnston of Abingdon, Virginia.

So grandfather was sworn in as a Senator, serving in all for three terms. The salary in those days was 3,000 USD a year, later raised to 5,000 USD. This raising from 3 to 5,000 became known as "The Salary Grab," wealthy northern Senators refusing to take the extra 2,000 USD. In addition, each Senator was allowed one office assistant, known as his secretary, who was paid a modest salary. At the end of his third term, our grandfather found himself with no tangible assets to mark his long Senate service. But he was greatly respected by his fellow Senators.

He probably was a better lawyer than he was a legislator, at one time being considered for appointment to the Supreme Court. And he had the distinction of being the second Roman Catholic to become a U.S. Senator. This writer remembers him as a slender, white-bearded man, very quiet and greatly loved by his family and close friends. At one time, while grandfather was Senator, he had two uncles serving in the House of Representatives, once General Joseph E. Johnston, the ex-Confederate leader, and the other, Mr. Henry Bowen, his mother's brother, from Tazewell County, Virginia.

Chapter X

Being read to was not our only way of passing a long evening. Our mother's sisters from Richmond spent many months as guests of the family. Our Aunt Letty, her older sister who never married and who was the writer's dearly loved and never to be forgotten godmother, was one of them. She knew the family pioneer history, covering Virginia and Kentucky, and never tired of recounting stories of early Indian fights and deeds that were to make a country out of adventure. One of her favorite characters was our second great grandfather Colonel John Floyd, known in Kentucky history as the "Indian fighter."

There were three Floyd brothers, Welshmen, owning ships making regular business trips shortly after the settlement of Jamestown. Two of them finally settled on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the third going north and settling on Long Island, becoming the ancestors of the Floyds of New York State, one of whom was to sign the Declaration of Independence. The two in Virginia ultimately crossed the Chesapeake Bay and took up residence on mainland Virginia.

One of the brothers married Abidah Davis, daughter of the Princess Nicketti, daughter of Opechancanough, foster brother of Powhatan, and who succeeded him, thereby becoming the last Emperor of the Chickahominy. Tradition had it that Opechancanough was not a Chickahominy Indian, but had come to the James River territory fully grown from the far south, saying he was a refugee from his own people. Since he wore gold arm bands in the shape of serpents with emerald green eyes, the supposition was that he may have been an Aztec. He is known in Virginia history for having staged the last great massacre of English settlers.

Such was the story our Aunt Letter told us, seated in the library before a blazing log fire. An adventure story that had the advantage with children of being family tradition.

The man who was to become Colonel John Floyd and Kentucky's Indian Fighter, and incidentally our second great grandfather, thus had a strain of Indian blood. Some of his descendants bore visible proof of this. Our grandmother, who was named Nicketti after the long-dead Princess, had the wide, high cheekbones of the typical Indian. Our middle sister, named Nicketti after her, inevitably was called Nick, as a nickname.

John Floyd married quite young. his wife died in childbirth, leaving an infant daughter, whom the father named "Mourning." One of our Aunt Letty's bearers thought, and still does, that such a name for an infant girl was a bit out of the ordinary, to put it mildly. When grown, the daughter married and raised a family, but there is no record that any daughter of hers was given her mother's name of "Mourning."

The widower John Floyd, having settled his wife's infant daughter with his dead wife's family, accepted an offer from Col. William Preston, then an officer of the Commonwealth living at Smithfield, the present site of Virginia Polytechnical Institute. He was to help the colonel to keep his office work in order as well as act as tutor to the Colonel's young ward, Jane Buchanan, orphan daughter of the Colonel's dead friend Major Buchanan.

That was the beginning of John Floyd's adventurous career.

At that period, Kentucky was still a part of Virginia. It therefore came within Col. Preston's official sphere. Also, its lands were being surveyed by groups sent out by Virginia men of influence looking toward ownership of large tracts of rich territory. In 1774, Col. Preston decided to organize such a group, choosing John Floyd as the member to represent his interest.

Our grandmother, who was granddaughter of John Floyd, gave to our sister Nicketti the diary kept by some member of this expedition, in which is listed the day-to-day progress of the expedition. Nicketti in 1956 presented this diary to the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. In it are listed tracts surveyed and for whom. Among them, including 2,000 acres for George Washington, among others for unstated amounts, were tracts for Col. William Preston, John Floyd, and Patrick Henry.

This was John Floyd's first visit to Kentucky, where later he was to become an associate of Daniel Boone and be given the rank of Colonel. Since his life has been written in detail for publication of by our Floyd Cousin, Miss Ann Carthidge of Baltimore, we must keep to the story as told to us children by our Aunt Letty Johnston before the blazing wood fire one winter evening at Woodley.

It should be explained here that my father and mother had been blessed with eight children, one, Louisa, dying in infancy. There was, therefore, a considerable gap in ages. Mary, the eldest, being at school in Richmond, John, the next in age, preparing for college, and Letty at the Convent of the Visitation in Georgetown, D.C.

This left the four of us younger ones to constitute our Aunt letty's tales of pioneer Virginia. Of these, Joe was the eldest, already showing indications of the inventive faculty he presumably had inherited from our grandfather McMullen. Nicketti was next, intense and with some share of the high temper of our mother's family, the Virginia Johnstons. Next, the writer, inflicted with the surname Dysart, of his paternal grandmother. And last and youngest, Elizabeth, named after her grandmother McMullen, possessing a musical gift, as yet, in embryo.

So our aunt Letty had a young audience when she told of John Floyd, whose deeds and personality were as remote to us as though he had been a fictional character from one of our favorite adventure novels.

He must have had an itch for change, for though he had been in Kentucky at the outbreak of the American Revolution, he returned to Virginia and somehow managed to assemble of group of similar spirits which ended in their investing in a ship to prey on English shipping in the Atlantic.

Calling from Alexandria, they left the Capes and headed for the Caribbean. There, they captured an English merchantman and headed back with their prize for the Virginia capes. But falling in with an English man-of-war, they lost prize, their own ship, and their liberties. John Floyd was taken to England and thrown into jail at Bristol. He was young, handsome, and ardent. Family tradition had it that he got on the good side of the jailor's daughter who helped his escape and got to France. He must have walked from the coast to Paris, where he appealed to Ben Franklin for help to return to America. When Franklin told Marie Antoinette of the stranded American, the Queen gave him money to buy his passage home. When John Floyd received this, instead of buying a passage home, he bought a pair of diamond shoe buckles for the girl he intended to marry and a scarlet wedding coat for himself. Family tradition says "diamond shoe buckles." Actually, they were paste. At one time, one was in possession of our first cousin Ann Lee in Richmond. The girl he intended to marry was his former pupil, Jane Buchanan. Broke again, Floyd went to the Mission representing the Colonies in Paris and borrowed money for his passage home. The writer has seen photostats of the loan and its subsequent repayment by Floyd years later. Back in Virginia, FLoyd discovered Jane Buchanan on the point of marrying another swain. But giving that unfortunate the mitten, she promptly married Floyd and the newlywed pair lived a year on property Floyd owned near the estate of his patron, Col. William Preston.

They then decided to move to Kentucky, the trip to be made on horseback. Jane carried tied to her saddle two hens and a rooster, the first recorded domestic chickens to be taken to Kentucky. She also took items of household import, among which were a pair of silver sugar tongs, much later to be owned by the writer. They are now in the D.A.R. Museum in Washington D.C. Once in Kentucky, the Floyds settled in land John Floyd had surveyed for himself, now comprising the site of the City of Louisville. There, John Floyd's adventurous life took on new dimensions. He became at once the mentor and the protector of his fellow pioneers. He was given the rank of Colonel of Militia, an active job since incursions of Indians led by English Army officers were of frequent occurrence. Another family tradition, which is without documentary proof, is that he and George Rogers Clark, were offered large sums of money and any title under that of Duke, by the English government, if they would desert the cause of the Colonies and side with England. This was, of course, refused.

The most publicized exploits of Col. Floyd were undertaken with the help of Daniel Boone. Two young girls had been captured and carried off by a band of hostile Indians. Boone and Floyd tracked the gang, and came up with them still holding the girls unharmed. A flight followed in which Boone and Floyd slew the Indians and rescued the girls. The Indian that Floyd accounted for was a chief who wore heavy silver arm bands. These were taken home by Floyd, and later made into silver table forks by a silversmith. They had been given to our Aunt Letty by her mother, who was Col. Floyd's granddaughter. After Aunt Letty's death, they were given to our first cousin Ann Lee of Richmond. They had been offered to the writer, who was too young at the time to make a selection. In his stead, his mother chose a gift from his godmother, a helmet style silver cream pitcher, which had been won as a boy in a shooting match by Col. Floyd's posthumous son, Gov. John Floyd of Virginia. It is now in the D.A.R. Museum in Washington, D.C.

The Colonel's activities in Kentucky have often been written up. Theodore Roosevelt, in his "Winning of the West," gave him full credit for what he had accomplished in Kentucky. Four or five of his brothers and brothers-in-law having been killed by Indians. The youngest, his brother isham, having been tortured at the stake for two days before his heart was out and thrown to the dogs. His own death at the hand of an Indian came when he was still under 30 years of age.

This was in Kentucky, where he was living in the house he had built on the lands he had surveyed at Floyd's Station. He was riding out on a tour of inspection accompanied by his brother-in-law named Hart. He had a favorite black riding horse he named "Pompey." For some reason, that day he was on another horse, name unknown. Returning home on approaching a growth of virgin trees cluttered with thick underbrush, he said to his brother-in-law, "I wish I had Pompey instead of the horse I'm on. He can smell Indians when they're nearby. And I think Indians are around."

By chance, he was wearing the scarlet wedding coat he had bought in Paris. As they drew abreast of the clump of big trees, an Indian concealed in the underbrush fired a musket, the bullet striking Col. Floyd in the back. He slumped in the saddle, but Hart managed to support him until they reached home. Col. Floyd lingered for a day and a half before dying; his widow giving birth to a son some weeks later. This son was to become our great grandfather, Gov. John Floyd of Virginia. Col. Floyd was buried near his home, the site of his grave being long forgotten. His widow married a Breckenridge and had children by him.

Breckenridge and his children later were to acquire most of the extensive land holdings col. Floyd had surveyed for himself and his legal heirs. But the Colonel's widow on her deathbed made one final request. She asked that she be buried in the scarlet wedding coat worn by her husband, John Floyd when he was shot.