William Floyd (1734 - 1821)

Born 17 Dec 1734 in Mastic, Suffolk, New York Colony

Ancestors

Husband of Hannah (Jones) Floyd — married 20 Aug 1760 (to 16 May 1781) in Mastic, New York

Descendants

Died 4 Aug 1821 at age 86 in Westernville, Western, Oneida, New York, United States

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Biography

William Floyd is Notable.

General William Floyd served with American Founding Fathers during the American Revolution.

William Floyd is a DAR Patriot Ancestor, A040007.

William Floyd was born to a family in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York. His Welsh great-grandfather, Richard Floyd had settled on Long Island about 1650. He was the second child and eldest of two sons in a family of nine. William’s parents died when he was young, he inherited the estate and the responsibility for raising his brothers and sisters.

He was active in his local community, supported the Brookhaven church, became town trustee in 1769-71 and moved up in the ranks of the Suffolk County militia, becoming Colonel in 1775. He would eventually become Major-General in the American Revolutionary War.

New York was less affected by the unrest against British colonial policy than other American colonies. New York and Georgia were the only colonies in which the patriots did not control the government. From 1774-1777 William Floyd represented Suffolk County in the 1st and 2nd Continental Congress, served in the State senate and was a member of the council of safety then returned to Congress in 1779-83.

In 1776 William Floyd risked everything to support the cause of independence: he was the only person from Suffolk County, New York to sign the Declaration of Independence.

In 1776, the British occupied Long Island, making his home at Mastic their barracks. William and his wife Hannah (Jones) Floyd and family were forced to take refuge in Middletown, Connecticut. Loyalists plundered his lands and belongings. His wife died in Middletown in 1781, and when he brought his children back in 1783, he found the fields and timber stripped, the fences destroyed, and the house damaged.

He married again in 1784 to Joanna Strong and began to acquire more property, a tract in central New York and property at the headwaters of the Mohawk River followed by a grant of 10,000 or so acres in the same area which became his life’s interest.

In 1803, in his late sixties, he passed the family Long Island property to his son Nicoll, and set out with the rest of his family to make a new life on the frontier.

He built a new home at Westernville, upstate New York, where he died aged 86 on 4 Aug 1821. William Floyd was buried in the local Presbyterian Cemetery at Westernville.

Sources

• US Federal Census 1810

• US Federal Census 1820

• Connecticut Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions and Newspaper Notices, Vol 44 p 210

• New York Death Newspaper Extracts, New York Evening Post, July 1821

• Rhode Island Vital Extracts, Vol 13 Newspapers: Deaths, p 390, 3 Aug 1821, Oneida, New York

• Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol II, p 488

• William Floyd at Google

• The General William Floyd House and Farm at Long Island, New York

• William Floyd at NPS

• William Floyd at Wikipedia

• 2013 Penguin, Kilmeade & Yeager, ISBN 978-0-698-13765-3

• Find A Grave: Memorial #2806