Felix Walker (1753 - abt. 1828)

Born 19 Jul 1753 in Hampshire, Virginia

Ancestors

Died about 1828 at about age 74 in Clinton, Hinds, Mississippi, United States

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Biography

WALKER, Felix, (1753 - 1828)

WALKER, Felix, a Representative from North Carolina; born on the south branch of the Potomac River, in Hampshire County, VA (now West Virginia), July 19, 1753; attended country school on the Congaree River, near Columbia, S.C., and in Burke County, N.C.; moved with his father to what became Lincoln County, N.C., and in 1768, to what became Rutherford County, N.C.

Felix was employed as a merchant’s clerk at Charleston, S.C., in 1769; he also engaged in agricultural pursuits; and in company with Daniel Boone and others formed the settlement of Boonsboro, Ky., in 1775.

He served as clerk of the court of Washington district (most of which is now in Tennessee) in 1775 and 1776 and of the county court of Washington County (now chiefly in Tennessee) in 1777 and 1778. The following year, he began his tenure as clerk of court of Rutherford County, N.C. (1779-1787).

Mr. Walker fought in the Revolutionary and Indian Wars.

Felix Walker served as a member of the state House of Commons in 1792, 1799-1802, and 1806. He resumed agricultural pursuits and was a trader and land speculator in Haywood County, N.C.

He was elected as a Republican to the Fifteenth Congress and reelected to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Congresses (March 4, 1817-March 3, 1823). He unsuccessfully ran for reelection in 1822 to the Eighteenth Congress and soon moved, about 1824, to Mississippi.

Felix Walker died in Clinton, Hinds County, Mississippi in 1828. He was probably interred in a private cemetery in Wetumpka, Elmore County, Alabama. ^[1]

NOTES:

Felix wrote a family history with interesting autobiographical notes. This has been reprinted in a book Genealogy of John Walker from Ireland 1720 and some of his ancestors from England and Ireland and some of his descendants in America by Robert Walton Walker which was published in about 1935 and has been copied and made publicly accessible online by the Hathi Trust [ at this link ] Felix's notes appear starting on page 35.

In his account, he “states, that my grandfather, John Walker, was an emigrant from Ireland about the year 1720, settled in the State of Delaware about or near a small town called Appaquinimey, lived and died in that State, was buried in a church called Back Creek Church on Bohemia River ... One of my father's sisters married a man by the name of Humphreys, father of Colonel Ralph Humphreys, who died at or near Natchez about thirty years past ... One sister married Benjamin Grubb, a respectable farmer of Pennsylvania, but removed to South Carolina and died there. The other sister married Colonel Joseph Curry, settled about five miles below Columbia on the Congaree River."

Felix was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. His constituency included Buncombe County, N.C. and in one of his speeches he became famous for inspiring the term Buncombe (often spelled bunkum) as a synonym for "speechmaking for the gratification of one's constituents or for mere show" according to the definition offered by Webster's New International Dictionary of 1917.

Sources

1. ↑ http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=W000050

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Walker_(American_politician)
• Source: S343 Author: Ancestry.com Title: U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1700s-Current Publication: Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2012; Repository: #R1
• Repository: R1 Name: Ancestry.com Address: http://www.Ancestry.com E-Mail Address: Phone Number: