Floyd Coachman Crews (1867 - 1958)

Born 2 May 1867 in Steam Mill, Decatur County, Georgia, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Rowe (McKinnie) Crews — married 15 Feb 1893 in Christian Church, Dublin, Texas

Descendants

Died 31 Aug 1958 at age 91 in Fairfax, Virginia, United States

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Biography

Floyd Coachman Crews was born on 2 May 1867 in a rural community, about 3 miles from the post office of Steam Mill, Decatur County, Georgia, United States. He was the third of fourteen children of Dr Leonidas Crews, a country doctor, and his wife, Sarah Helen (Coachman) Crews. It was just two years after the end of the Civil War, in which Floyd's father and all his father's brothers had fought on the losing side.

One of Floyd's earliest memories was being taken from his bed one night and carried into his mother's bedroom to kiss her good-bye. He believed this to have probably been after the birth of his sister Elma, when he was two years old, and that his mother was expecting to die; at the time he was too young to understand what was happening, but was aware that the good-bye was a serious one. Fortunately, his mother didn't die but recovered and lived many more years.

During the first half of Floyd's childhood, kerosene was beginning to supplement tallow candles as a form of lighting, but people still used the phrase "at early candle lighting" to describe the start time of evening meetings. Matches were a rare and expensive novelty, and mostly candles were lit using a twisted piece of paper taken from a vase on the mantlepiece and lighted from the fire in the fireplace. Boys went barefoot except in winter, when they wore boots. There were no bathtubs or kitchen sinks, and no closets - people used wardrobes instead.

In 1871 when Floyd was four, the family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, travelling on a train. Floyd had never even seen a train before, and like many small boys, was very impressed. Trains at this time in this area were wood-fueled, and it was common for trains to stop in wooded areas far from any station and load up with the wood that was stacked by the tracks.

In Valdosta, Floyd's family lived with his maternal grandparents at first, and then bought their own home. Floyd thought it was the nicest home they ever had; it was raised up above the ground and you could play underneath it, which would be very appealing for children. In about 1872 or 3, Floyd's mother bought her first sewing machine, and was never without one after that.

In about 1872, while the family were living in Valdosta, Floyd's parents took their youngest, Percy, to Savannah, where Leonidas, with the help and advice of a surgeon of that city, operated upon the club foot of baby Percy in the hope that the foot would straighten out and become like its mate, but this experiment proved futile. Clarence, who was about 10 years of age, was permitted to accompany them to Savannah, and Floyd never forgot Clarence's joy and enthusiasm upon receiving this permission.

Floyd's father had no trouble attracting patients and was doing well, but his uncle Mortimer Crews when he visited expressed his strong opinion that a town was no place to raise children, and gave Floyd's father $5000, suggesting he use it to take his family back to Steam Mill, which he called the "garden spot of the world".

Leonidas evidently liked the idea, as he acted on it. In Steam Mill, he formed a business partnership with Ned Dickinson, and they rented the Rambo or Rambeaux Plantation, a large plantation on the Chattahoochee River.

After the Civil War, instead of giving land to each freed slave to own and farm, President Andrew Johnson had returned all land in the South that was under federal control to its pre-war owners. At this time, many of the former slaves remained on the plantations where they had been slaves, with little choice but to work for the plantation owner to earn enough to live. Under the sharecropping system that ensued, the plantation labourers would receive part of the profit when their crops were sold, and out of this they would have to repay the plantation owner for anything he had had to furnish them with while the crop was growing, because the former slaves usually had no capital to buy seeds or tools or necessities. Since the former slaves would be at great risk of being unable to find work if they left, plantation owners and managers were in a position to exploit their workers badly.

So Leonidas and Ned were buying seeds and food and things for their workers on Rambo Plantation, and hoping to make a good profit when the crop (mostly cotton) was sold. Unfortunately for them, 1874 was a year when the river overflowed its banks several times, and killed almost all the growing crops. This was presumably a disaster for the sharecropping plantation workers, who would have received little or nothing from the crops to pay their debt to Leonidas and Ned, or to cover their living costs for the coming year. Leonidas was in the position of having spent most of his $5000 and having no money coming in from the harvest, and although he was presumably in principle owed some money by the sharecroppers, they wouldn't have been able to pay him.

Each time the river burst its banks, it left stagnant pools of water behind, in which flies and mosquitoes bred happily. There were no screen doors and windows, though mosquito nets to put over beds could be had. Flies were invited to stay away from the victuals on table by brushes of one kind or another which had to be operated by someone while eating was in progress. Some of these fly brushes or "scarers" were made of the beautiful tail feathers of peacocks; others were of paper strips suspended from the ceiling and connected so that the operator could swing all of them simultaneously by pulling a cord at one end.

So with so many insects moving freely around people's homes, the summer also saw rampant malaria and typhoid in the "garden spot of the world". Floyd's family suffered a great deal of illness; often there wasn't a single well person in the household. Floyd's little sister Elma died of typhoid in August 1874, and his brother Clarence was also very very sick and almost died.

Elma had been much loved; she was only eighteen months older than Percy, who had a club foot and was slow learning to walk, and she liked to look after him and play with him, and called herself his little nurse. When she first fell ill, she asked her mother to "tell Perce his little nurse is sick and can't play with him today". Floyd cried in bed at night many times, knowing he was never going to see Elma again.

In the fall, two or three of the older children were packed off to relatives in Camilla, with a supply of nasty-tasting anti-malarial medicine which they were to keep taking till the malaria had been driven from their systems.

The return to Steam Mill had been a disaster for the family, and they couldn't afford to sink more capital into the plantation. Leonidas and Sarah had heard glowing reports of Texas from Floyd's uncle Charles Constantine Crews, and decided to move there. After auctioning off their household goods and furniture, in February 1875 they travelled to Camilla where two of Floyd's aunts lived, taking with them all their worldly possessions - which amounted to a few trunks of baggage and $1,700. The trip took two days by horse-drawn wagon, so they stopped the night at a farmhouse on the way.

They collected Aunt Shattie - Floyd's mother's half-sister - who was to go with them to Texas, and boarded a train at Camilla on about 10 Feb 1875. They were waved off by Floyd's grandparents and both of his aunts' families. Floyd was seven at the time, and later remembered the trains on the journey as having wooden coaches lit by coal oil lamps, no sleeping accommodation, wood-burning steam engines with tall smoke-stacks, and tracks with but little if any ballast.

After a trip of 27 miles from Camilla, they had to get off and wait a long time for a train to take them to Eufaula, Alabama. This arrived in the middle of the night, so they had to take an omnibus to a hotel, where they stayed till they could catch a train to Montgomery, Alabama. There they changed for New Orleans, where they again arrived at night. In the morning they took a ferry-boat across the river to Brasher City, Louisiana (now Morgan City).

To get from Brasher City to Galveston, Texas, they had an 18-hour trip by sailing vessel across the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone but Floyd and Leonidas got seasick. They arrived on 13 Feb 1875.

After a day or two's rest they went on to Houston. At the time, it had no pavements or sewerage, and the mud in the streets was axle-deep. This was by no means unusual, paving being rare and indoor toilets nonexistent; people wore boots, and used a boot-jack to remove them so as not to get their hands filthy. One horse or ox was never enough to pull a wagon in these conditions; one to three pairs was used, depending how heavy the load was, and the wheels of the wagons and hooves of the animals created deep ruts and holes in the dirt, and deep mud when it rained. Each adult male at the time was legally obligated to spend three days a year maintaining the roads, or to pay a $3 tax in lieu.

Leonidas investigated how to get to Uncle Mortimer's farm in south-east Texas. The family took the train as near as they could get to it, a station called Great Lake although there seemed to be no water near it, then Leonidas hired a horse and rode the rest of the way while his wife and children stayed in the hotel rooms above the station for a few days. Uncle Mortimer returned with Leonidas, and gave each of the children a fifty-cent piece, asking them to try and keep it till he saw them again. (This turned out to be six years later and Floyd had, unsurprisingly, not managed to keep his unspent.) To get between the station and Uncle Mortimer's farm, they had had to swim their horses across a river.

Leonidas wanted to see the area spoken of so highly by uncle Charley, so after returning to Houston they took the train on to Waco - the end of the line - and hired two wagons to take themselves and their household goods to Peoria in Hill County, where Uncle Charley had written from. But when they arrived, they learned he had left Peoria for the "open" country to the west.

Sarah wanted to investigate Hillsboro as a place to settle, but Leonidas determined that they would follow uncle Charley, against her wishes. So they hired a man with a covered wagon and team to drive them the rest of the way, which turned out to be three or four days' travel. They camped at night, and though it was March, it was warm enough until the last night, when they were camped at Bear Creek, about four miles beyond the village of Hamilton. A north wind set in then and it got quite cold. The next day some of them got out of the wagon and walked to stay warmer; they were crossing open prairie, so there was no shelter from the strong cold wind, and when they finally saw a cabin with smoke coming out of its chimney, they asked if they could come in and warm up.

The owner, Tom Patterson, and his family were very friendly, and when Tom heard where they were headed, he strongly advised Leonidas to leave his wife and the younger children in the cabin and head on with only the older two boys, Clarence and Floyd, the last twelve miles to where Charley was, because he had only tents and an unfinished log cabin for accommodation and it would be unsuitable for the little ones until the weather got warmer. This was done, and Leonidas and the two boys were away for two weeks; the Pattersons were very hospitable, and refused to take any payment, but later Leonidas was able to give them medical care and return the favour by refusing to be paid for it.

After a fortnight the weather must have gotten warmer, because Leonidas returned and brought the rest of the family to where uncle Charley was. Uncle Charley did have his log cabin largely erected, but the chinks in the walls weren't plugged yet, there were no doors and windows, and only a dirt floor. The children slept outside, with a wagon covering over them, but one night it blew away in a strong wind.

For about a month they had no flour, but ate cornbread as the staple with their meals instead. Eventually Leonidas and Charley made a trip to Comanche for flour, and Sarah made biscuits - Floyd remembered Charley eating 14 of them!

About a month after the family's arrival in Texas, a letter came informing them that Floyd's maternal grandfather, who had waved them off at the station, had died.

Leonidas actually began building a log cabin near Charley's, without consulting his wife; Floyd laconically says in one of his memoirs "it became apparent that this would never do" without explanation, and after a month or two with Charley, the family returned in May 1875 to Hamilton, Texas, where there were more people and Leonidas could practice medicine. Floyd adds "This greatly enraged Uncle C., and I have rarely in my life heard such a blast of vituperation heaped upon any head as Uncle C called down upon Father the morning that we left".

In Hamilton, they lived in a rented three-room log cabin at first - the only place available to rent - till a stone house was built for them on two acres of land. The plot had first to be cleared of closely grown brush and trees, and Clarence and Floyd spent many days there helping clear space first for the house and yard, and later for a garden.

There was no courthouse or jail in Hamilton yet, no church building yet in the entire county, and the two or three schoolhouses that had been built were one-room log cabins. Schooling was only available for three or four months of the year, and it seems Floyd did not attend school at all before 1884.

Not long after they arrived in Hamilton, a schoolmaster arrived also, named Mr. C.M. Boynton. He arranged for a proper schoolhouse to be built, with lumber brought in from Waco. All the men in the community helped build it in a single day, and a picnic dinner was served to them from a wagon. A few were injured when some scaffolding fell down, but not badly.

Aunt Shattie took work as a schoolteacher whenever possible, but it was poorly paid - under $25 a month usually - and she lived with Floyd's family when unemployed, and taught him and his siblings. When there were enough children in Hamilton, she worked for Mr Boynton. School terms were somewhat erratic - they continued as long as the appropriation^[1] lasted, and then if the teacher wasn't ready to stop they took up a subscription^[2] and carried on longer on the proceeds. Shattie stayed in Texas five or six years.

The stone house in Hamilton was some distance from the nearest source of water, and Clarence and Floyd had the job of fetching enough water for all the household's needs in buckets, from a spring or from someone else's well. They also had to keep the household in firewood for cooking and heating, and looked after the family's dairy cows, milking them and bringing them home and locking them in each evening. Their mother made everyone's clothes, knitted their socks, and cut their hair. Most people in Texas cooked on open fireplaces, but Leonidas and Sarah bought a wood-burning kitchen stove called the "Charter Oak", made in St Louis, which interested their neighbours.

Perhaps Leonidas still thought country life was better for children; and according to Floyd, his father always wanted to have a farm. So in September 1877 the family moved to a 160-acre place 21 miles from Hamilton, the only painted house within ten miles. Leonidas continued to practice medicine, and they didn't try to grow much on their extensive property, usually only what they could consume themselves, and two years out of the five were very dry, causing crops to wither and die. But one year he did produce a surplus of corn, which he sold for about $100. The family kept free-range hogs, which fed largely on the acorns of the local shin oaks. A little while before slaughter time they would be rounded up, and fattened on corn. Some of the neighbours butchered cattle, and when they slaughtered one, the family could buy some of the surplus beef to eat immediately, and some to smoke.

As it was a rural area, the patients were thinly spread, and Leonidas travelled up to fifteen miles on horseback to visit them. But he charged $1 for each mile he went, so a fifteen-mile trip would earn him $30. He then supplied any medicines needed, which he carried with him. Money was scarce for many people, so he was often not paid, or was paid in crops or livestock instead of cash. So with their large family, Leonidas and Sarah were often short of money. Uncle Mortimer, who had no family and was fond of Leonidas, and owned two large cotton plantations, would occasionally give him $1000. Since there was no bank in Hamilton, this money had to be hidden in various places around the house, and one time when Leonidas thought the most recent gift had all been spent, Sarah found a substantial amount of cash hidden in the rafters of the front porch.

In his memoirs Floyd tells the story of a Mr Couts, in the early 1870s, who drove his cattle to the west coast, sold them for $50,000, paid off his cowboys, and started quickly back hoping not to be ambushed with his earnings. He stopped in New Orleans on the way back, and learned of the existence of things called banks, and when he arrived back opened his own bank.

Floyd was only ten years old when they moved to the country, but as the two eldest boys, he and Clarence had a busy schedule of chores. They would get up early, make a fire in the kitchen stove, fill the teakettle with water, grind coffee and put it in a coffee pot on the stove filled with water. Coffee was widely available, but as dried green beans, which kept well, so households roasted it freshly themselves. Floyd and Clarence then had to carry out the ashes, and milk the cows (between 5 and 13 in number). Each cow had a calf, which was tied away from its mother while she was milked.

Floyd and Clarence's next job was to see to the day's wood and water supply. Then they would eat breakfast, pack a picnic lunch and drinking water for themselves, and head with their axes to the low, brush-covered mountainsides nearby. Land their father wanted to grow crops on needed to be fenced, and the fence had to be made of wooden rails and poles. So they spent many hours cutting down trees large enough to make a fencepole or two, and the occasional one big enough to be split into 4-8 rails. They would drag the cut wood out and pile it up somewhere the wagon could be got to.

In the evening, they would return home, and do similar chores to the morning ones - the cows had to be milked again, and wood and water gotten in. It was tiring, but Floyd didn't think the expectations of him were unreasonable. Once enough land was fenced, the time chopping wood on the mountainside was replaced with farming chores.

On Saturdays, Floyd would ride one of the farm horses, old Boon, the five miles to Center City to collect the mail and make small purchases for the family. Once a month, several of the family would take the farm wagon to Hamilton to buy supplies, stopping overnight with Mr and Mrs C.M. Boynton.

Leonidas did grow some wheat, of a variety called "Nicaragua", and it was unusually hard. So the nearby millers refused to grind it, but there were two mills that would, one at Williams Ranch in Brown County, and one called Carter's Mill on the Cowhouse Creek, about 12 miles from Hamilton. Every now and then Clarence or Floyd was sent on a 3-day trip with the farm wagon to one of these mills with ten or more bushels of wheat to be ground - one day to go, one day to wait while the wheat was ground, and one day to return home. There were three resulting products - the best flour, the "seconds" or inferior flour, and the bran. The miller took a share of the grain as payment.

In January 1880, Leonidas and his wife, who had been Methodists, joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). They and their children Floyd, Clarence, Eulalie and Donella were all baptized by immersion in the running waters of the North branch of Lampasas Creek in Hamilton County, Texas, as was Aunt Shattie. This was following a revival meeting held in the local schoolhouse (a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor) by an evangelist from Illinois named Robertson, but Eulalie had already put her membership in before the meeting, and probably the evangelist had been sent there by friends of the family who were Disciples in Hamilton, because it was known Leonidas and Sarah were ready to join. Along with others convinced at the meeting, they founded Antioch Christian Church, and would meet together under a bush arbor when the weather was suitable, elder Hiram Hawley would read the bible and they would discuss it and take Communion.

Also in 1880, Floyd's uncle John W. Coachman, who was visiting relatives in Florida and Georgia, wrote to his sister Sarah offering to take Floyd's brother Clarence "back to Rio de Janeiro with him and teach him the rudiments of the dental profession if she would fit him out with proper wardrobe and have him meet himself and members of his family in Camilla, Ga., when they reached that town on their return journey to Rio". So Floyd's brother Clarence was away for about two years, and not only that but his sister Donella travelled with Clarence to Camilla to take piano lessons from his cousin Helen Cullens (later Mrs E.G. Littlejohn), so she was also away from home for about two years.

Floyd's uncle Fleming J. Crews and family moved from their home in Smith County, Texas, to Hamilton County, Texas, in about 1880. The following year, when Floyd was 14 years old, Fleming returned to Smith County in his mule-drawn farm wagon and, accompanied on horseback by Floyd and another slightly older boy, gathered and drove Fleming's cattle (some 20-odd head) to his new home. The distance covered by the round trip was about 500 miles, and they camped out at night nearly all the time on the way. They were a month or more making the trip, with the cattle slowing them down.

In about 1881, Floyd's grandmother Coachman and his aunt Fannie paid them a long visit from Georgia. At some point during the family's time in this place in the country, uncle Mortimer also paid them a visit. Mortimer refused to spend $3 on hiring a buggy to take him from Hamilton to their house, thinking it excessive; he walked fourteen miles, and was then picked up by a farmer who brought him the last seven. When he left, he gave Leonidas another $1,000.

Floyd's mother didn't really like living in the country, and wanted them to move back into Hamilton. Finally in 1882 she managed to get Leonidas to promise that if he could get a good price for his cattle, they could do that. The price of cattle went up, and he did sell them at a good price. Not only that, but a man who was moving west with his family stopped overnight with them, and when he learned they were planning on moving back to town, he offered them $1000 for their 160 acres and house, which they accepted.

By this time, Floyd was fifteen, and considered old enough to be working. He got a place helping in the office of the Hamilton Herald; he wasn't paid a wage initially, but was lodged and fed in the home of its owner, Mr. C.M. Boynton. Once Floyd's parents moved back to their stone house in Hamilton, he moved in with them, and Mr. Boynton was persuaded to pay Floyd $10 a month. There was no limit on how many hours he might be asked to work, and he never worked less than ten hours a day; the paper issued an extra edition which meant they often had to work till midnight or later. Once that was out, they would head home for a late dinner, and Floyd would be handed a silver dollar and thanked.

Later Floyd was offered $15 a month to work for the Hamilton Times instead, and accepted; it was later increased to $25 a month. This ended in 1883 when Floyd got a temporary job for $25 a month helping out in the drugstore of Dr. George F. Perry; his drugstore job ended when Dr Perry's brother Ed returned from the school he'd been attending in Missouri and came back to work for his brother.

Floyd now had an opportunity to attend Ralph Edgar's school in Hamilton for four or five months from January 1884 - the first time he had been to school. One morning on the way to school he was joined by a group of other pupils who were talking excitedly about a lynching that had happened in the town the night before. Floyd remembered the man's name being Garrison, and related in his memoirs that the man had been a notorious horse-thief, the leader of a gang which had been terrorizing the area for some time. When the lynching party began attacking the jail, he thought it was his outlaws come to rescue him, and called to them "Come on my brave boys" and the like. They hung him from an oak tree just outside the town cemetery. Floyd doesn't mention W.B. Garrison's race, nor do the newspaper reports covering the incident.^[3]

When the school ended in May, Floyd went to work in a printing office in Gatesville, for his board and $12.50 a month. When he left his parents' home in Hamilton on May 24, 1884, he walked the distance because the 3-times-a-week mail hack^[4] was not running on account of the swollen Leon River being unfordable at Jonesboro, and the local livery stable wanted $8 (or $6 in one version of Floyd's memoirs) to take him. He figured that by walking he would save about two-thirds of his first month's pay. It was a grueling task, as he had to walk all day on the outer edges of the muddy road and go several miles out of the way to avoid a creek which had no bridge. His shoes ran down and rubbed an ugly sore on one of his ankles, which took months to clear up.

In Gatesville, Floyd boarded in the home of his employer, Dr. Joseph A Mudd, and Mrs. Mudd. Years later in Washington he ran into the Mudds again, and they were very pleased to see him again.

In about 1884, at the age of seventeen, Floyd tasted ice cream for the first time; there was no refrigeration, and in the south it was difficult to obtain and store ice, though it was collected on rivers and lakes in the north in the winter for this purpose.

1884 was a presidential election year, and the election campaigning in Gatesville was exciting for Floyd, who was used to living way out in the country, although he was not quite old enough to vote. After Grover Cleveland triumphed over James Blaine, the "Plumed Knight" of Maine, there was a big celebration in Gatesville with a torchlight procession, anvil shooting, fireworks, and soapbox oratory.

Floyd wanted to go home for Christmas, and again had difficulties with transport - this time the stage (mail hack) was fully booked several trips in advance (it could only take four passengers) and of course hiring a horse from the livery stable was still very expensive compared to his salary. So he walked the 32 miles from Gatesville to Hamilton, which took him all day. An icy North wind sprang up and his route was along an open plain, so it was quite unpleasant.

In April 1885, Floyd - almost eighteen - went to Waco, and spent four years working for newpapers there - first the Examiner, later the Evening Day. He joined the Typographical Union.

In April 1888, he sent in an application to work as a compositor in the Government Printing Office in Washington, but he didn't hear back from them, so he continued working for the papers.

In June 1889, he travelled about, and had brief jobs in Galveston, New Orleans (where he worked mostly for the Times-Democrat) and Nashville (where he worked as a "sub" on the Nashville Banner), ending up in Glasgow, Kentucky, where he attended the Glasgow Normal School for the entire school year of 1889-1890, the longest stretch of formal schooling he'd ever had. He valued the opportunity, and studied very hard. At the weekend he usually had a day's work in the Glasgow Times office and earned $2, which helped eke out the $200 he had saved from previous jobs. His board cost only around $1.50-$2 per week, and he could rent textbooks each term. In the summer of 1890, before leaving Glasgow, he visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky with a group of school friends.

After the school year ended, Floyd went to Nashville, and spent six weeks doing irregular part-time work in the office of the Nashville Evening Banner, but the work wasn't plentiful, so he travelled to Cincinatti, taking a boat on the Ohio River from Louisville to Cincinatti. There he worked for a few months in the office of the Cincinatti Times-Star. This came to an end in October 1890, when his brother-in-law George H. Boynton contacted him asking him to return to his parents - who were now in Dublin, Texas - as soon as possible, because Floyd's father and George had clubbed together to buy the Dublin Telephone, a weekly paper containing news and job adverts.

On the way back to Dublin he stopped in Glasgow Kentucky to say goodbye to his sweetheart, Miss Dell Reynolds Porter.

In Dublin, Floyd stayed with George and Donella Boynton, his sister and brother-in-law.

In April 1891, Floyd left Dublin and went to Galveston Texas, at the urging of his uncle Dr John W. Coachman, who thought it would be a great idea to start little coffee shops in American cities such as were popular in Brazil. However, he may have been ahead of the times - Floyd decided the idea was impractical, but stayed some months in Galveston, doing some work for an afternoon paper when possible. He went on to Fort Worth, where he again worked for an afternoon paper; but George Boynton persuaded him to go back to Dublin, and to buy his father's share of the Dublin Telephone on credit.

It wasn't long before George left Dublin himself for Llano, Texas, leaving Floyd in charge of the paper. His brother Percy took over as Floyd's business partner for a while, but Percy had to leave the area because the climate was thought to be contributing to his serious trouble with asthma, leaving Floyd as the sole owner and publisher of the newspaper.

Floyd was a staunch supporter of prohibiting the use of alcohol - he personally abstained all his life from the use of both alcohol and tobacco, thanks to his mother's teachings. So he presumably made his views on this clear in his editorials in the Dublin Telephone, and he certainly allowed the local branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) to have a column in his paper every week, written by Miss Rowe McKinnie. This sequence of events led to two significant consequences - he was beaten up by a local saloon owner who spotted him in the street, and he fell in love with Rowe McKinnie, who belonged to the same local church as him.

Around this time, Floyd discovered that instead of using benzine to clean the type of the printing press, he could use gasoline, which worked just as well and was much cheaper because it was a byproduct of coal oil, and there was no demand for it - yet!

Floyd and Rowe were married in the Christian Church in Dublin on 15 Feb 1893. They didn't have a honeymoon, but the bride's parents hosted a wedding dinner for many of their friends and the bride and groom. They lived with Rowe's parents for a few weeks, then moved into a little cottage in Dublin that they'd bought for $600. It had about four rooms, and a well in the yard for water, and they stayed there till their first child was born on 31 Mar 1894 - a boy, who they named Clarence McKinnie, but usually called Mac.

Then they moved to a larger house, rented cheaply (about $8 a month) from their brother-in-law Augustus Hartgrove. However, by the time their eldest daughter Cora was born on 15 Sep 1896 in Dublin, they were once again living with Rowe's parents.

When Cora was a month old, Floyd took little Mac, who was two and a half, to the Texas State Fair in Dallas.

In the summer of 1897 Floyd and Rowe and family moved to Waco, but Floyd found it, like Dublin, "dull and jobless". So they moved again after about 13 months, this time to Houston, Texas. There were more jobs there and they were better-paid; they settled in Brunner, a suburb of Houston, and their third child, Floyd, was born there on 20 Jan 1899. The very same day, Floyd received the completely unexpected notice that his application to work in the Government Printing Office in Washington, made almost eleven years earlier, had been successful!

Things were going well in Houston and Floyd almost turned the Washington job down, but eleven relatives all urged him to accept it and none disagreed, so he told them he would accept if it could wait till his wife and newborn son were fit to travel. This wasn't a problem. So the family left Houston on 28 Feb 1899. Their train was an hour late into New Orleans and they missed their connection, and had to wait a day and a night to catch another, so they weren't in Washington till the morning of 3 Mar 1899.

Floyd worked as a compositor in the Government Printing Office in Washington. After one night in a hotel, Floyd looked for more affordable lodgings, with the assistance of an old friend from Waco, Colonel C. J. C. Puckette. With some difficulty (because many landlords didn't like children) they found a room in a boarding house at 615 New Jersey Avenue run by Jessie Bush^[5], and arranged for meals to be provided by the woman next door. This was a temporary arrangement, only intended to last until their household goods arrived. When that happened, they moved to a proper home: 1208 Florida Avenue North East.

There was an employee of the Government Printing Office named Morgan, called "Windy" Morgan by his associates. He once told Floyd that he had been part of the mob that lynched Mr. Garrison. It's difficult to work out from Floyd's memoirs exactly what his personal views were on race, lynching in general, or the lynching in Hamilton, because he tended to stick to facts or what people said. He related the lynching incident as though Garrison's guilt was certain, although there had been no trial to find him guilty. So that shows some sort of bias, but not necessarily racial since Garrison may have been white. A bit later in the same memoir where he mentioned the lynching, he stated that there had never been black people in Hamilton County or in Comanche County, and that there was said to be an unwritten law in Comanche County that black people would not be tolerated there, but that he had never heard that said of Hamilton County.

In the summer of 1900, Floyd's brother-in-law Augustus Hartgrove and his wife with their children (little Ellen and baby McK) paid a visit.

On 1 June 1901, Floyd was transferred to the Library of Congress branch of the Printing Office, where he worked in an office in the basement for 29 more years. Cora later remembered walking him home from the beautiful building after his work ended at 5 P.M. Floyd's sister Simmie arrived on an extended visit the same day

A month later, they moved to 1384 East Street, North East. There was a row of half-a-dozen newly-built houses there, and their friend Mr H. F. Harmon had arranged for all these houses to be let to himself and a group of his friends, most of whom belonged to Ninth Street Christian Church. The rent was $16.50 a month.

Floyd used to take over all responsibility for the children (aside from nursing any babies) when he got home from work, while Rowe finished getting dinner ready. The family paid someone to do their laundry, and on one occasion it hadn't been returned by Saturday night when they needed it to wear to church and Sunday School on Sunday; Floyd went to the person's house, found the laundry still soaking in her tub, took it out and lugged it home, and laboured till the wee hours of the morning himself to get it clean and dry, and the family did make it to church.

Rowe had attended a conservatory before her marriage, and gave private piano lessons to children for many years; Cora was the only one of her own children who was willing to take piano lessons from her.

Floyd and Rowe's son Maurice Augustus was born on 8 Aug 1901. Simmie's visit to Floyd and Rowe ended in March 1902.

Floyd used to sing the children to sleep, and he used to sing "I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves even me." But one night Floyd wasn't there, so someone else was putting Maurice to bed, and they knew that Floyd sang that song, so they started singing, "I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves..." and Maury, who was supposed to be asleep, roused up and said "NO, Jesus loves even PAPA!" So after that, everyone but Floyd sang "I am so glad that Jesus loves Papa, Jesus loves Papa, Jesus loves Papa, I am so glad that Jesus loves Papa, Jesus loves even Papa".

In the fall of 1904, linotype and other typesetting machines were installed at Floyd's workplace, and his job changed from being a compositor and setting the type manually to being a linotype operator and proofreader.

In May 1905, at their friend Mr Harmon's instigation the family moved to "the Colony", a little rural settlement in the woods near the Tuxedo, Maryland train station, and Floyd commuted five miles in to Washington by train for work each day. A group of about eight families, most of whom belonged to the large Ninth Street Christian Church in Washington, had decided to have houses built for them all together in a nice rural location. They also clubbed together and built a small Christian Church there, which was at first called Magruder Christian Church and later Tuxedo Christian Church. There was a little one-room schoolhouse less than a mile away where the children could go for elementary education, but for high school they had to go in to Washington.

Floyd and Rowe's daughter Sybil was born on 1 Aug 1905; their last child, Mildred, was born on 4 Nov 1907.

Floyd's mother and Rowe's mother both visited the family in the summer of 1907, and Floyd's sister Lizzie accompanied their mother. Floyd and Floyd junior (who was eight) accompanied Lizzie and her mother as far as Norfolk, Virginia when they set off for home again, and spent a day at the Jamestown exposition in Norfolk. The trip from Washington to Norfolk was by steamer on the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay.

With six children to look after, piano lessons to give and a house to run, Rowe did get pretty tired sometimes, and one time she had a babysitter trying to look after the children so she could get some rest upstairs. Suddenly the sitter realized they didn't know where Sybil was, so they looked all over and they called "Sybil where are you?" and a little voice came from upstairs and said "I'm up here 'musin' Mama!"

Mac graduated from Eastern High School, Washington in 1910.

In 1912 the family had a visit from Stella.

Cora graduated from Central High School in 1913.

Floyd (junior) graduated from Business High in 1915.

In about 1915? the family sold the Tuxedo house and moved back into Washington.

On the night of February 15, 1918, Floyd and Rowe's children planned as a complete surprise to them a celebration of their Silver (25th) Wedding Anniversary. At the appropriate time, Mac lured his parents from home on the pretext of taking them to a show somewhere downtown. On some pretext, he took them into the residence of a friend a few blocks from their home and killed some time there; then he suddenly "remembered" that he did not have with him the tickets and rushed them back to their home, supposedly to pick up the tickets. Their first surprise was a roomful of guests waiting to congratulate them, then their six children came down the stairs in the order of their birth and age, each bringing a very substantial dining chair. Little Mildred was only 10 years old and small for her age, and her chair looked too large a load for her, but she managed it all right.

Maury graduated from Eastern High School in 1919.

Sybil graduated from Eastern High School in 1922.

Mildred graduated from Eastern High School in 1925.

Floyd was unable to help his children get an education beyond graduation from a District of Columbia high school, which each of them attained with honor; but each child in turn continued by his or her own initiative and effort to the attainment of a college or university degree, and he was very proud of them all. His three sons all became patent attorneys.

On 31 Jul 1930 Floyd retired with a Civil Retirement Pension. However, he still continued to work intermittently as a proofreader for another ten years in the downtown office of Maxwell Jones at 908 12th Street North West, which allowed him to qualify also for a small pension from Social Security. Having been a member of the International Typographical Union for much of his life, he also received a pension from it.

In 1931 Floyd "was persuaded" (he didn't say by who) to buy the only car he ever owned, a Plymouth sedan. After several driving lessons, he got his licence. On their first long trip in the car, Sybil was the driver. She took her parents to Cape May, New Jersey, where she was going for a beach holiday. Floyd drove himself and Rowe back home, while Sybil stayed for her holiday.

In 1933 Floyd and Rowe paid a visit to many of their relatives in Georgia and Texas, and Floyd tried to find little Elma's grave, but with no success. A local woman had helped them find the cemetery, and kept warning them to look out for rattlesnakes, so their search was not as thorough as it might have been. They went on to Oklahoma, Colorado Springs, and to Yellowstone National Park and back via Chicago during the "Century of Progress" there, and then Buffalo New York. In Buffalo, they received a telegram with the sad news that Ernest Harmon had died, and cut their trip short so they could be in Washington for his funeral. But they had sub-let their apartment for four months and couldn't move back in yet, so they went on to Philadelphia and New York after the funeral.

In 1937 the first Crews family reunion was held, bringing Floyd and Rowe's children and grandchildren all together for a delightful time of festivities, contests and games. One was held each year afterwards for many years, except for 1939 (when Floyd was ill following an attack of angina pectoris around the end of May), and the three years 1943-1945 (due to World War II). Nearly all of the reunions were on Lake Wallenpaupack (most or all at Silver Birches, some five miles south of the small city of Hawley, Pennsylvania). The first two were held at Wyalusing Rocks, Pennsylvania. The reunion of 1942 was held at a lake in northern New Jersey (possibly Lake Hopatcong), because it was more accessible by train and gasoline was being rationed.

Some time after retiring from Government service, Floyd took over a little family paper from one of his grandsons, and enlarged its sphere of circulation until he was mailing out as many as 90 copies monthly. He changed the name to "Our Family News" and eventually bought a proper Mimeograph machine and was getting out a monthly journal of 50 or more pages of "note paper size"^[6], all carefully stencilled so that the right-hand margin would run smooth and not ragged. Floyd's nephew Lon Boynton used to print attractive covers to bind the Family News in.

In 1938, Floyd and Rowe moved to a new-built house - 2104 North Brandywine Street, Arlington, Virginia.

In about 1940, Floyd's eyesight was getting worse and Maxwell Jones failed, so he gave up paid work altogether.

On 14 Feb 1943, Floyd and Rowe's children organized a big party at the New Colonial Hotel to celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary. Although the weather was inclement - Floyd described it as about the worst afternoon of the winter - several hundred people made it there.

Floyd had to give the Family News up when his eyesight failed him in late February 1944, but kept, bound in book form, a near-complete issue of the Family News. His right eye had been blind for perhaps a couple of years before this, but he was now completely blind.

On 19 Jan 1946, Floyd and Rowe moved back to an apartment in Washington, at 1514 17th Street North West.

On around July 30, 1946, Floyd went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where a surgeon cut out a portion of the cornea of his right eye and replaced it with a piece of similar size which had been donated by someone. He was kept in the hospital for 15 days with his eyes tightly bandaged, and when he was released he could see pretty well with the eye that had been operated upon and felt very happy about it all, but in a month the eye had become clouded as badly as ever, and Floyd was again completely blind.

Although he was blind, Floyd's memory remained sharp and detailed in his old age. His granddaughters Marie and Ruth Rittenhouse both passed on stories about him talking about the sinking of the Titanic, years after it happened, and mentioning the band playing "Abide with Me" as the ship went down. Marie later tried to verify this, but was unable to until the film Titanic was made.

Floyd remained a faithful member of the Christian Church all his life, joining the local church as soon as possible every time he moved, even when he only stayed a few months. He was an elder in Fifteenth Street Christian Church in Washington for some years, and also their church clerk, and printed their church bulletin on a small printing press in the basement of his home at 316 17th Street South East.

Floyd died on 31 Aug 1958 in Fairfax, Virginia. Rowe outlived him, dying on 8 Aug 1962 at a nursing home in Annandale, Virginia.

Research Notes

Steam Mill was in Decatur County at the time Floyd was born, but later became part of Seminole County when it was created.

Sources

1. ↑ The editor of this biography is uncertain of the meaning of the term "appropriation", which is taken directly from Floyd's memoirs. Probably it was an allocation of funds for the purpose of providing education, but who allocated it is unknown to the editor.
2. ↑ Asked people to give money so the school term could carry on longer. Whether only parents were asked, or the wider community, and whether children whose parents didn't give money could continue at school, is unclear to the editor.
3. ↑ Lynching in Texas Staff, “Lynching of W. B. Garrison,” Lynching In Texas, accessed April 30, 2021, https://lynchingintexas.org/items/show/240. Note: there are two newspaper clips attached to the story - the Maryland News journalist appears to have used the From Gatesville story as the source of his information but misunderstood the location of the incident.
4. ↑ horse-drawn vehicle carrying letters and parcels for delivery
5. ↑ Their landlady was referred to in one version of Floyd's memoirs as Mrs Bush, and in another as Miss Jessie; it's therefore possible the editor has conflated two landladies here.
6. ↑ 8½ x 5½ inches

• Family records.

• Floyd's memoir Some Random Recollections of an Octogenarian

• Floyd's memoir Some Changes That Have Occurred During My Life

• Floyd's memoir Some Random Recollections and Early Impressions of Floyd C. Crews

• Floyd's memoir Additional Early Recollections of Floyd C Crews

• Floyd's memoir Recollections of Floyd C Crews - Draft

• Floyd's memoir Floyd C Crews - Autobiography for Cora

• Marriage "Texas, County Marriage Index, 1837-1977," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QK8Y-SGYR : 10 December 2017), Floyd Crews and Rowe Mckinnie, 15 Feb 1893; citing Erath, Texas, United States, county courthouses, Texas; FHL microfilm 1,026,025.

• Marriage "Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1965," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV14-K7K6 : 10 December 2017), Floyd C Crews and Rowe Mckinnie, 15 Feb 1893; citing Marriage, citing Erath, Texas, United States, Texas State Library, Archives Division, and various Texas county clerks; FHL microfilm 1,026,025.

• "United States Census, 1900," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MMXY-RH4 : accessed 22 November 2019), Rowe M Crews in household of Floyd C Crews, Washington city, Washington, District of Columbia, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 7, sheet 3A, family 47, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,240,158.

• "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M2NM-68P : accessed 22 November 2019), Rowe M Crews in household of Floyd C Crews, Kent, Prince George's, Maryland, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 74, sheet 7B, family 141, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 567; FHL microfilm 1,374,580.

• "United States Census, 1920," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MNLG-RG7 : accessed 22 November 2019), Rowe M Crews in household of Lloyd C Crews, Washington, Washington, District of Columbia, United States; citing ED 231, sheet 15A, line 38, family 329, NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), roll 208; FHL microfilm 1,820,208.

• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XMKT-7MD : accessed 22 November 2019), Rose Crews in household of Floyd O Crews, Washington, Washington, District of Columbia, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 142, sheet 12A, line 16, family 653, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 296; FHL microfilm 2,340,031.

• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VRY7-B4X : 26 July 2019), Rowe M Crews in household of Floyd C Crews, Arlington County, Arlington, Virginia, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 7-6, sheet 6A, line 22, family 266, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 4245.

See also:

• FamilySearch tree entry https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KLYD-GPF