JOSH FLOYD

 The following bio was taken from page 201 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

 Transcribed by Shirley Koym

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

 To save me, I cannot remember, but it must have been around the middle of November 1916, that my daddy, Uncle Josh Floyd, as everyone affectionately called him, loaded everything he owned along with his wife, five children, a few geese, some chickens, and a white dog name Topsy into a wagon pulled by two mules.  We left our place of abode in San Augustine, Texas and headed north to a place to settle and to call our own.

 At night we would camp close to a stream of water, loose the geese, water the mules, milk the cow, cook the food on an open fire, and bed down under the stars for the night.  Each morning we had to catch the geese, put them in a coop on the back of the wagon, harness the mules and start out another long day of slow travel.

 On the second or third night, just before time to bed down, a car came by, hit our dog Topsy, broke his legs or back, I’m not sure which.  It broke my three little brothers’ hearts, because our daddy went ahead and shot the dog.

 We spent the third night of our journey in Nacogdoches close to the railroad stockyards, because the train coming through next morning would wake this little four year-old girl a long time before I wanted to get up.

Each morning my three brothers, Roy, Emmitt and John, had many chores to do before we’d head out for another day of travel.  Clarence was too little, as he was only two years old.  We’d ride the wagon until we tired to that, then get off to walk again.  Over the years I have often wondered how many times we changed from the wagon to walking again.  We probably fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

On the fourth day, we arrived at Henderson and made camp out under the willows across from Willow Lake, our last night of travel. 

Still we had another ten or twelve miles to go before we could say we had reached home.  Home was a one-hundred-year-old cabin and the rockiest one hundred acres in deep East Texas, that had been owned by the elder Dr. Jesse Ross.  Part of the house had been built just before the Civil War, Dr. Ross told us.

At this home three more children were born – Marvin L., Katherine and Jesse David.  We spent seventeen wonderful childhood years on that rocky old farm, and even now after all these years I can close my eyes and hear the ring of the hoes as we chopped cotton and hoed corn or peanuts. 

Our daddy was one of the best cotton growers in Rusk County.  One year, 1925 or 1926, we raised and picked twenty-seven bales of cotton.

In 1923, Papa had the Ford people in Henderson order our very first car.  That was a happy family when that car drove into the yard.

 My mom and I would pick the geese every six to eight weeks and use the feathers to make mattresses for each bed in the house.  Mummm, what a wonderful feeling to bury down into those warm feather beds. 

 In those days farming was a way of life.  Our parents reared eight children to adulthood.  Now all are married with families of their own.  Growing up in the country taught us not to be afraid of work and how to shoulder responsibilities.

 Submitted by Mrs. Clarence Waller (Katie Floyd)