General John Floyd was the son of Charles Floyd of South Carolina. He served as a member of a volunteer militia from Beaufort during the final year of the American Revolution. Following the war Floyd trained as a carpenter and shipwright. In 1793, he married Isabella Maria Hazzard.

Floyd would become a successful planter of cotton and indigo with plantations at Fairfield and Bellevue near Woodbine, Georgia. When the young nation again needed military leaders, Floyd was named Brigadier General and placed in command of eight counties of the Georgia Militia. In the War of 1812, Georgia’s 1st Brigade, also known as “Floyd’s Brigade,” was involved in many battles with the Creek Indians. While fighting the Creek at Autossee, Floyd received a musket ball to the knee, where it remained the rest of his life.

Floyd was elected to three terms in the state legislature, serving until 1826 when he decided to run for the United States Congress. In 1832, when Floyd was sixty-three years old, the State of Georgia created Floyd County out of land that had previously been part of Cherokee County. It was one of few Georgia counties named for someone who was still living.

General John Floyd died in 1839 and is buried at Fairfield Plantation in Camden County, Georgia.

Mary Faith Wilson

Mary Faith Wilson was born in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest daughter of Lawrence Otis and Mary Faith McAdoo. She was a graduate of the Putney School in Vermont and the University of Chicago. She was one of the heirs to the Otis Elevator fortune, and a freelance news writer in Washington, D.C. for many years, as well as a consultant on national public affairs to various organizations.

Mary Faith was deeply interested in restoration and preservation, particularly in the historic Georgetown district of Washington, D.C., where she lived. Her work in preservation soon spurred an interest in American history and that of her ancestral families, the McAdoo, Davis, and Brooks families of East Tennessee; the Hazzard family of South Carolina and Georgia; the Otis family of New England; and the Floyd family of Georgia.

She soon began gathering materials including artwork about individual family members and their lives in America. She never married and died in Washington, D.C. on November 21, 1996. She is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. The fund was established in 1997 by a bequest from Mary Faith Wilson in honor of her ancestor, General John Floyd of Camden County, Georgia.