Floyd-Pate Collection

Collection

Identifier: A-0086

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Essays by Middleton B. Floyd concerning his ancestors, Thomas Beckworth Floyd, Dolphin Floyd, John W. Floyd and Joseph Boling Pate. One essay contains extracts from Pate's letters to his mother written from Vicksburg, Mississippi; Port Caddo, Marshall, Nacogdoches and Harrison County, Texas; and Caddo Parish, Louisiana describing his life as a traveling salesman.

Dates

Creation: 1855-1858

Creator

Floyd, Middleton B. (Person)
Pate, Joseph Boling (Person)

Language of Materials

The collection is in English.

Conditions Governing Access

Open for research.

Biographical / Historical

The two families in this collection originally hail from Georgia, but they are tied together and to the history of Texas in the nineteenth century. The Floyds place in Texas history is thanks to Dolphin Ward Floyd, who was born in 1804 to Penuel and Sarah Beckwith Floyd in North Carolina. Dolphin Floyd left North Carolina in 1825 and eventually settled in Gonzales, where he made his living as a farmer. On April 26, 1832, he married Ester Berry House. Floyd joined the relief force from Gonzales and rode to the besieged Alamo, where he arrived on March 1, 1836, and died 4 days later. This news did not reach his family in North Carolina until 1855.

The Pate family paints a good picture of the “Cotton Region” in the years before the Civil War. Joseph Boling Pate was born in Harris County, Georgia in 1828. He was a cotton gin salesman and traveled from Georgia to Louisiana to Texas. Along the way, Pate wrote letters back home to his mother about what he saw. During his travels Joseph met Dolphin Floyd’s brother John in 1857 and sold him a cotton gin. The two families became united 25 years later when Dolphin and John’s brother Thomas Coleman Floyd married Joseph Pate’s daughter Martha Jane Pate.

Written by History graduate student Wil Carter, Summer 2019. Paraphrased from the collection and the Texas State Historical Association website.