Brigadier-General John Floyd (October 3, 1769 – June 24, 1839) was an American politician, planter and military officer who served in the 1st Brigade of the Georgia Militia during the War of 1812.

[3] Charles Floyd spent fourteen years at sea, mainly on vessels in the Triangular trade, sailing to ports in Europe, Africa and elsewhere.

[4] These men who favored independence raised a volunteer militia, the St. Helena Guards, whose hats bore a silver crescent with their motto, "Liberty or Death".

[10] In any event, after her mother's death, Isabella was raised, educated and groomed for society by Mrs. Waight, her father's cousin, in Beaufort, South Carolina.

His brother Samuel (1814–1878) did not fight for the Confederacy, nor did he ever formally marry, but sold the remains of Bellevue to a former slave, and lived in St. Marys with a mulatto women, with whom he had six children before he was buried in an unmarked grave in a town cemetery.

[12][13][17] Family lore claims that Floyd built Bellevue Plantation shaped as an anchor to symbolize their fortunes' link to the sea.

[13][17] A blueprint of Bellevue, drawn by Hazlehurst Ross Noyes, a descendant of John Floyd, showed the three-level plantation house as a substantial dwelling.

[9][13] The ground floor or basement was made of tabby with walls over eight feet high and two feet thick; contained two huge fireplaces in which immense cauldrons hung on cranes, supplying hot water to the upper floor bathrooms; household storage areas; a kitchen area for last minute food preparation; the informal dining room and the curved billiard room.

[13] A mile-long avenue of moss-draped live oaks and cedar trees connected the two plantations, with flowering bulbs and myrtles dotted beneath.

[13][17] During the nineteenth-century plantation era, Floyd's Neck encompassed swamps, hammocks, pine barrens, forests thick with oaks, gum, cypress, as well as cleared agricultural fields.

[13] These roads led not only to other plantations but westward (inland) to the county seat, Jeffersonton (abandoned after a move back to St. Mary's in 1872), and eastward to Cabin Bluff on the Cumberland River.

[16] Depending on the tide and the wind, it took the Floyds four to six hours to sail in their privately owned boats from the Cabin Bluff dock to St.

Camden County, Georgia tax returns in 1809 show the combined lands owned by Charles and John Floyd as 5,825 acres.

[12] On August 24, 1837, John Floyd sold six acres on the north end of Little Cumberland to the United States Government for a lighthouse to be erected on St. Andrews Sound: "John Floyd... hath granted, bargained, sold unto the United States of America Six acres of Land on the Island of Little Cumberland and at the north part of the same and selected as a site for the contemplated Light House to Saint Andrews inlet as the Plat thereof".

[12] John Floyd, a civil engineer as well as a master boat builder, used his workers and his expertise to construct schooners and merchant vessels for shipping and trade.

Former Georgia governor and General George Mathews), as a special agent during the Patriot War, asked Floyd to hold his militia ready to help overthrow the Spanish government in East Florida.

[21] The Creek Indians, who allied themselves with the British forces, began attacks on white settlements in eastern and central Alabama and western Georgia.

Indians from the Upper Creek Towns, known as Red Sticks, who resented the encroachment onto their lands, sought aggressively to reduce influences upon their tribal unions and wished to return their society to a traditional way of life in culture and religion.

[22] In September 1813, in response to the threats and to quell the Red Stick rebellion, General John Floyd was ordered to command Federal troops who were assembled at Camp Hope on the Ocmulgee River.

Indian men, women and children were shot, stabbed by bayonets, bombarded with volleys of fire, and burned to death in their own houses.

[22] In early January 1814, General Floyd, having replenished rations, firearms and artillery, marched with 1500 men via the Federal Road deep into Creek territory.

[22] If friendly Lower Creek Indians (who had allied themselves with the white state militias) had not warned them, and the veteran companies had not acted quickly, General Floyd might have lost this brutal battle.

His son Charles Rinaldo Floyd survived his father by six years and would be buried wrapped in a U.S. flag at Fairview Plantation as he wished (as discussed herein).

[12][17] Enclosed by a low rectangular brick wall, secured by a small wrought iron entry gate, nine visible gravestones and over fifteen unmarked graves lie in seclusion under a thick canopy of moss-draped trees.

[3] He bequeathed his lands, including Bellevue Plantation, a few slaves, out buildings, tenements, appurtenances, all physical property, including the townhouses owned in St. Marys, cash and bonds, to his wife, Isabella Maria Floyd, with the proviso that nothing was to be sold during her lifetime unless it was for payment of debts, and after her death, all property would revert into the Estate.

[3] General Floyd directed bequests to his heirs, all of his living children, also with a proviso that should a difference of opinion arise, contrary to his wishes or intentions, the disagreeing parties shall call in an umpire whose final decision would be binding.

Various raiding parties of the 54th Massachusetts sent ashore from a blockading Union vessel anchored in St. Andrew Sound destroyed both Fairfield and Bellevue, including the outbuildings.

[9][12][13][16][17] Only tabby concrete ruins remain of Bellevue, which his brother Samuel Floyd sold to a former slave after the American Civil War.

The end of the plantation economy meant the decline of several towns prosperous in Floyd's lifetime, including Jeffersonton (removed as county seat circa 1870 as St. Marys had the railroad connection) and Cabin Bluff.

In the 1920s, thousands of acres near the Cumberland River and Cabin Bluff became hunting lodge which hosted celebrity hunters from across the world, including President Calvin Coolidge, and which has recently been renovated and opened to the public.