Miss Olivia Floyd

As we have learned previously, Port Tobacco was a hotbed of activity during the Civil War. One can only imagine how certain people must have been constantly watching over their shoulders as they plotted and schemed to further their cause. We have discussed George Atzerodt and Rose Greenhow. These two found themselves under suspicion and out right accused of conspiracy and espionage.

Miss Olivia Floyd was another unlikely Confederate spy. She was an heir to the mansion of Rose Hill and was living there during the War. Her brother was a Confederate soldier who was killed in 1863. Additionally, one account states that she had broken her back as a child and was crippled for the rest of her life.

She was already a smuggler of messages headed south and would conceal them in a wooden boat model made by her brother. In the winter of 1864, a group of Confederate soldiers raided St. Alban’s, Vermont and escaped to Canada with their horses, money, and lives. They were then arrested by Canadian authorities and Union officials sought their extradition for trial on charges of being spies. Their lives depended on proving that they were commissioned officers of the Confederate Army acting on official orders. A message started south requesting the commissions of the men. It passed from Southern sympathizers, from Canada to Maryland, and eventually to Miss Floyd.

Miss Floyd had successfully concealed the important note in a pair of brass andirons in her parlor which were missed by Union soldiers. One had even propped his foot up on the very same andiron by the fire. After they had left, she put the note in her hair and carried it to the signal station at Popes Creek where it had been sent to Richmond. The result was the soldiers on trial in Canada received copies of their commissions in time to save them.
Another interesting note about Olivia Floyd is that she claims to have seen the spirit of The Blue Dog (remember last week’s blog?). She died December 8, 1905 and is buried at St. Ignatius Church at Chapel Point.

In loving remembrance

Of

ANNIE OLIVIA FLOYD

Daughter of the Late

DAVID L. & SARAH SEMMES FLOYD

July 2, 1826

Dec 8, 1905

Digging in the Library

Library research often feels like fieldwork. I have a general sense of what I am looking for but never know what I will find. This break in fieldwork has allowed me to return to my home institution, Binghamton University, to partake in some much needed library time.

So far I have found an interesting mix of references on Port Tobacco. The oldest is Isaac Weld's 1807 book detailing his North American travels from 1795 to 1797. Weld provides a general description of the town:

"Port Tobacco contains about eighty houses; most of which are of wood, and very poor. There is a large English episcopalian church on the border of the town, built of stone, which formerly was an ornament to the place, but is now entirely out of repair; the windows are all broken, and the road is carried through the church-yard, over the graves, the paling that surrounded it having been torn down." (137-138)

A similar traveler's account is Robert Sutcliff's 1812 book covering his journey of 1804 to 1806.

"On the 21st of the 9th Month, 1804, I left Alexandria, crossed the Potowmack [sic], and went down to Port-Tobacco. In my way I passed through Piscattaway, where I dines, and where, amongst other things, broiled squirrels were served up at table. In travelling along this day, I observed that the population of this part of the country consisted chiefly of black people; and, in many parts of the road, I noticed it was mostly tracked with bare feet, some of which appeared to be immoderately large, arising, probably, from their almost constant practice of going barefoot." (47)

Since Port Tobacco was a backdrop for the events surrounding the Lincoln assassination, there are also several authors that appear to have projected their anger onto the town as a whole. George Alfred Townsend's 1865 book on John Wilkes Booth provides the following description of Port Tobacco:

"If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it is Port Tobacco. From this town, by a sinuous creek, there is flat-boat navigation to the Potomac, and across that river to Mattox Creek. Before the war, Port Tobacco was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and a haunt of negro trades. It passed very naturally into a rebel post for blockade-runners and a rebel post-office general. Gambling, corner-fighting, and shooting matches were its lyceum education. Violence and ignorance had every suffrage in the town. Its people were smugglers, to all intets, and there was neither Bible nor geography to the whole region adjacent. Assassination was never very unpopular at Port Tobacco, and when its victim was a Northern President, it became quite heroic. A month before the murdr, a provost-marshal was slain in his bed-chamber. For such a town and district, the detective police were the only effective missionaries.The hotel here is called the Brawner House; it has a bar in the northernmost cellar, and its patrons, corousing in that imperfect light, look like denziens of some burglar's crib, talking robbery between their cups; its dining-room is dark and tumble-down, and the cusine bears traces of Kaffir origin; a barbeque is nothing to a dinner there. The court-house of Port Tobacco is the most superfluous house in the place, except the church. It stands in the center of the town, in a square, and the dwellings lie about it closely, as if to throttle justice. Five hundred people exist in Port Tobacco; life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and the adjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, where iguanadons, and pterodactyls, and plesiosauri ate each other." (490)

La Fayette Curry Baker's 1867 book on the history of the Secret Service provides some brief accounts that illustrate the political probhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giflems Port Tobacco faced during the Civil War.

Letter to Sec of State dated 1861
..."On my arrival at Port Tobacco, the headquarters of Colnel Graham's regiment, I found the inhabitants complaining bitterly at their alleged ill-treatment and depredations committed by the soldiers unger his command." (105) ..."The postmaster at this place is secrelty doing all in his power to further the interests of the ." (106)

I am sure there are many other historic descriptions of Port Tobacco still waiting to be discovered in the library. Off I go.

-April