Grayson County TXGenWeb

Nathaniel Crosby Floyd IV
1904 - 1972

Nat Floyd IV was born in Oklahoma July 31, 1904. His father, Nat III (1877-1906), died in Galveston on December 17, 1906.

Floyd's paternal grandmother, Martha Alice (West) Floyd, died in Abilene less than two weeks before her 100th birthday in 1946. The Abilene Reporter-News said she was the first white girl-baby born in what is now Dallas County. Another story in the same paper in 1938, on the 73rd anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, said that her father-in-law (Nat Floyd's great-grandfather), Nathan Crosby Floyd of Kentucky, hired the young Lincoln to split and haul the famous rails that paid, in part, for his limited schooling.

The 1907 and 1909 Denison city directories list Nat III's widow, Virgie C. Floyd, as a roomer at 521 W. Morgan.
Her obituary dated 1950 says she married M-K-T engineer John B. McGeehon in 1909. Before they married he lived at 530 W. Morgan. He may have been her landlord. The 1910 Census shows them living in McAlester. The 1915 Denison City Directory has them back in Denison at 521 W. Morgan again. The 1920 Census shows them still at 521 W. Morgan, along with Nat IV (age 15) and his half-sister, Vivian McGeehon, age 8. They also had three male lodgers.

521 W. Morgan
Denison, Texas

After Virgie died in 1950, the house had multiple tenants for several years before being officially partitioned into four apartments (A, B, C, D) around 1956. The house's history suggests it may have been intended for multiple occupancy from the beginning. During the years the McGeehons were in McAlester (when the 1911 and 1913 Denison city directories were published), 521 W. Morgan housed two or more tenants at the same time. After they returned to Denison in 1915, they continued to have lodgers living with them.

Former Sherman correspondent for the Denison Herald and New York Times foreign correspondent Nat Floyd (Nathaniel Crosby Floyd IV, 1904-1972) was a 1921 graduate of Denison High School (TWO SCHOOLS, pg. 125). He spent time with General MacArthur's troops on the Bataan Peninsula after the Japanese drove American forces from Manila at the beginning of WWII. He's mentioned in more than one history book, including William Lindsay White's They Were Expendable. A bestseller in 1942, it inspired the 1945 movie of the same name starring John Wayne. White (1900-1973) was the son of Emporia Gazette editor William Allen White.

After Nat IV had gained fame as a correspondent in WWII, the editor of The Denison Press wrote a column about him:

Denison Press
Friday, February 13, 1942
pgs. 1, 4

An anecdote from fellow correspondent Clark Lee, taken from a report published in the Lawrence (KS) Daily Journal, February 9, 1942:

Lawrence Daily Journal
(Kansas)
February 9, 1942
pg. 3

Nat Floyd died in 1972 in Arlington, Virginia.