Margie Gibbs Floyd

FLOYD, RICHMONDS

Posted By: Emmet County IAGenWeb Coordinator (email)
Date: 2/13/2011 at 20:18:01

[Contributor note: Margie Myrtle (Gibbs) FLOYD]

Mrs. Margie Floyd was born in 1885 on the now Mary Dundas farm, "when there was no town here at all."

"People had to go to Estherville for everything " Mrs. Floyd said.

"When I was born, my grandmother came in a sled, wrapped my mother and I in quilts, and took us to her place. There were no doctors here then."

Her mother and her parents, the Matthew Richmonds, came to Armstrong in a covered wagon from Lansing, Michigan having started originally from Canada.

Mrs. Floyd stayed at her grandparents while going to school in one of the few-and-far-between one-room country schoolhouses in the area. She walked one and one half miles to school daily, she said.

Spelling bees used to be held at the country schoolhouses. This, she believes, is how her parents met.

She met her future husband, William while she was the assistant postmaster and her husband the local band director. They were married in 1906.

William Floyd directed municipal bands in Estherville, Washington state, and North Dakota before he and Mrs. Floyd returned here in 1932 because of Mr. Floyd's poor health. He died in 1937.

"There are so many empty buildings here now," she said.

Mrs. Floyd is a lifelong member of the Presbyterian church, but stopped going three years ago.

"It's hard for me to walk, But I enjoy listening to it on radio."

Contributed by: Jim Richmond. Source: The Diamond Jubilee Supplement of the Armstrong Journal, Armstrong, Iowa, 4 July 1968.