#this reminds me of Ann visiting Catherine in the hospital

[neeleys]

Charlie Murphy as Ann Gallagher in Happy Valley s2, deleted scene: Helen's final days

[sonofhistory]

Could you tell us about Mary Floyd Tallmadge please?

There actually isn���t anything known about her. 

Mary Floyd Tallmadge was born on March 6th, 1764 to William Floyd and Hannah Floyd. She grew up in Connecticut for all of her life but the British occupied her family home on Long Island for a lot of the war. She had an older brother named Nicholl born in 1762 and a younger sister named Catherine “Kitty”, born 1767, who was at one point courted by James Madison in the 1780s. 

Her father was considered a simple man whose greatest pleasures were hunting and hosting parties for his friends. As a child her father was constantly involved in politics. William Floyd spoke up strongly against British taxes, and was elected to the Continental Congress in 1774 and served in the First and Second Continental Congresses, from 1774 to 1777, and from 1778 to 1781. He continued to serve in the Congress of the Confederation, from 1781 to 1783. Neither a self-serving lawyer nor a politician, he would sit in the Congress listening to the debates, but contributing little except to work hard on the various committees. In 1776, he led a New York militia unit, and in one skirmish, his men drove off British invaders attempting to land on Long Island. The British soon returned in strong numbers, and took the island. 

Mrs. Floyd had time to bury the family silver before she and her three children, with a few friends and neighbors fled across the waist of the island to its north shore and sailed across Long Island Sound to shelter with friends in Middletown. On 17 October 1776 William Floyd reported, “I am now going to try to get some of my effects from the island if it is possible, and shall be absent from Congress a few days, I beg you would excuse me as it is the first time I have absented myself.” On 28 October 1776 Governor Jonathan Trumbull ordered an armed party to cross the Sound and bring back Floyd’s possessions. Local fishermen were the ones who took Hannah Floyd with others across Long Island Sound to Connecticut and safety, eventually to hide in Middletown, Connecticut until the end of the war. However, in Middletown, May 16th, 1781, Hannah died as a result of exposure, fatigue, stress and illness. 

When peace was made in 1783, Mary returned to the family home in Long Island with her father and two siblings but during the seven-year occupation, British Cavalry had turned their home into a stable, and had ruined it. Her father rebuilt the house and the next year, May 16th 1784, to the date three years after her mother’s death, he remarried Joanna Strong. She was born in Setauket, New York on January 4th, 1747. By her he had two additional children, Anna “Ann” Floyd (born 1786) and Elizabeth “Eliza” Floyd (born 1789). 

In 1784, Mary married Benjamin Tallmadge. Of this he wrote in his autobiography:

“After visiting Connecticut, and arranging a settling my plans for mercantile life, in the place where I now reside, on the 18th of March, 1784, I led Miss. Floyd to the hymenial alter, and commenced the life and duties of a married man. She was the eldest daughter of the Hon. William Floyd, of Mastic, Long Island. He was the man of very extensive landed possessions on the island, but having actively engaged on the side and in the cause of his country, he was oblige to abandon his estates, and was a member of Congress through the war. As soon as peace was proclaimed, he, with many others who had left their property in the hands or under the control of the common enemy, returned to their homes. These they found, for the most part, sadly changed for the worse. But it was very comforting to all who had suffered this voluntary banishment from their own soil, once more to place the soles of their feet upon it. The nuptials of Miss Floyd and myself were solemnized on the 18th of March, 1784, my honored father officiating, when Gen. Floyd gave a most sumptuous entertainment to a great number of invited guests.”

Her new husband’s father officiated the ceremony on March 18th, 1784, there were many guests that were invited to it. Soon after the married, they both paid a visit to New York where “we found a great number of friends, which whom we spent a few weeks very pleasantly.”

“We were treated with great hospitality by the family of Mr. Joseph Hallett, at whose hospitable abode we were invited to take up our lodgings. After this visit was ended, we returned back to Mastic, calling on our friends on the north side of Long Island and on Shelter Island, whom we wished to see before we departed to our abode at Litchfield, Connecticut. We took a jaunt down the island, which was considered rather as a parting visit. In this also we had a very pleasant journey, and time seemed to glide sensibly away, which brought us every day nearer to the period when we expected to bid Long Island a final adieu as our home. Indeed I had not made it my place of residence since I entered college in the year 1769, and for my beloved partner, she had never seen her father ‘s house since the family left it in the year 1776, when the British troops took possession of it and New York.”

With Benjamin Tallmadge she resided for the reminder of her life in Lichfield, Connecticut for the rest of her days. She had seven children: 

William Smith Tallmadge (born 1786), Henry Floyd Tallmadge (born 1787), Maria Jones Tallmadge (born 1790), Frederick Augustus Tallmadge (1792), Harriet Wadsworth Tallmadge (1797), Benoni Tallmadge (1792) and George Washington Tallmadge (1800).

Mary Floyd Tallmadge died on June 3rd, 1805 at the age of forty-one.