The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 1, July 1897 - April, 1898 Page: 63

John Crittenden Duval.

went with the rest of his family from Kentucky to settle at Talla-
hassee. The Governor, indeed, was practically the founder of that
town, and he otherwise left an outward mark and impress upon
Florida. Jackson is in Duval county, and one of the principal streets
of Key West is Duval street. It was a difficult and not too con-
genial task the Governor undertook during and subsequent to the
Seminole War, but he is remembered as the Indian's best friend
in those times. The family returned later to their old home in.
Bardstown.
John Duval's scholastic education was completed at the Univer-
sity of Virginia. He adopted the profession of civil engineer, and
the greater part of his life was given up to surveying and locating
Texas lands. Many of his fees were paid in land certificates, and
often he was what is known as land poor. More than once when he.
was applied to by some needy person for help, not having the cash,.
he has been known to give that help in the shape of a land certi-
ficate. Certainly his virtues were not profitable to him, for he died
a very poor man. In him there was an utter forgetfulness of self
when he contemplated the misfortunes of others. Not so very long
before he died there came to his home a tramp, begging. The man
asked pitifully for a pair of shoes; he did not really need them,
but he persuaded the old man that he did. Finally, Mr. Duval rose
and courteously begged to be excused for a moment, and then went
into another room. Presently he emerged in his stockinged feet
and gave the beggar his own shoes. The shoes, however, were res-
cued at the gate, and when the old gentleman was gently remon-
strated with he pleaded that the man was a young man in misfor-
tune and must need shoes worse than he.
Few, even of his friends, were aware that he was all his life a suf-
ferer from hemorrhage of the lungs. This was the real cause of his
determination to spend as much of his life as possible in the open
air. His profession of land surveyor took him much on the fron-
tiers of Texas and New 1Mexico, where months passed without a
roof covering him, and he enjoyed it. This same craving for the
freedom of the prairie and the woods was one of the chief reasons
for his joining the famous Jack Hays' Ranger Company. It was
partly, too, an inherited dislike of restraint, as may be judged from
Irving's "Ralph Ringwood." The proverbial irony of fate was
never more strongly reaffirmed than in his case. Here was a man,
who, like St. Paul, had suffered almost every peril on land and