~ Some Jefferson Davis Genealogy ~ Jefferson Davis was sprung from comparatively humble stock; beyond his father and grandfather nothing is known of his ancestry. The name of his grandfather was Evan David, but after landing in America the name was changed to Davis. The grandfather and two brothers came over from Wales and settled at Philadelphia early in the eighteenth century. 1 Some years later Evan Davis set out for the Southwest and landed in Georgia, where he married a widow Williams, who gave birth to an only child, Samuel, Jefferson Daviss father. Shortly after the birth of Samuel, Evan died. The father of Jefferson Davis was a strong character, stubborn, unlovable and silent. But he was a brave man and when the Revolution broke out, he raised a company, becoming its captain, and marching to the relief of Savannah. For his services the Government granted him two hun- dred and eighty-seven and a half acres of wild land 2 After the war Samuel Davis moved to Augusta, Georgia, where he was appointed clerk of the county court and married Jane Cook, a South Carolina woman. This prolific Scotch-Irish woman pre- sented her husband with ten children, nearly all bearing patri- archal and Biblical names. There were Joseph and Samuel, Ben- iThe claim of Daviss recent biographers that Samuel DaviV^ president of Princeton, was of this line lacks proof : letters to author from the secre- taries of Virginia and Pennsylvania Historical Societies; Southern His- torical Society Papers, XXXVI, 79 J Whitsitt, i-io. 2 In Townsends Handbook of U. S. Political History, 362, it is stated that Jefferson Davis and U. S. Grant were cousins on Daviss maternal side. 3 4 BEGINNINGS Benjamin and Isaac, Mary and Anna and so on to the tenth and last, Jefferson. Undoubtedly Samuel, a hard-shell Baptist in religion and an unwashed Democrat, but then called Republican, in poli- tics, was determined to do honor to all the saints in the calendar. Now the Davis family was in no sense aristocratic; in Wales they had been laborers and in America they were small, wandering farmers, Samuel and his offspring ploughed the fields, chopped cotton and worked side by side with the two or three slaves be- longing to the family. 8 Even poorer whites in that early day could indulge in the luxury of a slave or two, slaves being worth little more than good mules. After a few years, Samuel grew weary of Georgia and wandered over into the Blue Grass country. There were then no steamboats or other public conveyances in that western land and Samuel therefore packed his household goods in a covered wagon and about the year 1792 set out with wife, chil- dren and slaves on a five-hundred-mile jaunt, passing through Georgia, Tennessee, and into Kentucky. There the gad-about fel- low opened up a wayside tavern and raised cattle and horses. But Kentucky was also unsuited to the Davis family and they remained only a few years, yet long enough to present to the world their most distinguished son. Little Jeff had no recollection of his unpretentious Kentucky home, for he was an infant at his mothers breast when the roving Samuel set forth on another trek. This time Bayou TSche was his objective, a Louisiana village a thousand miles or more away. The family, except Joseph, accompanied their peripatetic parent. Joseph remained and studied law, afterwards becoming a lawyer and practicing at Hopkinsville, Kentucky. At Bayou TSche malaria attacked the wanderers and they made haste to move again. The lower Mississippi valley, then a territory, was Samuels latest fancy and there, after three removals and hundreds of miles of plodding over well-nigh impassable roads, the much-worn fam- ily settled down at last. Source: The Civil War News & Views Open Discussion Forum By:dennis brooke Date: 11/11/2014, ~Souths President Jefferson F. Davis
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:36:08 +0000
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