Some Information Shared by Marcia Estep

Marcia shared the following with me via e-mail.  I asked her to post these images here so that anyone interested could see them.  In her e-mail to me she said, "Just thought you might like have a copy of these letters, email, obit that I obtained last year from my cousin Dorothy from CA last year. She is the daughter of Dora Davis who was married to Harry Wells. I thought they were pretty interesting."

A Brief Introduction

The idea of creating a blog to facilitate sharing Davis research has been in the back of my mind for quite a while.  It would seem to be the easiest means of keeping fellow Davis researchers in the loop on the progress that I make on my book about James Davis, his brother Aaron Davis, and their nephew, Willis Davis (son of Amos Davis).  James was the first Davis to have settled in present day Jackson County, Illinois back in 1808.  His brother and nephew followed him there several years later.

In the acknowledgments to my book, there is information about the people who have helped me prior to this point.  But it appears likely that the list of fellow researchers may start growing considerably due to a few recent events.

The first was meeting Marcia (Lyle) Estep, who has been digging into various descendants of James' son William "Uncle Billy" Davis (they migrated to Southern California in the late 1800s).  She recently came into possession of a photo album that includes past owners of a portion of James Davis' third homestead, which is located west of Elkville, Jackson County, Illinois (and very near Du Quoin, Perry County, Illinois).  The property is now owned by the Burroughs.

In February 2016, Dee (Little) Burroughs passed away, and her obituary stated that in October 2018 her family farm would be celebrating the 200th Anniversary of James Davis' land entry for the property - the point at which he began to buy the property from the Federal Government on credit.  I had been eager to contact Dee's children or close cousins, since it seemed she had had an interest in the Davis family history.

These two events led me to finding one of Dee's daughters on Facebook, Launa (Burroughs) Dinkins.  She in turn put me in contact with her sister Carole, who has taken on the role as the family historian.