Aaron Davis' son, Jahu Davis

I've finally finished the section for Jahu (Jehu, Jahue, etc) Davis, whom most people find mis-identified in public records as John Davis.  The bulk of his descendants are from his son, Thomas Anderson Davis, though three of his daughters are known to have also started families.

Rather than creating a PDF of just the section for Jahu Davis, I have made one for the entire Aaron Davis Chapter:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ppstqvhbe33vefp/Aaron%20Davis.pdf?dl=0

Thus, there are some minor changes to the three earlier sections that I had produced for this chapter.

At some point I will reformat the book so that only a few generations of descendants are included.  When I do that, I will create a second volume that includes only the descendancy lists for the three Davis families.  A big reason for doing this is because indexing the book with the number of people that it currently includes will be a nightmare.  So the plan is to include a full name index for the first volume and probably no index for the second volume (that really is a decision for later in the process, so who knows what will actually happen?).

Aaron Davis' Daughter, Elizabeth (Davis) Henson

I actually had finished the re-write of this section of the Aaron Davis chapter at the same time as I had done the previous section, but figured it was best not to put both sections out at the same time.

Most of this section was done after I subscribed to Newspapers.com, so the listings are a bit more detailed and the citations are somewhat abbreviated.  I've decided to include living people, but generally do not provide birth and death information after the mid-1940s or so.

You might have noticed in the previous section that I have added chapter name headers to each chapter, making it clear (if a single page is printed) that these are descendants of, for instance, Aaron Davis.  I had also re-titled the book to The First Davis Family of Jackson County, Illinois, but have since changed it back to the original title because Nathan and Clement Davis had also arrived in Jackson County around 1808 or so.  Thus it is not possible to determine which family arrived first.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o55ikzo05t4cr7/Elizabeth%20Davis%20Henson.pdf?dl=0

Since printing the above I've improved the newspaper citations, so that it is as easy as possible to find the right newspaper and zoom in on the information of interest.  I've also started replacing the citations Find A Grave bios and obits with the same information from a specific newspaper, where possible.

Descendant surnames in this section:
Shrewsberry, Lynch, Bartlett, Vollmer, Mattingly, Fry, Drumtra, Morris, Elmore, Callahan, Isom, Aselmeier, Davis, Mills, Zitta, Blumyer, Goehl, King, Bouck, Evans, Keck, Riseling, Patterson, Lancey, Tweedy, Will, Treadway, Stanford, Overstreet, Whisler, Talbot, Williamson, Wright, Bowman, Cairns, Philp, Bowers, Crisler, Bagley, Levan, Borgsmiller, Imhoff, Shannon, Vancil, Hanna, Eatherly, Carden, Smith, Morgan, Popejoy, Klein, Anderson, Miller, McBride, Thompson, Hamblen, Kessel, Rohlfing, Enders, Moeller, Tope, Heiple, Bryant, Fuhrhop, Summers, Weseloh, Morrow.

Aaron Davis' daughter, Matilda Priscilla (Davis) Bradshaw

This section of the chapter on Aaron Davis has taken a while to work through, mainly because of the depth of research necessary to try to make sense of Eliza Evaline Bradshaw (daughter of John and Matilda Priscilla [Davis] Bradshaw) and her marriages to Henry Painter and Joseph Victor Glodo.  The result of that effort is somewhat speculative, but I believe I am on far more solid ground than speculation that has been done by others.  And I suspect that whoever in the future pays to get a copy of Joseph Victor Glodo, Sr.'s Civil War pension application will likely find that I am correct in most, if not all, important details.

So here is the link to the recent draft of the section about Matilda Priscilla (Davis) Bradshaw:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hs4w3s2ifbamhh/Matilda%20Priscilla%20Davis%20Bradshaw.pdf?dl=0

Note that the citations in this section are a bit too detailed, and I will likely pare them down the next time I review it.  In the next section that I am working on (Elizabeth [Davis] Henson), the citations are pretty much limited to those that prove a family connection, and even some minor connections are not cited.

Also, I recently subscribed to Newspapers.com, so some of the citations for this section will eventually be replaced with newspaper citations.

Descendant surnames for this section include:
Woodward, Dorway, Layne, Gillooly, Sloan, Claussen, Herring, Ledbetter, Sanders, Paulus, Tucker, Cattoor, Pinkston, Cornwell, Friedemann, Kessler, Reeves, Prater, Fry, Harasek, Bradshaw, Craig, Carmack, Lee, Fly, Bateman, Balling, Hill, Danback, Douthitt, Painter, Glodo, Sickmeier, Speis, Whelchel, Callahan, Guetersloh, Heeszel, Gannon, Ogle, Todd, Morgan, Carter, Hawkins, Kueker, Holcomb, Richardson, Brown, Cuttill, Mason, Ralls, Holderfield, Flood, Jelley, Cochran, Gola, Querling, Hagemier, Verble, Fricke, Stewart, Kilby, Hodge, Schuenke, Burcham, Maciejewski, Daniels, Spearhouse, Dunn, Reeder, Rogers, Cox, Thurman, Phelps, and Gasawski. 

It is probably worth noting our current situation.  As most of you know, Alea and I have spent the past two+ years traveling around the U.S., camping in our 12' Camp Inn teardrop trailer.  For the winter (from now through at least February) we will be camping within 100 miles or so of Orlando, Florida.  Most of the time we will have decent cell reception, which is necessary for me to continue to research and write the book.  But that won't always be the case, and at times camping conditions will be far from favorable for making much progress.  So I will continue to plug away at it, but don't be surprised if the pace of progress varies considerably.

Aaron Davis' son, Andrew Jackson Davis

I am currently updating the chapter of the book for Aaron Davis and his descendants.  Below is a link to the changes to the section about his son Andrew Jackson Davis.  This section alone took about a week of working full time to update, so I decided that it would probably be best to post these smaller book section updates as I complete them, as opposed to waiting for full chapter updates.  Aaron's chapter was the only chapter not fully updated in draft two, so I am hoping that the other chapters will be less time consuming to update (and I've already made quite a few changes to most other chapters).  The PDF below uses revision marks - so it is clear what has been updated since the last draft and what hasn't.  You will see that a very large portion of this section has been updated.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xvw74kpr54htep6/Davis-Aaron-AndrewJ.pdf?dl=0

Hopefully one or more of you will have the time and inclination to review this and provide comments, suggestions, changes, deletions, additions, etc.  For descendants who were born after 1940 I generally don't provide birth or death information, though I have included marriage information when I find a source for that.

Regarding source citations, I've tried to limit citations to the minimum necessary to prove the relationships between people.  I generally won't source marriage records, except for licenses that list parents and other details.

I believe this is a fairly complete listing of Andrew Jackson Davis' descendants, though it is always possible that someone had moved out of state and has fallen through the cracks.

Descendant surnames in this section: Carter, Morgan, Gillespie, Blankenstein, Kasperzick, Asbury, Kuegler, Tucker, Chavaux, Dickhans, Sellers, Pobst, Mobley, Mabuce, Peterman, Hawn, Fishburn, Reed, Forbis, Criss, Robison, Zook, Bullinger, and Eakins.

Moore and Cumberland Counties, NC

I spent the afternoon in Charlottesville, NC and completed my research of Cumberland County records.  There was a record of Mathis and others living east of Governors Creek around 1786, which could have been in Cumberland County.  But their deed indexes are online and there was no deed where Mathis sold that property.  It could also have been in Harnett or Lee County, but the former only has land records from 1855 and the latter from 1908.  So it looks as though land records are exhausted, unless I find a source for surveys related to land grants (I found online records for the grants, so I suspect the surveys are not available).  

I found where Mathis Davis was involved in at least two lawsuits, one against the state of North Carolina.  I suspect these were both settled in Moore County, where the records have been destroyed, so I won't pursue those.

I found no grantor deeds from Mathis, only grantee deeds.  The former would likely have required the signature of his spouse, since she would have a dower interest in the property.  If such a deed had shown that his wife's name was Martha, it would have been another brick in the foundation proving that he was the father of James, Aaron and Amos.

Book Progress

I believe I have finally researched most of Aaron Davis' descendants in my tree on Ancestry.com.  As time allows, I will attempt to update the Aaron Davis chapter of the book.  Once that is done I will share a link, seeking your help with comments, corrections, etc.

I have also been updating other sections of the book as time has permitted.  My plan is to go back through each chapter, adding major reference citations to the descendants lists, and reviewing the 1900 and 1910 Census records for any wives who were alive at that time.  The intent of the latter will be to see how many of the surviving children have been identified (since some are nearly always obscured by the lack of an 1890 Census).  As that work is completed, I will send out links for each chapter, again with the intent to get your feedback.

Once all of that is done, I will publish a final draft for any final corrections or comments.  During that time I will create the book's index and document all of the descendant surnames, which will be listed on the title page.  Indexing will be incredibly time consuming, and is best not started until most of the final edits have been done.

If anyone is hanging on to information that might be incorporated into the book, now would be a good time to forward that to me.  Send me an e-mail or contact me through the blog's contact form and I can provide an address where we will be residing periodically during this winter.

Since I don't intend to charge for the book, I can't offer to pay anyone for their help.  But I will be certain to credit your contributions in the book's front matter.

If, once the final PDF is published, there is sufficient interest in purchasing hard copies, I might consider doing so as a fund raising effort to pay for copies to be donated to regional libraries.  But the book will be formatted such that it can easily be reproduced at your local copy store or on your home printer.

Almost a Eureka! Moment

Serendipity was at work this past Monday, when I visited the Sparta Public Library to view a copy of the 1907 Atlas for Jackson County, Illinois.  It happened to be the closest library to Jackson County that was open on Monday, otherwise I would have gone to a library in Jackson County.  They have only a single call number for their roomful of genealogical history books: GEN HIS.  That meant that in order for me to find what I wanted, I literally had to look at each and every volume.  In doing so, I happened upon an abstract of early Kaskaskia newspaper notices.  One such notice reads as follows:

"Vol. 5, #33, Tues, June 19, 1821
Mr. John Gathers, 19 [sic], and Mrs. Patsy Davis were married in Brownsville, Jackson County, on May 21.  The ceremony was attended by the children and grandchildren of the bride."

It is hard to imagine a 19 year old marrying a grandmother in 1821 Illinois, so that is likely erroneous information (possibly 79?).

I got to wondering how many Davis widows living in Jackson County in 1821 were old enough to have married children, and thus grandchildren?  The answer: very, very few.  After all, 1821 was still a very early time in Illinois (just three years after statehood), and the vast majority of pioneers did not yet have grown sons who had married.  After all, the average pioneer family was fairly young.

The one possibility that to me seems very likely is that she may have been the widow of Mathis Davis.  When he sold land in Livingston County, KY, the deed was acknowledge by this wife, Martha (Patsy being a common nickname for Martha).  

If Mathis was the father of James, Aaron and Amos, as I have speculated, then he was likely near 80 years old in 1820.  So his widow would probably have been of a similar age, and in 1820 they were living just a few miles south of Brownsville, where this wedding took place.

If there were any record of the groom, John Gathers, it would help immensely in determining if all of my speculating is correct.  But that name does not show up in a search of Census records from 1818 to 1830.  The one possibility is that the name was not transcribed accurately, which would greatly complicate any efforts at finding him.  Could it have actually been Gaston, which is the name of a close neighbor?

The next step would be to determine how to get a copy of the actual newspaper notice, in order to determine if there is a transcription error.  I will see if there is a research library that might be willing to find that information for me, but I suspect it appeared in the Illinois Intelligencer, which was published in Kaskaskia from 1818-1832.  There are copies on microfilm at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, so if we happen to pass near there when they are open, I will get a copy of the actual notice.

In my mind, if there is record of her groom living in the vicinity of either James Davis or Aaron Davis, the odds would be very high that she was the widow of Mathis Davis, and that Mathis was the father of James, Aaron and Amos Davis.