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Historical marker Main Street, Salem, WV
We have two new Y matches. The first is originally from Harrisville, Ritchie County, WV and the second is from Gallia County, OH, across the Ohio River that separates OH and WV. Both these areas were located along the migration trail taken in 1787 from Monmouth County, New Jersey to Salem, Harrison County, WV.
Salem to Harrisville, WV and Salem to Gallia, Ohio
First Y match’s Davis line from Harrisville, Ritchie, WV
The first Davis Y match is a targeted tester, a 2nd cousin of a man who has been an interested William Davis DNA Project follower for some time. This interested WDDP follower first contacted me in 2014, asking about how to verify his line if he did not carry the Davis surname. His mother had been a Davis and her paper trail led back to the larger known Davis family.
This Davis enthusiast later did an autosomal test and matched several of the testers who were Davis descendants. Although matching autosomally is not conclusive proof, when coupled with his family history and ancestors’ locations in WV, we were pretty sure his line led back to Rev. William1 Davis.
The targeted tester, who does carry the Davis surname, Y-tested and does match our William Davis subgroup haplogroup of I-P37 (L-160), so we are even more sure our enthusiast is a Davis descendant.
Our Davis enthusiast and his second cousin both descend from the same great grandfather, Daniel Newton8 Davis. Daniel N. Davis was born abt 1863 in Ritchie County, WV, died in 1943, and was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, Harrisville, Ritchie County, WV. He was a farmer and had married twice. He had four children with his first wife and six children with his second wife. Both our Davis enthusiast and his second cousin descend from the second wife’s six children.
Daniel Newton Davis, 1863-1943 Harrisville, Ritchie County, WV
The line that Daniel Newton Davis descends from might sound familiar. See if you recognize it.
Daniel’s father was Lemuel7 Davis, born 1822 Harrison County, VA (later WV) and died 1900 Ritchie County, WV.
Lemuel’s father was Joshua J.6 Davis, who was born 1791 in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, NJ and migrated to Salem, VA (WV) after the first group left.
Joshua J. Davis’ wife of 46 years, mother of 7 children, was Catherine Maxson, born 1797, Salem, Harrison, VA (WV), dau of Zebulon Maxson, Jr. and Mary Davis, who were part of the migration. (Zebulon Maxson Jr. was grdson of Rev. John2 Davis, and Mary Davis was dau of Rev. Nathan4 Davis).
Joshua J. Davis had a second wife, Delila Clark. She was the mother of 4 more children and outlived him to apply for his War of 1812 pension.
So, are Joshua J. Davis and wife, Catherine Maxson, starting to sound familiar? Here’s a hint:
Joshua J. Davis’ parents were William Gifford5 Davis,”Jersey Billy” (born 1762 Manasquan, New Jersey) and Catherine Johnston (born Shrewsbury, NJ).
The line is familiar because we had a previous tester, actually one of our first targeted testers, from Buckhannon, Upshur, WV, who descended from this same line. This earlier tester from Buckhannon descended from Zebulon7 Davis, who was Lemuel7’s brother. The Buckhannon tester had tested in 2009. (We’ve been at this 10 years! Can you believe it?)
Coming forward, toward the present, on the Buckhannon tester’s line, Zebulon7’s son was John Robert8 Davis (picture below), whose son was Virgil Roy9 Davis, and gdson was Londes Roy10 Davis. Londes’ son was the living tester11. So this line of Joshua J.6 Davis is confirmed for a second time as being part of the William Davis family, thanks to our new tester’s results matching our Rev. William Davis haplogroup, I-P37.
John Robert8 Davis, born 1859 WV, with Londes Ray Davis
Joshua J.6 Davis’ line continues into the past.
Joshua J.’s father was William Gifford5 Davis.
William G. was the son of Rev. Nathan4 Davis Sr., b 1740 RI and Anna Gifford, born in New Jersey and both died, after migrating, in Salem, WV.
Rev. Nathan was the son of Thomas William3 Davis, born 1719 RI, who died in 1791 in White Day Creek, Monongalia, WV, on the way to Salem, WV. Tacy Crandall, Thomas’ wife, died just 4 years later in 1795.
So almost back to the start,
Thomas William3 was son of Rev. John2 Davis, (born 1692, Chester County, PA) and Elizabeth Maxson.
Rev. John2 Davis was the son of the first Rev. William1 Davis who was born in Wales 1663, and who came to Philadelphia, PA in 1684. Rev. William moved to Westerly, RI and Stonington, CT, two towns just across the river from each other, coming back to PA a couple of times, finally moving to Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, New Jersey in 1743, where he died shortly afterwards in 1745.
On the map, you can see that the places of origin of our current tester and our previous tester are both close to Salem, WV: Harrisville, about 36 miles West of Salem and Buckhannon, about 42 miles South of Salem.
Salem, WV to Harrisville, WV and Salem, WV to Buckhannon, WV
So welcome new tester, and thank you, enthusiastic second cousin, for your interest and collaboration. You both have a new Davis cousin on your line who lives in Buckhannon, WV!
Second Y match’s Davis line from Gallia County, Ohio
While you’re looking at the map above, see where Gallia County, Ohio is on the western part of the map? This is where our second new Davis Y match originated.
Named for the French people who originally settled there, “Gallia” is the Latin word for Gaul, the ancient region of Western Europe that included present day France, according to Wikipedia. Apparently some land prospectors named the area hoping for a French group to settle in Gallia County, OH. But turned out the sellers didn’t have proper ownership of the land and when the settlers arrived with their deeds, the poor settlers had to buy their land again from the actual owners.
This second Y match’s daughter said that her paternal Davis line originated in Gallia County, Ohio, but how those Davises connect to our original Davis family is a bit of a mystery.
Her Davis great grandfather had a distinctive name: “Jacob N. M. Davis,” b 1851, Jefferson County, OH and died in Gallipolis, Gallia, OH. The middle initials stand for Jacob “Neff Mahlon” Davis.
Jacob Neff Mahlon Davis, 1859-1936 Gallia, Ohio
Jacob Neff Mahlon Davis, wife Maggie Sluyter, Ruth, Willie, Sadie, Walter, Ohio Tnsp, Gallia County, OH, abt 1898
According to the 1900 Ohio, Gallia, OH census, Jacob was a teacher. He was the son of parents William Keer Davis (b 1819 Ohio, died 1887 Gallia County, Ohio) and Ruth E. Elliott.
William Keer Davis, 1819-1887 Gallia County, Ohio and Ruth Elliott
But who are the parents of William Keer Davis?
A few family trees on Ancestry claim William Keer Davis’ father was a William Davis who was born 1785 PA, with wife Mary Milligan from Wales. You know Ancestry trees, no documentation. No proof whatsoever that William Davis b 1785 PA is the parent of William Keer Davis. And no parents of William b 1785.
But one actual source, North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000 on Ancestry, says that William Keer Davis’ parents were Jacob Davis and Mary Stuart Kearr. Is a printed family history more reliable than an Ancestry family tree? Yes, although they can be wrong sometimes also. But let’s follow it and see where it goes.
This Jacob is listed as born in 1795, near Chadd’s Ford, Delaware, PA and died May 1865, Colerain, Belmont, Ohio. Jacob Davis and Mary Stuart Kearr had 12 children and one of them was named Benjamin W. Davis!
I brake for Benjamins!
Benjamin W. Davis? I brake for Benjamins! That name is one of our unsolved mysteries, a Davis line who we haven’t been able to connect to the original Davis family… yet. Well this Benjamin W. Davis can’t be the one who we have been searching for all these years because this Benjamin W.’s father, Jacob Davis, was born in 1795. The Benjamin W. Davis we are always on the lookout for was born in 1786. No cigar there.
But it gets a bit more intriguing because, according to the same North America, Family Histories, the parents of Jacob Davis (b 1795) are Benjamin Davis and Hannah Ann Hannum. So Jacob’s son, Benjamin W. Davis, was named after his grandfather, Benjamin. The source says that grandfather Benjamin Davis was born 1777 in Chester County, PA and died in Feb 1829, East Palestine, PA, about 3 hrs northwest of Chester County.
And, if (IF!) we can trust this source as being accurate, the parents of grandfather Benjamin Davis are listed as:
Joseph Davis and Hannah Cloud, Joseph can be calculated to be born in the years from about 1732 to 1757 (if he were the age of 20 to 45 in 1777).
Don’t we know someone else who was living in Chester County, PA (near Philadelphia)?
Oh yes, Rev. William, himself, from 1699-1702 and from 1717-1724.
Rev. William did have a son named Joseph, (Joseph2), who was born in 1729 in Rhode Island. And this Joseph2 had been in PA, because Susie Nicholson says he “returned” to Shrewsbury, NJ, from PA, in 1747 (age 18). But Joseph2 supposedly later moved to Rhode Island in 1752. Joseph2 would have been 48 when this Benjamin was born in 1777, so he is the correct age, but it’s hard to be in Rhode Island and PA at the same time.
Can we speculate that our Joseph2 is Benjamin’s father? Not really. Making a conclusion from only the name Joseph Davis, in the large state of Pennsylvania, is not exactly solid research. Joseph is a very common name, even on just our own Davis family tree. Especially when Joseph2 is documented as living in RI in the years around 1777.
We can’t even prove that the parents of William Keer Davis are Jacob Davis and Mary Stuart Keear. So this is a very shaky line. But it could be one to build on. Since this line takes us to Chester County, PA, close to the correct years for Rev. William Davis’ adult children, it seems worth researching further.
We know that this Gallia line leads back to some Davis male of the Rev. William Davis family since the descendant’s Y test matches our haplogroup, I-P37, but more research will be required to figure out which Davis son is the connection.
Lack of facts for this line leaves us at a temporary end of the line, where the records end and the misty clouds of the past appear.
Clouds of the Past, (photo, Simon Migaj)
Luckily, there seems to be no end to the number of Davis family members we might uncover, if autosomal results are any indication.
Autosomal tests don’t break down brick walls, they just fly over them and connect you directly to a descendant of a Davis line, often with a detailed tree. I am confidant that this line, and our other unplaced lines, will eventually be identified through autosomal matches when the databases grow even larger. And how satisfying those discoveries will be!
Thanks to Tim Davis, in Maryland, for his sleuthing and financing to find this tester. The project is grateful for his generosity and dogged persistence!
Corrections, additions, reactions, interesting thoughts or photos, related to this post, happily accepted.
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Reconstructing the Davis Family Relationships
Reconstructed Fort New Salem in Salem, Harrison, WV (photo: WVExplorer)
“…Fort New Salem is a living history outdoor museum…
Salem was originally settled in 1792 by a group of
Seventh Day Baptist families from Shrewsbury, NJ…” -Wikipedia
It has been an honor to document the lives of our Davis ancestors who pioneered out into the unknown lands of “Virginey” for a better life. Thanks to being able to study the large Davis family tree of many lines who all funneled back to the original Rev. William Davis family and being able to reconstruct their relationships, my Davis research is now taking me in a related, but new direction.
In the future, I’m going to try a different approach. For now, I plan to focus my research on only one specific branch of the Davis family, one that I have been studying for some time and one that is currently not well known. I hope that you will find my latest Davis search as interesting as I have found it. It has been a long time coming!
The Davis families “go West,” 1789-1792
In 1789, a group of Davis families and others who were members of the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, New Jersey, decided they were going to try their luck by “going West.”
“West” was Virginia (the area that is now West Virginia), and the route to Virginia went through Pennsylvania, the first state west of New Jersey. Why they left was never put in writing but the most obvious reason was the Revolutionary War. It had just ended in 1783.
Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth
by Emanuel Leutze. Monmouth County, New Jersey, 28 June 1778 -Wikipedia
Davis researcher Susie Davis Nicholson mentions in her book, “Davis, The Settlers of Salem, West Virginia, 1979,” one instance of destruction and death to the Davis family by the British. James Davis Sr., son of Rev. William, had a shipbuilding business in Monmouth County, NJ. The British burned it down, prompting James to change allegiance from Loyalist (for British) to Patriot (against the British).
This same James, born 1720, was killed, at age 58, by a “stray bullet of the British” as he rode out to watch the Battle of Monmouth, which took place in Monmouth County, the Davis family home.
Leading up to the Battle of Monmouth, Monmouth County’s people had suffered socially. Their community was torn apart when what amounted to a civil war broke out in 1777, with some Monmouth County residents fighting as Loyalists in the British Army and plotting against their neighbors, who they called the “rebels.” These Loyalists gave strategic information about local Patriots to the British, setting up their previous neighbors for unexpected deadly ambushes.
Loss of lives, business and friendships must have caused great resentment and disappointment in the Davis community.
For this or other reasons, the members of the Seventh Day Baptist Shrewsbury Church decided, on Sept 8, 1789, to leave their New Jersey home in order to “setle in the state of Verginey.”
Their destination was Woodbridgetown, Fayette County, PA, some 400 miles due west, about 7 hours by car. In their case, they were traveling with horse, mule or oxen, pulling about 70 wagons, camping out along the way. They were following an old Indian trail that went West, probably stopping wherever there was a source of water. A horse and wagon travels at the speed of a walking horse, which is about 2-3 miles per hour. That is about the same speed that a walking person averages.
So they were essentially walking across the country. In good weather, they might cover 10 miles in a day. But bad weather, difficult terrain (including at least six mountains), wagon breakdowns, sickness, deaths, births and who knows what other problems, might halt their progress for one or several days. One might also consider that there might not have even been much of an actual “road,” since these were unsettled areas.
Although this was taken in 1920 or so, and the Davis families probably used oxen, this gives you an idea of what they might have been traveling in.
They left Shrewsbury in two groups: one Sept 6, 1789 and another Sept 13, 1789. They stopped for some time after arriving in Woodbridgetown, Fayette County, PA, then changed their mind about settling there. Instead, they continued south into VA (WV).
The death of Thomas William Davis (husband of Tacy Crandall), age 72, was recorded on July 1791 at White Day Creek, Monongalia County, VA (WV), 35 miles S of Woodbridgetown, almost two years after leaving NJ.
They arrived in May 1792 at Harrison County, VA (WV), another 46 miles SW of White Day Creek, almost three years after they left NJ. There they settled the village of “New Salem,” the name of which the Post Office shorted to “Salem” in 1884.
Routes “West” from New Jersey to “Virginia” and Ohio, 1789-1792
West Virginia was not the only place to which the Davis family migrated. Some of the Davis family in this “going West” migration traveled further SW, past Salem, to Gallia, OH. Some did not go South at all. Instead they continued due West of Woodbridgetown, some 300 further miles, to Jackson Center, Shelby County, Ohio. Other branches of the Davis family had already traveled north of Shrewsbury, New Jersey and settled in Lincklaen and Brookfield, New York, and later, other Davis branches traveled even further west to Antigo, WI and out to Oregon.
One way we know these towns are accurate locations of the migration trek is because we find autosomal and Y-DNA matches from descendants of Davis ancestors who originated in these towns along the route.
Of our recent new Davis matches, 3 Y-testers and 1 autosomal, all come from places along this migration trail, including Parkersburg WV, Gallia Ohio, and Shelby County Ohio.
Let’s start with the Shelby County descendant.
In 2014, I got a query from someone whose line had originated in Shelby County, Ohio, but part of that family had returned East to Pennsylvania, losing contact with their Shelby ancestors. She gave me the name of her ancestor and asked me to let her know if I found any living descendants. She thought there were many. Her ancestor was a William P. Davis, born about 1819 in Ohio.
Well, another Davis descendant of that branch has finally appeared, from Sidney, Shelby, Ohio. Melissa Cook, daughter of Lucille Elizabeth Davis, comes from a “daughtered out” line and so has no living male Davis to test. She did test autosomally, though, and her autosomal test does match some known Davis descendants.
In her words: “Daniel was brother to my grandfather, Oliver Franklin Davis. Oliver and Sophia had my mother, Lucille Elizabeth Davis 1922 – 1981; and two sons, Arthur and Vernon Davis, but both of them adopted. That is where the Davis Male line ends on my side.”
And she brings to us a photo.
This is a photo of Daniel Webster Davis, Melissa’s great uncle, who lived in Shelby County, Ohio.
Great Uncle of Melissa Cook:
Daniel Webster Davis, born 1895 Shelby County, Ohio
(Original photo: Kelly Williams)
Daniel’s grandfather was William P. Davis, born 1819 Ohio, son of Zebulon Davis, born 1786 New Jersey.
Zebulon was the son of Rev. Jacob Davis born 1748, New Jersey.
Rev. Jacob Davis was a chaplain in the Rev. War and migrated with the group in 1789 to Woodbridgetown, at age 41. Rev. Jacob was son of James Davis, Sr. and Judith Maxson, the same James whose shipyard burned down and who died watching the Battle of Monmouth. Rev. Jacob’s wife was Mary S. Davis, daughter of Thomas William Davis born 1719 and Tacy Crandall.
Rev. Jacob Davis founded a Seventh Day Baptist Church in Woodbridgetown, PA, while their group temporarily lived there. When they continued south and founded their first church in 1792 in Salem, VA (WV), Rev. Jacob Davis was their first minister. Rev. Jacob died a year later, in 1793, en route back to Woodbridgetown to minister at his old church. His son, Zebulon, was just 7 years old.
TO BE CONTINUED. We have more testers who are descendants of the Rev. William Davis family and more stories of their ancestors who originated in towns along this migration trail! Do your Davis ancestors come from any other towns along this path?
If you are a Davis descendant and have autosomal DNA results, please contact me and I will compare your results to the autosomal results of others who are known Davis descendants. Even if you don’t need to corroborate your ancestry with DNA, your results could help place someone else’s line. And your results might possibly, one day, help determine the probable DNA signature of Rev. William Davis, himself.
Comments, corrections, further details or other responses respectfully received.
Copyright, 2019
Jan Davis Markle, M.A.
Founder, William Davis DNA Project
William Davis DNA Project 
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