pp. 3-6 Statement of Catherine (Soleman) Chandler dated July 24, 1967, concerning her Davis family tradition and its probable independence from the similar Davis traditions of other branches.
From my own knowledge, gained through stories told me by my grandmother and her sister, I submit the following:
My grandmother, Caroline Armstrong Soleman, remembered her grandmother, Elizabeth Davis Craig, who was a Quaker and always wore a little white cap. From Elizabeth to her daughter Malinda Craig Armstrong to her granddaughter Caroline, who was my grandmother, and eventually to me, came stories of people in other generations of our family. Ther was Isaac Davis, who fought in the Revolutionary War because he believed it was right, even while it conflicted with the religious principles of his sect. There was Dorothea, the Quaker preacher, an English lady descended from kings, who was so imbued with the virtues of simple, godly living and brotherly love, that she wrote a book about it, and preached her beliefs, despite the fact that Quakers were ridiculed, despised, even imprisoned. And I was told of others
One of them was Dorothea's daughter, another Dorothea, who had married John Davis, an ancestor of my grandmother. Just how far back Dorothea Scott Gotherson fitted into the family picture was not clear to me. I am not sure my grandmother knew. The Davis name came down through several more generations to Elizabeth, born in 1785 in Salem County, New Jersey, who married Isaac Craig in Columbiana County, Ohio.
When I first heard some of these stories I was no more than six or seven years old. They were told to me dozens of times during my childhood, when I was still too young to realize that some day I would become intensely interested in genealogical research. Living across the street from my grandparents, Henry and Caroline Armstrong Soleman, I saw them nearly every day for the first fifteen years of my life. Instead of wanting to hear the usual fairy tales, which most children like, my sister, Betty S. Webber, and I used to beg our grandmother to tell us about "when Daddy was a little boy," "when you were a little girl," etc. Sometimes she would laugh and ask if we might like to hear something else, but we never did. So she patiently repeated the familiar ones and reached back into her memory for others.
Grandmother's older sister, Melvina Armstrong Shanklin, whom we saw frequently, did the same. She told of kings and queens centuries back in the family's past, and said that the Davis history would make exciting reading; that among its members there were "many good men and great," and "people who had a big hand in making history." (This is quoted form her granddaughter Hazel Ryder Crites, who also remembers hearing these stories.)
It was she who knew about an early governor Virginia, who was related in some way to our Davis family. Since she knew nothing of the ancestry . . . Scott family. Research later disclosed that Sir Francis Wyatt, Governor of colonial Virginia from 1621-6 and 1639-42, was indeed a first cousin of Thomas Scott, [grand-]father of Dorothea Scott Gotherson. Everything my grandmother and her sister told me, that I have been able to find on record, has been confirmed in every detail.
Elizabeth Davis was a child of five in 1790, when her parents left New Jersey never to return. After about fifteen years in Frederick County, Virginia, the rest of her life was spent in Ohio, where she died in 1870. This was six years before Thomas Shourds published his book on Fenwick's Colony [cf. TS]. Scull's Dorothea Scott [cf. GDS] appeared later. It is most unlikely that Elizabeth ever heard of these two New Jersey gentlemen, both of whom wrote essentially the same Davis information that had been passed on to her daughter and granddaughters, who were then living in Tama County, Iowa.
Certainly neither the names of Scull and Shourds nor the title of their books were known to me when I began research on this family, yet I already knew about the Davis-Gotherson marriage. Nor had anyone else in my particular line done any work on Davis or Gotherson. With names, palaces and a few dates supplied by my grandmother, it took a surprisingly short time to fill in the blank spaces and verify my information all the way back to John and Dorothea Davis. Beginning in Ohio and working back to Salem County through wills and land records, I finally became acquainted with the works of Thomas Shourds and Gideon Scull, and found in them information which corroborated what had been told me years before. Only the surnames of the two wives and the official record of the Davis-Gotherson marriage have not as yet been recovered. There was no reason to question that marriage when all else proved to be true and everything fell into place like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.
Elizabeth's brother Isaac Davis died in Nebraska in 1847. One of hs descendants, Ruth Oliver Otto, of whose existence I was not aware until 1960, wrote me that the Davis traditions and the Gotherson marriage were known likewise in her family. Elizabeth's younger brother David Davis died in 1836 in Ohio. Subsequently some of his children went west with the Mormons. In January 1967 I learned by letter from a descendant, Eli Davis LeCheminant, that this family too knew of the Davis-Gotherson traditions.
Such information could not have evolved and survived if it were not founded upon truth. My second great-grandmother did not and could not concoct events and make up names (now substantiated), solely that she might claim certain ancestors. She merely told her children the stories that had been told to her about her family because she found them interesting and believed them.
p. 6-8 Statement of Catherine (Soleman) Chandler dated July 24, 1967, quoting letters of another distant Davis relative with similar traditions backed up by early research.
In a roundabout way in 1960 I got in touch with Mrs. Ruth Oliver Otto (b. 1901). Until that time I had never heard of her, although she was descended from Isaac Davis (d. 1847), brother of my second great-grandmother Elizabeth Davis Craig and the families gradually lost contact with one another.
Mrs. Otto, daughter of Jennie Davis Oliver, wrote me seven lengthy letters before her death in 1962. Significant facts are quoted from those letters, as follows:
July 1, 1960: "Mother had a bible, which she called 'my grandmother's bible.' I can't say whether it was the real old Davis bible or a later one; however, much of her information is credited to family bible records and old letters."
"Isaac and Hannah (Hildebrant) Davis and their family moved from Salem Co., N.J., to Frederick Co., Va., in 1790, where they lived for 16 years, and then moved to Columbiana County, Ohio. Evidently other Davis realtives made the same move, for there are uncles, aunts, and cousins mentioned in old letters and records of that time."
Letter not dated but received September 13, 1960: "Since your last letter I have studied Mother's notes very carefully and it amazes me to discover that she had been working on her line as early as 1910 and maybe before that . . . . Her father inspired here to trace the family. He died in 1891 but during his lifetime he had told her what he knew of the family history, the names and traditions that had been handed down to him. The traditions were: 1) that the first ancestor in the line in America was John Davis, one of four brothers who came from Wales and settled on Long Island; late r two of them moved to near Philadelphia and settled there, 2) that he married an English lady of noble birth, daughter of a Quakeress preacher, 3) that her father's great-grandparents were first cousins" [this would have been Thomas and Elizabeth (Bassett) Davis].
Further on she wrote: "Mother found an old letter which claimed that the four brothers came from Wales with their widowed mother. . . . I think the old letters were a great help to Mother for bits of information in them, and also in tracing living descendants and contacting them for more letters and whatever they might know of the Davis line."
"My great-grandmother made her home with her son Isaac (Mother's father) from 1847 till she died in 1886. I think many of the letters were written to her by Richards and Davis relatives. Letters were precious in those days and they were kept to be read again and again, or sent on to other realatives or handed down to succeeding generations. My grandmother Davis had a bureau drawer full of them. I remember, when I was a little girl, we were at Grandmother's house one time and Grandmother took Mother and a couple of my Aunts upstairs — I tagged along — they got the letters out and read them, and then Mother took some of them home with her. I was so little I didn't know what it was about. I do not know where any of these letters are now, and of course a great many were borrowed from distant cousins, etc., and had to be returned." . . .
Sample From Family Record Of Judge David Davis, Written In Bible Printed 1754, Thomas Baskett, Oxford, England. [cf. SJDR]
Family HistoryI
In the Name of God Amen.
Dorothea to Oyster Bay February 8th 1680
Dorothea Scott Married Major Dan Gotherson in the year 1649
he was executed 29th Septbr 1666
She died in the Fifty Ninth yr of Age
2 months and 8 days on April 10thday 1688
Daughter
Dorothea married by the Rev. Nicholson
[- ]o'clock August 5th 1680 John Davis
Dorothea born July 13th1661 England
John born September 11th 1660 Scotland
Dorothea departed this life September 28 1709
John -- -- April 8 1708
Buried: Pilesgrove Town Salem New Jersey
Son
|
Judge David Davis
was born Tuesday morning 6 o'clock July [ - ] 1688.