North Carolina Branches

By Eilene Lyon

There’s an entire section of my family tree that I’ve neglected over the years. These are the ancestors of my great-grandfather, Sterling Price Davis. Just his name gives you a clue why. Sterling was born in Missouri and is named for the late Missouri governor, Sterling Price. Price was earlier a general in the Confederate Army.

Sterling’s father, Melville C. Davis, also served in the Confederate Army, until he voluntarily surrendered himself to the Union and became a prisoner of war. Melville Davis was part of the last generation in my family to hold humans in bondage.

All the family lines on Sterling P. Davis’s tree—Livengood, Mock, Hoover, Taggart, and Hamilton, etc.—came from North Carolina, where they established themselves prior to the Revolution. At least two of Sterling’s ancestors appear to have enlisted in the cause for American freedom.

This group of families is my only connection to the pre-Civil War South, and to slavery. The culture these people represent is so far removed from my liberal Yankee upbringing that I find it difficult to wrap my head around it.

I’ve determined to dig deep into the North Carolina (and Missouri) records to suss out who these ancestors were, and who they enslaved, as well. I’ve decided to begin with brick-wall ancestor Joseph Davis. He has been an enigma to all his descendants. Some folks have incorrectly added Joseph Davis and Hannah Doane to their tree as his parents.

I believe some information about Joseph that gets repeated came from a posting on a Genealogy.com message board back in 2001:

“Joseph Davis was born about 1776–1780 in Guilford County, North Carolina, and died May 9, 1837 in Lafayette County, MO…Joseph is buried in Zion Hill Cemetery, Ernestville, Saline County, MO.”¹

There’s not a scrap of evidence on any family tree to support these statements. My searches on Ancestry and FamilySearch have yielded nothing, either. There isn’t even a marriage record for Joseph and his wife, Sarah Ann Hamilton (though other evidence supports this marriage).

Recently, using the full-text search function at FamilySearch, I’ve dug up quite a bit about Joseph and others. I believe I have excellent candidates for his parents, though I am still working on a proof argument to show that he was the son of William and Elizabeth (MNU) Davis. All the evidence is circumstantial, but strong.

The case hinges on geography. The group of families I named above were clustered in the drainage of Abbotts Creek and a tributary called Rich Fork. This area was first part of Rowan County and later split off to form Davidson County in 1822. This region abuts the southwestern Guilford County line, which is where we have our first concrete record for Joseph: the 1800 census.

In that year, Joseph is living next door to his father-in-law, John Hamilton. There is a female adult, a girl under 10, and 3 enslaved people in his household.² Joseph was also enumerated in Guilford in the 1810, 1820, and 1830 censuses. In the 1790 census there were only three Davis households in all of Guilford County. In neighboring Rowan County, there were twenty-six Davis households.³ The overwhelming odds are that Joseph was born in Rowan County. There was a Joseph Davis in Rowan who was probably “my” Joseph’s uncle.

The other reason I place Joseph’s origin in Rowan, and in Abbotts Creek particularly, is that his children married into—and moved to Missouri with—those other families who all came from that place. Joseph’s son, Hamilton C. Davis (my 3^rd great-grandfather) married Christina Mock.⁴ Christina’s grandfather, Philip Mock, bought land from William Davis, the man I believe is Hamilton Davis’s grandfather.⁵

William Davis wrote his will in February 1799 and died that summer.⁶ He lists as heirs his “wife” (no name), sons John Davis and Solomon Davis, a slew of daughters (no last names for them), and then two more sons: William and Joseph Davis. These last two inherited William Sr.’s land and were his executors. At the time of the will, neither of these sons had children. That puts this Joseph in the right age range to be my ancestor, as well as in the right place.

Given that Joseph was old enough to serve as executor in 1799, I place his probable birth year as 1778 or 1777. His brother William (who appears together with Joseph in a number of land records), was reportedly born May 2, 1778.⁷ These brothers might have been twins (they were named jointly in the will whereas all their siblings were named individually).⁸ I’ll be working to solidify Joseph’s place in the William and Elizabeth Davis family. That will be a separate post.

What about Joseph’s death? Certainly I’ve found no records for him as late as 1840, so I believe he died prior to that year. His children relocated to western Missouri in the 1830s. Did Joseph go with them?

Joseph owned a fair amount of land in North Carolina (and enslaved people). So did his sons before they moved. What I can’t seem to find is any record of disposition for these properties. Nor are there probate records for Joseph in either state. A Guilford County courthouse fire in 1872 could be the culprit.⁹ Probate records for Lafayette County in the 1830s do exist, but no Joseph Davis is listed.

No death record. No burial record. No record of any kind puts Joseph in Missouri. His sons bought government land there. Why didn’t he? If he died in Missouri, why are his widow and sons buried in a different cemetery (Pisgah)?

No history book mentions him in Missouri, either, though his son-in-law John Scott was one of Lafayette County’s first white residents, plus several sons and David Mock (Hamilton Davis’s father-in-law) are recorded as arriving not long after.¹⁰

Let’s suppose that Joseph did die in May 1837. His widow, Sarah, did not give a Power of Attorney to her son, Hamilton, until December.¹¹ Why the delay? I suspect she and Joseph were in North Carolina, and she moved to Missouri after Joseph’s death. She is living with Hamilton Davis in Lafayette County in the 1840 census.¹²

I may not be able to solve the mystery of Joseph’s death, but stay tuned for more about his (probable) birth family.

Feature image: Views at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, North Carolina. The battle fought here on March 15, 1781, was the largest, most hotly-contested action of the Revolutionary War’s climactic Southern Campaign. The serious loss of British manpower suffered at Guilford Courthouse foreshadowed Lord Cornwallis’s final defeat at Yorktown seven months later. Joseph Davis’s father-in-law, John Hamilton, fought in this battle. (Wikimedia Commons)