The John Davis Challange – continued

I was able to spend about 5 hours doing research at the Isle of Wight County courthouse on Friday.  Since I had already poked around the marriage registers and discovered nothing particularly useful there, I decided to focus on wills and deeds.  I will post specific research notes from the visit in a page under the Davis page on this site.

I went through deeds first, starting with the year 1700.  I worked through about the year 1800, going through the index of each deed book to pick out the Davis deeds.  The deeds conveying property from one Davis to another were the most promising, but still I found very little of direct interest.  In short, I was unable to find a shred of proof corroborating the family tree I have.  I did find an Edwards Davis, but found no direct connections to our tree.

Next, I went through the wills.  Again, I began early in the 1700s, but not quite as far back, since I would likely not recognize any of the names that far back since they have not been revealed to me.  I found several Davis families, several John Davises, several Samuel Davises and several William Davises.  There were no references to Philip Davis, Stephen Davis or any of the other listed Davis members on my tree.  I am beginning to think the trail will have to be rediscovered in Gloucester and possibly traced back to a more fertile source of information on the preceding generations.  It is still possible that the Davis branch we belong to may have been from Surry County, Southampton County or even Nansemond County, all adjoining Isle of Wight.