Anne Turberville Beale and Joseph Hoomes Davis
Joseph Hoomes Davis first married Martha F. Beale and had one son, Robert Beale Davis (1835 – 1864) who was killed at the Battle of Peebles Farm near Petersburg, Virginia during the Civil War. Martha never recovered from childbirth, leaving Davis, a Methodist circuit minister, with an infant child. Davis turned to his wife’s sister, Anne T. Beale, for help, which she provided soon coming to love the boy as her own. Indeed, as time progressed it is evident through the many tender letters exchanged between the traveling minister and Anne Beale that a romance was growing. They wed in Baltimore on 10 May, 1838, and she joined him as he accepted a post in New Bern, North Carolina. They had the following children:
- Wilbur Fisk Davis (1839 – 1912)
- John Williams Corbin Davis (1841 – 1913)
- Olin Lee Turberville Davis (1844 – 1922)
- Martha Anne “Nannie” Davis (1846 – 1932)
We proceed to follow this to my mother by selecting Olin Lee Turberville Davis from the list above. Olin was a school teacher in Westmoreland county, raised in the strict Methodist household of Joseph H. Davis and Anne T. Beale.
George W. Murphy was the son of John Ballantine Murphy and Million Browne Wishart. The Murphys had settled at Ayrfield, about 10 miles from the Beal home at Hickory Hill, in the late 1700s, taking over the vast holdings of John Ballantine, who died around 1790. The property passed to his wife Ann, who then married John Turberville. After his death in 1799 and then her death in 1834, the property passed to her son, John Ballantine Murphy. Following their marriage in 1820, John B. Murphy and Million Wishart had the following children:
- John Sidney Murphy (1821 – 1841)
- Robert Wishart Murphy (1823 – ? )
- William Wishart Murphy (1826 – 1871)
- George Wishart Murphy (1829 – 1905)
- Anne Elizabeth Murphy (1832 – 1921)
George W. Murphy married Olin Lee Turberville Davis on 6 November, 1877. They lived at Ayrfield, the place where George grew up and continued farming after the war. His father had died in 1867. They had the following children:
- Frank Marvin Murphy (1879 – 1962)
- George Wishart Murphy, Jr. (1885 – 1920)
- Olin “Little Olin” Murphy (1887 – 1887)
Of these children, only the eldest survived to have children. George W. Murphy, Jr. completed schooling at Randolph Macon College and became the Superintendent of Schools in Westmoreland County. He began to suffer from some kind of debilitating disease such as multiple sclerosis or possible Lou Gehrig’s Disease and was eventually confined to a wheelchair, dying in 1920. Little Olin was born on Christmas Day 1887 and died five days later, a matter of great sadness for years to come.
Frank Marvin Murphy, known all his life as Marvin, remained at Ayrfield and took over the farm. He attended Randolph Macon for two years but was not able to return and finish, as his father died in 1905 and Marvin was needed to run the farm, leaving his brother to completed his education. In addition to farming, he received some engineering training from his uncle, John W. C. Davis, who was a land surveyor, and Marvin began surveying with him. When Davis died in 1913, Marvin was able to take over the job, and inherited his Uncle John’s surveying equipment and drafting tools. He surveyed land the rest of his life. During the Depression, he also supplemented his income by selling real estate, having obtained a license. During the time between the death of his mother in 1922 and his marriage in 1932, he pinched a few pennies by boarding up Ayrfield and staying with Mr. Charles Taylor at The Grove a couple of miles away in Kinsale. He was joined here by several Bailey cousins, the family of Joseph Harvey Bailey, and also on occasion by his Whittaker cousins, the family of Fred Whittaker. The wives of Bailey and Whittaker were sisters, the daughters of his uncle, Wilbur F. Davis.
Marvin Murphy had met his future bride a few times between 1900 and 1930. In fact, she was his cousin, the granddaughter of Williams Thomas Davis, his mother’s uncle. Hope Alice Dadmun (1893 – 1962) visited Ayrfield several times in her youth as she met her country family (she grew up in Petersburg and Richmond) and spent some time away from the city. The details of the courtship are lost to us now, but Marvin Murphy at the tender age of 53 married Hope Alice Dadmun on 23 July, 1932. They had only one child, Hope Alice Murphy, born in 1935.
Hope Alice Murphy, known to this day as Jackie, grew up at Ayrfield, attended St. Margaret’s School in Tappahannock and Women’s College of Greensboro in North Carolina. She returned to Ayrfield and helped with the farm, gradually taking it over from her parents, who died within a few months of each other in 1962.
Jackie met her cousin Arthur Davis Whittaker during many of his visits to Kinsale over the years. His mother lived in Kinsale and he visited when he could. He had started going to sea in the late 1930s, and following World War II he spent some time helping Marvin Murphy with some surveying, picking up a little more of the trade, as he had done some surveying in a CCC camp in the mid-1930s. He went back to sea, and had become a very successful engineer in oil tankers for National Bulk Carriers by the 1950s. He spent a lot of time away, but always returned to Kinsale to catch up with his family. He and Jackie were married on 7 October, 1961 at Ayrfield.
Arthur ended his seagoing career in 1964 and took up land surveying as his father in law had done. Jackie had inherited all of her father’s equipment and Marvin had built an office at Ayrfield to store his tools and to do his office work and drafting. Arthur took it all over in the early 1970s after surveying for several years with an old Navy Seabee named J. Arthur Cooke, where he finished learning his trade and obtained his own surveyors license. He surveyed land the rest of his life also, semi-retiring at the age of 80 in 1993. He died quietly on 26 June, 1997, 13 days after his 84th birthday.
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