Dave’s Genealogy

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.

I went to the Isle of Wight county courthouse today for a little while to get oriented.  The staff in the records room could not have been friendlier, and I saw them assisting a lady getting documentation for membership in the Jamestown Society – a group of direct descendants of Jamestown colonists – as though they were looking for one of their own relatives. They were dedicated and very helpful!

While getting a few tips from the staff on how the records are arranged, and what finding aids they have and how to use them, it became apparent that it will be quite a challenge to find anything about our Davis folk, since the one name we have from the time our family lived there is John Davis.  There were pages of references to John Davis throughout the index to the Will Books.  Several John Davis references in the marriage books.  None seemed to have wed the elusive Elizabeth Edwards.  Several Johns were mentioned in the wills of other Davises, and one of them may just be our forebear.  The connective tissue will be hard to find.

Since the marriage records were of little (or no) help, I think the best bet will be the land records in the deed books and tax records.  I may be able to find the right Davis and discover some more family members.  I am itching to go back on a day when I can spend more than an hour there!

After putting it off for a while, I made a start on the Davis family page.  I have a lot of information already, but putting it together is a challenge.  I think I’ll have to start with a few people and build things out from there.  I started with the origin of our Davises in Virginia, telling the old story of the three Welsh Davis brothers that reputedly founded our line.  Our earliest named Davis was John Davis of Isle of Wight county who was said to have been the son of one of the original three brothers.

I want to find some more information on the shadowy John Davis and his father and uncles.  We know they settled in Isle of Wight county, and John moved to Gloucester county with his family sometime before 1800, possibly as early as the 1780s, and acquired some property named Oak Lawn.  We have some family notes and a tree prepared by John W. C. Davis (my great-grandfather’s brother) that indicate that John Davis married Elizabeth Edwards.  Perhaps that explains the Edwards part of Williams Edwards Davis’s name, but what about the Williams part?  I’m going to have to take a day off and go to the Isle of Wight courthouse, and most definitely to Gloucester.  OK, maybe I don’t have as much information as I thought I did.