DAVIS FAMILY.

George Washington Davis.

File set up by RKW.

Notes from book “Blue Stem Country” by Pauline Kennedy Jones.

Page 49 - George Washington Davis and Malinda Jane Stansbury family were early day settlers in Polo, Kansas, and Atlanta, Kansas. One of George’s younger daughters, Mary Adeline Davis, married Willis Wilson as a second wife. She was married to him after his first family was grown. His house was right across the street from the George Washington Davis house in Atlanta. Mary had been a teacher at Lone Tree or Prairie View School.

George had been in the Civil War, and served in the Missouri Militia on the Union side. There were 12 children in the family.

George wasn’t only a farmer in Richland township, but was a blacksmith, buggy and wagon maker, carpenter, and a coffin maker. He was the eldest son of William M. Davis. His son, George Washington Davis, Jr., worked with his father in the long shed on the Davis place in Atlanta. George’s wife, Malinda, wove the cloth and cut and tailored the suit that George Washington Davis, Jr., wore in his pictures. She also lined the coffins that her husband built. The Davis’s used the loveliest satins.

Pearl Davis Bean stated that the first dead person she had ever seen was in the parlor of the Davis house in Atlanta.

The eldest daughter of William M. Davis and of his wife, Oney Belle Allman, died of appendicitis.

The parlor was where the family bible was kept on a special stand, and was usually off limits to the rambunctious grandchildren; but when Nora Davis died, her coffin lay in the place reserved for the bible.

George Washington Davis, Jr., married Minnie Irene Rhoads. Their children were Clarence Rhoads Davis, Viola Grace Davis, Pearl May Davis and George Newton Davis. George Newton Davis was the father of Elizabeth Davis Ivey.

[Information from Pearl Davis Bean, historian, Elizabeth Davis Ivey.]

Other notes from the same book.

G. W. Davis, Sr., first settled at Polo, Ks. and moved his house and family to Atlanta, Ks. (in 1885) when they discovered the railroad would bypass Polo but would have a station at Atlanta, Ks. He moved his house, on wheels, to section 16 of Omnia Township, on the Frisco railroad.

Another family (Ed and Inez Davis) also lived in the Polo district in the early days.

(Were they related?)

Charlene Davis was a clerk in the Atlanta Postoffice in 1884/5.

(Was she a relative?)

There is a picture of the Davis farm in 1890.

There is a picture of Margaret Elizabeth Davis (Ketterman). (Was she a relative?)

Page 137 refers to G. W. Davis, Jr. as coming to Floral from Polo, Atlanta, and Wilmot. He ran a blacksmith shop in Floral.

Page 307 says George Davis came here in 1880 settling in Richland Township at a location on the farm. He was a business man at Polo, Kansas, where he ran a blacksmith shop and a farmer. Mr. Davis was in the Civil War, for the Missouri State Militia cavalry. After being a blacksmith in the service, he came to Polo, then to Atlanta with blacksmith shop. His son, George Davis Jr., had a blacksmith shop at Wilmot, Floral and Kellogg, Kansas. John H. Davis and wife Cathrine owned land in Richland township.

Coming here from Missouri, blacksmith by trade, setting up a business here, and a family of 12 children.

G. W. Davis took on a task to move houses from Polo, Kansas, to the new Atlanta, Kansas. His task took him to the timber to select logs to cut. They cut down the tall trees, for they needed long poles for the job. It took 2 long poles the right length, a team of horses, man power to fix the poles on rollers and a task began which took all day to go 4 miles east to Atlanta. They had many on lookers to see that the task was done.

Moving day was a big task and a full days job for the movers. It was a sight seeing thing to do, and go the length of the poles and stop and roll back the poles and began again.

The Davis’s later moved to Oklahoma to live and the families settled around the area.

(Information from Elizabeth Davis Ivey and Winfield Courier.)

George Washington Davis was born in 1832 in Kentucky. His parents were John Davis and Catherine Price Davis of Virginia. He was married in 1851 to Malinda Jane Stanbury, who was born in 1834 in Lurel City, Kentucky, They were married at Ava in Douglas County, Missouri. They migrated to Atlanta, Kansas from Appanous city, in Iowa between 1874 and 1884.