The Davis story actually started in the British Isles many years ago. The name Davis is from Welch ancestry, but this writers grandfather claimed more Scotts-Irish ancestry about how the Davis clan came to America. We do know they settled in what is now the state of
Tennessee where my Grand-father Harvey Broone Davis was born in the town of known as Knoxville.
This was on September 2, 1869. the war between the state had only ended four years before (1865). Ulysses S. Grant the famous Union General had just been elected the eighteenth president of the USA and 22 days after Grandpa, H. B. Davis was born. President Grant ordered the U.S. treasury to sell four million dollars worth of gold, this created the panic on Wall Street known in history as "Black Friday" September 24, 1869.
Grandpa never talked very much about his family, but he did tell us he had one brother, who they called "Doc". "Doc" was younger then Grandpa, H. B. and left home in his early teens. The last the family heard from "Doc" he was a conductor, on a train, working in the deep southern states.
Young Harvey B. Davis worked in a stone quarry near Knoxville. One evening on his way home from work he stopped at a farm and brought a quarter of beef. Continuing his walk home, it was just getting dark, when he heard what sounded like a woman's scream. He stopped to listen and heard some rocks tumbling on the slope behind him. He realized what he had heard, was a panther, so he quickly dropped the quarter of beef and did a three minute mile home.
Harvey was married in Tennessee, he was only 17 years old and his first daughter, Maude May Davis, was born December 7, 1886. Grover Cleveland is president now (22nd) and in October, 1886 the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor.
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