Aunts & Uncles~James Francis Davis Sr.

The “Aunts & Uncles” series of biographical sketches are Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiled narratives of selected individuals from my Genealogical database.  The selected AI will used the RootsMagic Individual Summary from my Genealogical Software, Roots Magic. All genealogical data is my research material acquired over the past 46 years of research. Today's Web post is a Biography of James Francis Davis, Sr. (1743-1808) compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 5 Median.   

                                          James Francis Davis Sr.

1743 – 1808

A Life on the Carolina and Kentucky Frontier

Born	1743, Craven County (later Marion District), South Carolina
Died	Before 5 February 1808, Mercer County, Kentucky
Parents	Rev. David Davis (1717–1793) and Jane Miles (1720–1772)
First wife	Margaret [maiden name unknown] (c. 1744 – c. 1768)
Second wife	Jane B. [maiden name unknown] (c. 1762 – 1841)
Migration	SC → Anson/Mecklenburg/Tryon Co., NC (c. 1762) → Mercer/Lincoln Co., KY (c. 1791–1792)
Military service	Private, Bowman's Company, 1st North Carolina Continental Line (discharged 28 May 1778); Adair's Regiment, Cavalry, Kentucky Volunteers (1793)
Relationship to Charlie Purvis	5th great-granduncle

 

Early Life and Carolina Origins

James Francis Davis Sr. was born in 1743 in Craven County, South Carolina – territory later reorganized as the Marion District. He was a son of the Rev. David Davis (1717–1793) and Jane Miles (1720–1772). Around 1762, James migrated northward into Anson County, North Carolina, together with his brother John. The portion of Anson County where the brothers settled was carved off in 1762–63 to form the new county of Mecklenburg, so James Davis appears in the earliest surviving Mecklenburg County records.

His first documented appearance in the county is a deed dated 21 January 1764, in which James Davis conveyed 480 acres on both sides of Sugar Creek to James Kerr (Mecklenburg County Deed Book 1, pages 622–623). Three months later, on 21 April 1764, he received a formal land grant of his own in Mecklenburg County, part of North Carolina's colonial land-grant program (Certificate range 1–616).

Marriage to Margaret and the Sugar Creek Lands

James married his first wife, Margaret (maiden name not yet identified), sometime before October 1765. The couple appear together in a run of Mecklenburg County land transactions along Sugar Creek between 1765 and 1766: a 3 October 1765 deed conveying 300 acres to James Johnston (Deed Book 4, page 333); a related 21 October 1765 conveyance of 500 acres to John Davis, apparently the source tract for the Johnston sale (Deed Book 11, pages 19–20); and a lease-and-release pair dated 23–24 October 1765 conveying 125 acres to Robert McCleary, on which Margaret signed with her mark (Deed Book 4, page 696).

A separate transaction the following year brought land into the family rather than out of it: on 6 October 1766, John Davis conveyed 114 acres on the north side of Rocky River to James Davis, land John had originally received from colonial governor Arthur Dobbs in 1762.

By 1768–1769 James had relocated to the newly formed Tryon County, North Carolina, while retaining his Mecklenburg County land interests; a deed dated 18 April 1769 shows him, then “of Tryon County,” selling 200 acres on Sugar Creek to Arthur Patterson. The couple's son Samuel was born in October 1768. Margaret appears to have died shortly afterward, as family research places her death around that time.

Revolutionary War Service

James Davis served in the American Revolution as a private in Bowman's Company, 1st North Carolina Continental Line, and was discharged on 28 May 1778. His service is recorded in North Carolina's Revolutionary War muster and payroll records (NARA microfilm M246), which document the pay, strength, and supply records of North Carolina Continental units between 1775 and 1783.

Second Marriage and Return to Mecklenburg County

Following Margaret's death, James married a second wife, Jane B. (maiden name not yet identified), born about 1762. The couple's first known child, Richard, was born in 1779. James and Jane eventually returned to Mecklenburg County, where the last North Carolina record of the family is a deed dated 1 December 1784: James Davis, planter, and his wife Jane, of Mecklenburg County, conveyed 114 acres on the north side of the river to Walter Pharr for one hundred and seventy pounds (Deed Book 12, pages 550–552). In the deed's formal covenants, James and Jane warranted that they were the “true lawfull and rightful” owners of the land and pledged to defend Pharr's title against all claims.

Removal to Kentucky

Around 1791–1792, James Davis and his family joined the westward migration into Kentucky, settling in the area that became Mercer and Lincoln Counties. He appears in Kentucky's post-Revolutionary War militia records: on 15 November 1793 he mustered as a private in Adair's Regiment, Cavalry Volunteers. He was also enumerated on Mercer County's 1800 tax list.

Final Years, Will, and Death

James Davis wrote his last will and testament on 23 December 1806 in Mercer County, Kentucky, naming his brother Samuel Davis as trustee and sole executor for the benefit of his family. The will directed that the estate be managed or sold for the support and education of his children, with each legatee to receive an equal share upon reaching the age of twenty-one, and his wife's share to be paid within a year of his death. The will was proved in Mercer County Court in February 1807 on the oath of witnesses Bennett Buke (Bull) and Samuel Davis.

James Davis died in Mercer County, Kentucky, before 5 February 1808 – the date on which the court-appointed appraisers, James Harlan, William Sevier, and Bennett Ball, completed their inventory of his modest estate. The inventory, returned to the court by executor Samuel Davis, totaled $159 and included a bay horse, a bay mare, fourteen hogs, eleven sheep, farm and blacksmithing tools, three beds with bedsteads, a chest, seven old books, pewter and earthenware, a table, and five old chairs – the working possessions of a Kentucky frontier farming household.

Family tradition holds that James's widow and two sons remained in Mercer County through the 1810 census, after which Jane moved with sons William and James Jr. to Madison County, Kentucky. By the latter part of the 1830s the family had migrated further south and west, likely traveling by river down the Ohio and Mississippi; William Davis settled in Obion County, Tennessee, while James Jr. and his mother continued downriver into Mississippi. Jane was still living in 1840, residing in Yazoo County, Mississippi – the last record of her.

Children

Child	Birth	Mother	Notes
Samuel Davis	October 1768	Margaret	Named as trusted witness to his father's 1806 Kentucky will alongside brother Samuel; family tradition holds a Samuel Davis served as executor of James's estate in 1808 (see Research Note).
Richard Davis	1779	Jane B.	First child of the second marriage.
William Davis	1780	Jane B.	Later settled in Obion County, Tennessee.
Daughter (name unknown)	c. 1780s	Jane B.	Married or died before 1810.
Son (traditionally “Hugh Davis”)	c. 1780s	Jane B.	Family tradition holds he migrated to Mississippi and later Louisiana.
James Davis Jr.	c. 1790–1791	Jane B.	Accompanied his widowed mother to Madison County, Kentucky, and later further south and west.

 

Research Notes

Research Note The 1806 will names James's wife as “Polly Davis” and lists children Joseph, John, Jane, Thomas, James Harry, and Polly Davis – names that do not match the children (Samuel, Richard, William, an unnamed daughter, the traditional “Hugh,” and James Jr.) attributed to James and his wives Margaret and Jane B. in the compiled family narrative and family group sheet. This is a genuine discrepancy in the source material rather than an oversight in this biography, and it deserves a closer look: either the will belongs to a different, contemporaneous James Davis of Mercer County, or the compiled family tree has not yet reconciled a third marriage or a fuller set of children. Until the underlying will and inventory images are reviewed directly, the will's family details are presented here as recorded, unmerged with the family group sheet's children. All reference  to the Will have been removed until the conflict in data can be resolved.  One cited source (Edmund West, comp., Family Data Collection – Individual Records, Ancestry.com) lists James Francis Davis's birth year as 1743 in one citation and, in an endnote reproduction of the same record, a birth year of 1793 – evidently a transcription slip, since 1793 would conflict with his documented 1764 land grant and 1765 marriage. The 1743 birth year is treated as correct throughout this biography, consistent with the land, marriage, and military records. The Davis family's descent is given in Harry Alexander Davis's The Davis Family (Davies and David) in Wales and America (1927) as David⁴, Evan², Morgan¹ – i.e., James Francis Davis was of the fourth generation from immigrant ancestor Morgan David of Pennsylvania. This published genealogy remains the source of most of the family's earlier Welsh-Pennsylvania lineage claims and would benefit from independent verification. It been 218 years since the death of James Francis Davis, Sr. Over more than two centuries, it becomes almost impossible to identify every child, spouse, relative, residence, and personal artifact connected to an ancestor with complete certainty. Records may have been lost to fires, wars, courthouse moves, weather, neglect, or simple deterioration, while many births and deaths were never formally recorded at all. Names were often misspelled, abbreviated, reused across generations, or recorded differently by census takers, clergy, neighbors, and family members. Children born outside of marriage, those who died young, stepchildren, adopted children, and relatives raised in another household may be especially difficult to trace. Family stories, cemetery markers, probate files, land records, military documents, and later genealogical research can offer valuable clues, but they may also disagree because each source was created at a different time, by a different person, and for a different purpose. As a result, conflicts in ancestral data do not necessarily mean that one account is deliberately wrong; they often reflect the incomplete and changing record left behind by people whose lives were not documented as fully as we might wish.

James Francis Davis, Sr. is my 5th Great GrandUncle.

Sources

Harry Alexander Davis, The Davis Family (Davies and David) in Wales and America: genealogy of Morgan David of Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C.: H. A. Davis, 1927), 52 and 72.

North Carolina Land Grant Files, 1693–1960; State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh; James Davis, issued 21 April 1764, Mecklenburg County.

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Deed Books 1, 4, 11, and 12 (various dates, 1764–1784); Register of Deeds, Charlotte, NC; digitized at FamilySearch.org.

Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775–1783, North Carolina; NARA microfilm M246; muster rolls and payrolls of American Army units.

U.S., Compiled Service Records, Post-Revolutionary War Volunteer Soldiers, 1784–1811; James Davis, Adair's Regiment, Cavalry, Volunteers, Kentucky, mustered 15 November 1793.

Kentucky, U.S., Tax Lists, 1799–1801; James Davis, Mercer County, 1800.

Appraisement and Inventory of the Estate of James Davis, deceased, 5 February 1808, Mercer County, Kentucky Court Records, page 319; FamilySearch.org.

Edmund West, comp., Family Data Collection – Individual Records [database on-line] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2000), James Francis Davis.

Prepared by

Charles Purvis, Claude Sonnett 5 Median AI and Perplexity AI.  

CPurvis1@gmail.com

52 Cousins~Elias Branson “Eli” Huneycutt

The “52 Cousins” series of biographical sketches are Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiled narratives of selected individuals from my Genealogical database. The selected AI will used documents and data from my RootsMagic Genealogical Software. All genealogical data is my research material acquired over the past 46+ years of research. Today's Biography of Elias Branson “Eli” Huneycutt was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 4:

Elias Branson “Eli” Huneycutt

1787 – 1857

A Piedmont North Carolina Farmer and Family Patriarch

Quick Facts

Born	31 August 1787, Orange County, North Carolina
Baptized	9 September 1798, St. John's Lutheran Church, near Mount Pleasant, Cabarrus County, NC
Died	before February 1857, Stanly County, North Carolina
Parents	Dempsey Huneycutt Sr. (1765–1849) and Rutha Keys (1766–1834)
Spouse	Leah Stough (1792–1857), married 1808, Montgomery County, NC
Children	13, born between about 1809 and about 1839
Residence	Wagster → West Pee Dee River, Montgomery County, then Furrs / Furr Township, Stanly County, NC
Burial	Eli B. Huneycutt Cemetery, Stanfield, Stanly County, NC

Overview

Elias Branson Huneycutt — known to his family and in the records simply as “Eli” — spent his entire life within a few miles of the Pee Dee River in the North Carolina Piedmont, farming land that his own father had helped clear a generation earlier. Born in 1787 into a family of German Lutheran heritage, Eli lived through the transformation of the North Carolina backcountry from raw frontier to settled farm country, watched the county he lived in be renamed not once but effectively reorganized when Stanly County was carved out of Montgomery County in 1841, and raised thirteen children who in turn scattered surnames — Hartsell, Barbee, Osborne, Holt, Drake, Little — across the same corner of the Piedmont. His 1856 will, written in his own careful hand less than a year before his death, is a small time capsule of rural Southern farm life: sorrel mares, sidesaddles, blacksmith tools, wheat, corn, and fifteen head of hogs, all divided among a wife and children with evident care.

Early Life and Family Origins

Eli was born on 31 August 1787, most likely in Orange County, North Carolina, the son of Dempsey Huneycutt Sr. (1765–1849) and his wife Rutha Keys (1766–1834). The family name appears in surviving records under a remarkable variety of spellings — Huneycutt, Honeycutt, Hunnycutt, Huneycutte, and in the original German-language church register, “Hannikot” — a reminder that the Huneycutts were part of the wave of German-speaking settlers who moved into the North Carolina Piedmont in the eighteenth century and whose names were phonetically re-spelled by English-speaking clerks and pastors for generations afterward.

Eli was baptized on 9 September 1798, at eleven years of age, at St. John's Lutheran Church near Mount Pleasant in Cabarrus County. The baptism was recorded by the Rev. Adam Nicholas Marcard, who on that same day baptized a whole run of Dempsey and Ruth Honeycutt's children together — Elias, Joseph, Mary, William, and others — with sponsors including George Gobel, Conrad Udi, Sybilla Springer, and Jacob Mueller standing as godparents. Group baptisms of several siblings on a single day were common on the frontier, where a Lutheran pastor might visit a rural congregation only occasionally.

Marriage and Family Life

Eli married Leah Stough in Montgomery County, North Carolina, in 1808. Leah was the daughter of Andrew Stough (1748–1839) and Mary Stough, and like the Huneycutts, the Stough family belonged to the German Lutheran and Reformed settlement of the Carolina Piedmont. The couple's first appearance together in the federal census comes in 1810, when the household of “Ele Honegeatt” was recorded in the Wagster district of Montgomery County: a young husband and wife, both aged 16–25, with an infant son — almost certainly Andrew Jackson Huneycutt, born the year before.

Over the next three decades Eli and Leah raised a large family along the West Pee Dee River. The 1840 census, taken in the West Pee Dee River district of Montgomery County, shows a household that had grown to include the couple (now in their fifties and forties) and a full house of sons and daughters at various ages, reflecting the family in the middle of its child-rearing years. By 1850, enumerated in the Furrs district (by then in the newly formed Stanly County), Eli was recorded as a 63-year-old farmer, with Leah, several unmarried adult children, and younger daughters still living at home.

Land and Livelihood

On 3 April 1837, Eli — recorded in the grant as “Eli Branson Honeycut” — was granted 100 acres in Montgomery County on the waters of Hartsell's Branch, land that bordered tracts belonging to his father Dempsey Huneycutt and to Adam and George H. Honeycutt, evidently kinsmen. The grant, formally dated 2 March 1838 and signed by Secretary of State William Hill and Governor Edward B. Dudley, is typical of the state land-grant system by which North Carolina converted vacant “waste and unappropriated” land into private farmsteads throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — a process that, cumulatively, built the patchwork of small family farms that defined the Piedmont countryside.

Eli's household appears again in the 1850 federal census as a working farm in the Furrs district of the new Stanly County, with grown and half-grown children still contributing labor to the farm — exactly the pattern of a mid-nineteenth-century subsistence-and-market farm, where sons and daughters remained at home well into their twenties to help work the land before marrying and, often, settling nearby.

Leah Stough Huneycutt — Wife and Partner

Leah Stough was born about 1792 in North Carolina, the daughter of Andrew Stough (1748–1839) and Mary Stough. She and Eli were married for nearly fifty years, raising thirteen children together on the family farm. Leah outlived her husband by only a matter of months, dying on 1 September 1857 in Stanly County. She is buried, like Eli, in the Eli B. Huneycutt Cemetery near Stanfield, Stanly County.

Leah's own inheritance from her father shaped the family's fortunes in a small but telling way: the forty-acre tract that she and Eli sold to Brittain L. Green in May 1856 is described in the deed as “the land willed to her by her father,” a reminder that in this Piedmont farming community, land passed down through both the husband's and the wife's family lines.

Children of Elias and Leah Huneycutt

Eli and Leah raised thirteen children to adulthood (or, in a few cases, to at least a documented adult age), whose marriages tied the Huneycutt family into a wide network of Stanly and Montgomery County families — Hartsell, Barbee, Osborne, Holt (twice over, through two different daughters), Drake, and Little among them.

Child	Born – Died	Spouse (Marriage)	Notes
Andrew Jackson “Andy” Huneycutt Sr.	1 Jan 1809 – 29 May 1903	Mary Ann Crayton (1808–1887), m. abt. 1830; Sarah Catherine Morton (1858–1911), m. 12 Jan 1888, Stanly Co., NC	Locust, Stanly Co., NC. Lived to age 94; local newspaper subject.
Elizabeth Huneycutt	abt. 1812 – (not recorded)	None recorded	Named in father's 1856 will as needing care in her 'infirm' state.
Mary Nancy Huneycutt	1814 – 20 Feb 1862	Holden Hartsell (1816–1865), m. abt. 1837, Montgomery Co., NC
Joseph K. Huneycutt	abt. 1815 – (not recorded)	Catherine Whitley	Co-executor of father's 1856 will; inherited land north of Rock Hole Creek.
Sarah “Sally” Huneycutt	abt. 1816 – after 1892	Gabriel Barbee (1813–1880), m. 1 Aug 1833, Cabarrus Co., NC
Emaline Malinda Huneycutt	abt. 1819 – after 1 Sep 1898	Joshua J. Osborne (1817–1888), m. abt. 1843
Benda Caroline “Beedy” Huneycutt	1 Mar 1821 – 29 Oct 1913	Benjamin Alexander Holt (1828–1882), m. 25 Jan 1855
Susanna Huneycutt	abt. 1823 – (not recorded)	None recorded
Eli James Monroe Huneycutt	9 Mar 1827 – 8 Mar 1899	Clarinda Little (1831–1898)	Furr Township, Stanly Co., NC. Inherited his father's homeplace tract.
James Madison Huneycutt	14 Mar 1832 – 27 Jan 1904	Beadie Ann Drake (1828–1892), m. 6 Jun 1856, Stanly Co., NC	Co-executor of father's will; inherited the family blacksmith shop and tools.
Margaret Pauline “Perlina” Huneycutt	5 May 1835 – 16 Feb 1915	John Allen Holt (1829–1913)	N. Albemarle, Stanly Co., NC; buried Old Freedom Cemetery.
Martha M. Huneycutt	abt. 1837 – (not recorded)	None recorded
Leah Malinda Huneycutt	abt. 1839 – (not recorded)	None recorded

Research Note The daughters named in Eli's 1856 will — “Elizabeth and Mary and Sally and Susanna & Martha and Leah & Malinda and Lastly Caroline” — do not map perfectly one-to-one onto the family group sheet's naming of Margaret Pauline “Perlina” and Leah Malinda as separate individuals. This may reflect informal or shortened naming conventions common in nineteenth-century wills rather than a discrepancy in the underlying family; it is noted here for future researchers rather than resolved. Two daughters, Benda Caroline “Beedy” Huneycutt and Margaret Pauline “Perlina” Huneycutt, each married a man surnamed Holt (Benjamin Alexander Holt and John Allen Holt, respectively) — an interesting double connection between the Huneycutt and Holt families of Stanly County worth exploring further.

Final Years, Will, and Death

On 26 April 1856, “being of sound mind & memory but considering the uncertainty of my existence,” Eli B. Hunnycutt dictated and signed (by his mark) his last will and testament in Stanly County. The will is an unusually rich document for a farming family of modest means, itemizing not just land but the tools and animals of daily rural life: a sorrel mare named Beck, a sidesaddle and bridle, two beds and furniture, a four-horse wagon with gears and harness, and a full set of blacksmith's tools that Eli directed be kept in a shop and made available to any of his sons who wished to work there.

Eli divided his land primarily among three sons. Joseph K. received the land north of Rock Hole Creek; Eli James Monroe received the hundred-acre tract he was already living on; and the home place went jointly to Leah and James Madison, with the arrangement that they would live there together “so long as she lives or remains a widow” — land that would pass fully to James Madison if Leah remarried or left. Son Andrew received a token bequest of one dollar, “which I do think will make him equal with the balance of the children,” implying Andrew had already received his share of the estate by an earlier gift or settlement. The residue of bacon, wheat, corn, and livestock on hand was left for the immediate support of the household, and any final surplus after debts was to be divided among Leah and the eight named daughters.

Eli died sometime before February 1857 in Stanly County. His will was proved in open court at the February 1857 term of Stanly County court, on the oaths of witnesses Matthias Furr and Aaron Hartsell (elsewhere recorded as “Matthew Barr”), and sons Joseph K. and James Madison Huneycutt were sworn in as executors. Eli and Leah are buried together in the Eli B. Huneycutt Cemetery at Stanfield, Stanly County, North Carolina — ground that, fittingly, the family itself had farmed for two generations.

Historical Context The Huneycutt and Stough families were part of a larger migration of German-speaking Lutheran and Reformed families who settled the North Carolina Piedmont — particularly Rowan, Cabarrus, Montgomery, and (after 1841) Stanly Counties — in the mid-1700s, drawn south along the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania. St. John's Lutheran Church near Mount Pleasant, where Eli was baptized, was one of several German congregations whose surviving baptismal registers are today an essential source for tracing these families, whose original names were steadily anglicized in spelling over the generations (Hannikot to Honeycutt to Huneycutt). Stanly County itself did not exist for most of Eli's life: it was formed in 1841 out of the eastern half of Montgomery County, which is why the earliest records in this biography (his birth, baptism, land grant, and the 1810–1840 censuses) are filed under Montgomery County while the later ones (the 1850 census, his will, and his death) are filed under Stanly County — though the family's actual farm may never have moved at all. North Carolina's state land grant system, under which Eli received his 100 acres in 1837, was the primary mechanism by which ordinary farming families acquired land throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: an applicant had a tract surveyed and entered, then received a grant — essentially a first deed from the state — once fees were paid, a process that could take months or even years between the entry and the final, sealed grant.