52 Cousins~The David Richard Davis Family

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 The David Richard Davis Family was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 4:

David Richard Davis

1825 – 1892 • Chesterfield County, South Carolina

 

Born	4 August 1825, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
Died	8 January 1892, Chesterfield County, South Carolina (age 66)
Burial	Sowell Cemetery, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
Parents	William Davis (1790–1864) and Julia Thurman (1792–1860)
Spouse	Mary Cornelia McNair (Feb 1835 – 31 Dec 1900), m. abt. 1858
Children	10 — five sons and five daughters

A Son of the Old Chesterfield District

David Richard Davis was born on 4 August 1825 in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, the son of William Davis (1790–1864) and Julia Thurman (1792–1860). He grew up in the rolling, sandy-soiled farm country of the South Carolina Pee Dee region, a landscape of cotton fields, longleaf pine, and small crossroads communities that had been settled by Scots-Irish and English families in the decades following the American Revolution. By the time David reached adulthood, Chesterfield County was a close-knit farming community where families like the Davises, McNairs, and Sellerses had intermarried for generations.

The exact date of David's marriage to Mary Cornelia McNair is not recorded, but family researchers place it around 1858, based on the birth of the couple's first known child, Margaret J. Davis, in 1859. Mary Cornelia was born in February 1835, the daughter of Alexander McNair (1804–1873) and Catherine McMillan (1804–1881). A note on her Find A Grave memorial offers an alternate theory that she may instead have been a daughter of Malcolm McNair and Effie Jane McLaurin — a reminder that even well-documented family lines can carry open questions worth continued research.

Building a Family in the 1860s and 1870s

David and Mary Cornelia settled into farm life in Chesterfield County and, over the next two decades, raised a large family. The 1860 federal census found the young couple living in the household of “D. R. Davis,” age 33, a farmer, with his wife “Mary J.” (Mary Cornelia), age 20, and infant daughter Margaret J. Davis, just seven months old.

The Civil War years that followed were hard ones for every family in Chesterfield County, and the Davis household was no exception. Although no military or wartime record survives for David Richard Davis in the family's files, he and Mary Cornelia were raising small children throughout the conflict, a period marked in this part of South Carolina by shortages, uncertainty, and eventually the direct passage of war through their home county.

Historical Note — War Comes to Chesterfield County

In March 1865, Union forces under General William T. Sherman marched directly through Chesterfield County on their campaign from Savannah toward North Carolina. Chesterfield Courthouse, along with much of the town, was burned, and the county was left destitute in the war's aftermath. Families across the district, including farming households like the Davises, spent years rebuilding in the difficult Reconstruction period that followed.

By the 1870 census, the family had grown considerably. Enumerated at Court House, Chesterfield County, the household of “D. R. Davis,” now 45 and still farming, included Mary Cornelia, 35, and four children: Eugenia Cordelia (7), Julia C. (5), Mary Lyde (identified in the record as “M. E.”, age 3), and infant son John C. (1). Ten years later, the 1880 census recorded the family once more at Court House, with David, 54, and Mary C., 45, now heading a household of eight children ranging from fifteen-year-old Julia down to baby Lucy Perkins Davis, just one month old.

Ten Children

David Richard and Mary Cornelia Davis raised ten children to adulthood or near it — five daughters and five sons — whose lives carried the Davis name and its connections into farming, banking, education, and family lines including Sellers, Graves, Jones, and Meehan.

Two of the children did not survive to adulthood: Margaret J. Davis, the eldest, died before the 1870 census, and son John C. Davis died before 1900. The remaining eight children lived long, well-documented lives, several of them well into the twentieth century.

Threads of the Next Generation

Eugenia Cordelia Davis married Henry Perkins Davis on 25 December 1879 and was buried at Pisgah United Methodist Church Cemetery in Florence County after her death in 1898. Mary Lyde Davis married William Arthur Sellers in 1889; the couple appears together in the 1910, 1920, and 1930 census records of Chesterfield County, raising a family that included daughters Marie (Sellers) Hoffman and Thelma (Sellers) Vick.

Flora Virginia Davis, known to the family as “Mitt,” never married. She spent her later years living with her sister Lucy and brother-in-law Lemuel Smiley Graves in Mt. Croghan and later Ruby, South Carolina, appearing as “sister-in-law” in their 1910 and 1930 census households. She died in September 1939 and was remembered in an obituary in the Chesterfield Advertiser.

William McNair “Mack” Davis became assistant cashier of the Peoples Bank in Chesterfield and married Mary E. Meehan in 1912. His life ended in tragedy in July 1916; a newspaper account in the Chesterfield Advertiser reported that he took his own life at the public school building after a period of failing health, a loss the community described as profoundly shocking given his good standing and sound financial affairs.

Family Note — A Difficult Chapter

The 1916 death of William McNair “Mack” Davis is a hard part of this family's story, but it is preserved here as it was recorded in the historical record, out of respect for accuracy and for Mack's memory.

Ida Isabelle Davis married Lewis Maxie Jones in 1902, and the couple later relocated to Lake Wales, Polk County, Florida, part of the wave of Carolinians who moved south in the early twentieth century. Alfred Thomas Davis pursued a career in education, teaching in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s before becoming an instructor at Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. He held the rank of Captain, married Kate May Pettigrew around 1926, and at his death in 1941 left an estate valued at about $25,000 to his widow and young son, Thomas Pettigrew Davis. Lucy Perkins Davis, the youngest child, married Lemuel Smiley Graves in 1904 and lived out her life in the Ruby community of Chesterfield County, where she died in 1962.

Later Years and Passing

David Richard Davis died on 8 January 1892 in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, at the age of 66, having spent his entire life within the county of his birth. He was laid to rest in Sowell Cemetery, where his tombstone — recorded decades later in James C. Pigg's Chesterfield County, South Carolina Cemetery Survey — preserves his birth and death dates for family researchers today.

Mary Cornelia McNair Davis outlived her husband by nearly nine years. The 1900 census found her, at 65, still head of a household in Chesterfield County's Court House area, with her unmarried adult children Flora, Mack, Ida, and Lucy still at home. She died on 31 December 1900 and was buried beside David at Sowell Cemetery in December of that year.

A curious piece of family paperwork survives from Mary Cornelia's later years: a power of attorney dated 4 February 1887, in which she joined several McNair relatives — heirs of the late Flora Sellers — in authorizing Calvin B. McNair to sell roughly 135 acres of inherited land in Chesterfield County on their behalf. The document, recorded in the county's Deed Book 9, offers a small window into how extended farm families of the era managed shared inheritances.

A Life Framed by Change

David Richard Davis's lifetime, 1825 to 1892, spanned one of the most turbulent stretches of American history. He was born five years before South Carolina's Nullification Crisis and came of age as the state moved toward secession; Chesterfield Courthouse itself hosted one of the earliest secession meetings in South Carolina in November 1860. He and his young family lived through the Civil War and the burning of much of their home county by Sherman's army in March 1865, then rebuilt their lives during Reconstruction and the difficult agricultural decades that followed. By the time of his death in 1892, the county he had known as a young man had been transformed — yet the Davis family endured, and through his ten children, put down roots that reached into the twentieth century and beyond.

David Richard Davis is my 1st Cousin 4X Renoved. 

Sources and Acknowledgments

This biography draws on federal census records (1860–1900), Chesterfield County deed and probate records, Find A Grave memorials, the Chesterfield County, South Carolina Cemetery Survey (James C. Pigg, 1995), obituaries from the Chesterfield Advertiser, and many family hisiorians researching  The Davis Family, as compiled in the accompanying family group sheet dated 2 September 2026.