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 John William Wadsworth & Margaret Emaline Davis was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 4:
A DARLINGTON COUNTY FAMILY
John William Wadsworth & Margaret Emaline Davis
1853 – 1938 • Chesterfield & Darlington Counties, South Carolina
John William Wadsworth and Margaret Emaline Davis were husband and wife, farmers, parents, and grandparents who spent their entire lives within a few miles of each other in the upper Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Both are direct ancestors in our family tree, and their story — pieced together from census records, probate papers, a deed of gift, death certificates, and family Bible entries — spans the last years of the antebellum South, the upheaval of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the hard, steady work of building a farm family that carried into the twentieth century.
QUICK FACTS — John William Wadsworth
| Born | 21 February 1856, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina |
| Parents | Lewis H. Wadsworth (1832–1910) and Mary Ann Freeman (1829–1901) |
| Married | About January 1878, Chesterfield County, South Carolina |
| Spouse | Margaret Emaline Davis (1853–1938) |
| Died | 10 March 1938, Darlington County, South Carolina (age 82) |
| Buried | Hebron United Methodist Church Cemetery, Bishopville, Lee County, South Carolina |
QUICK FACTS — Margaret Emaline Davis
| Born | 2 November 1853 (family Bible), Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina |
| Parents | John Calvin Davis (1812–1865) and Charlotte Hurst (1816–1888) |
| Married | About January 1878, Chesterfield County, South Carolina |
| Spouse | John William Wadsworth (1856–1938) |
| Died | 19 January 1938, Hartsville, Darlington County, South Carolina (age 84) |
| Buried | Hebron United Methodist Church Cemetery, Bishopville, Lee County, South Carolina |
A World on the Eve of War
Margaret Emaline Davis was born 2 November 1853 in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, the daughter of John Calvin Davis and Charlotte Hurst Davis. John William Wadsworth followed a little over two years later, born 21 February 1856 in the same county, the son of Lewis H. Wadsworth and Mary Ann Freeman Wadsworth. Both families were part of the close-knit farming community of the Chesterfield–Darlington border, an area of small cotton and subsistence farms that would soon be transformed by the coming of the Civil War. John was barely five years old when South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, and the war years that followed — with their shortages, disruption, and loss — shaped the world both children grew up in. By the time John and Margaret were old enough to remember anything clearly, Reconstruction was underway and the farming families of the upcountry were rebuilding from very little.
John's Family of Origin
John William Wadsworth was the son of Lewis H. Wadsworth (1832–1910) and Mary Ann Freeman (1829–1901). The 1860 census found the family in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, with 24-year-old Lewis, his wife Mary, and their small children — including four-year-old “John,” recorded as two years old, the future husband of Margaret Davis.
Known siblings of John William Wadsworth:
Eliza Jane Wadsworth Hunt (1853–1920)
Susan Wadsworth Teal (1854–1936)
Nancy A. Wadsworth Odom (1859–1937)
Effie Wadsworth Rivers (1866–1935)
Jesse Thomas Wadsworth (1869–1940)
The Wadsworth children grew up on their parents' farm in Chesterfield County, part of a large family typical of the era, when many hands were needed to work the land.
Margaret's Family of Origin
Margaret Emaline Davis was the daughter of John Calvin Davis (1812–1865) and Charlotte Hurst Davis (1816–1888). The 1860 census shows the family in Chesterfield County, with 48-year-old John C. Davis heading a large household that included eight-year-old Margaret. Her father died in 1865, the final year of the Civil War, leaving Charlotte to raise the younger children through the difficult postwar years. Margaret's birth is recorded twice in the surviving records — as 2 November 1853 in the Davis family Bible, and as 28 November 1853 on her later death certificate — a small discrepancy common in records of the period, when Bible entries made at the time of birth are generally considered the more reliable source.
Known siblings of Margaret Emaline Davis:
Thomas P. Davis (1837–1885)
Nancy J. Davis Teal (1839–1894)
John Wesley Davis (1845–1919)
Isaac Jacob Davis (1848–1917)
Julia Ann Davis Boatwright (1849–1911)
Mary Ann Davis (1851–1905)
Sarah E. Davis Ellis (1860–1905)
Chesterfield County estate papers name Margaret as an heir to the estate of her grandmother, Charlotte (Hurst) Davis, confirming the family's continued ties to the county even after Margaret and John had moved on.
Marriage and a New Household
John William Wadsworth and Margaret Emaline Davis married about January 1878 in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. Their exact marriage date was not recorded in a surviving license, but the 1900 census — which asked how many years a couple had been married — reported the pair had been married 22 years, placing the wedding in early 1878. John would have been 21 and Margaret 24. By 1880, the young family was farming at Cole Hill in Chesterfield County, where the census taker recorded 23-year-old John as a farmer, born in South Carolina, with 22-year-old Margaret as his wife and their first two children already born.
Building a Family
John and Margaret's household grew steadily through the 1880s and into the early 1890s. The 1900 census recorded that Margaret had borne five children, four of whom were still living — a poignant statistic confirmed by the family's own history: their firstborn son, Monroe, died at age nine in 1888.
Child | Born | Died | Spouse & Marriage |
J. Monroe Wadsworth | 1 Nov 1878 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC | 6 Jul 1888 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC (age 9) | — |
Julia Ada Wadsworth | 16 Apr 1880 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC | 21 Jul 1941 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC | — |
Mettie Jane Wadsworth | 9 May 1882 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC | 23 Dec 1960 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC | William Newton McKenzie (1877–1930) m. 15 May 1895, Hartsville, SC |
James L. Wadsworth | 18 May 1885 Hartsville, Darlington Co., SC | 23 May 1921 Atlanta, Fulton Co., GA | Sarah King (1888–1921) m. 10 Aug 1904, Hartsville, SC |
W. Carl Wadsworth | 23 Nov 1892 Chesterfield, Chesterfield Co., SC | 23 Aug 1976 Florence, Florence Co., SC | Ethel Lee (1891–1973) m. 16 May 1916 |
Sorrow in 1888
The Wadsworths' first child, J. Monroe Wadsworth, was born 1 November 1878 in Hartsville, Darlington County, and appears in the 1880 census as a two-year-old son in the Cole Hill household. He died 6 July 1888 at not quite ten years old, one of the quiet family tragedies so common before modern medicine, and the “4 living” children recorded on later census forms are a direct echo of his loss.
Farming Life in Hartsville, 1880–1920
By the 1900 census the family had moved into Darlington County, farming at Stokes Bridge, with John, now 42, and Margaret, 43, raising their four surviving children: Ada (19), James (15), and Carl (7), alongside Mettie, who by then had already married and started a household of her own. Ten years later, in 1910, the family was settled at Hartsville, still farming, with Ida (Julia Ada, sometimes recorded as “Ida”) and Carl still at home. Hartsville itself was growing quickly in these decades, developing from a small crossroads community into a regional center for cotton and, later, tobacco markets — growth driven in large part by the Coker family's agricultural experiments and the arrival of the railroad, which connected local farmers like the Wadsworths to wider markets. By 1920 John, now 64, and Margaret, 65, were still on the family farm with their daughter Ada, and a decade after that the 1930 census shows the couple, now in their seventies, still together at Hartsville with Ada still at home — a household that had weathered more than fifty years of farm life together.
The town of Hartsville grew from a modest agricultural crossroads in the 1870s into a prosperous cotton and tobacco market by the early twentieth century, largely through the efforts of local planter and scientist Major James Lide Coker. The Wadsworths' decades of farming in the Stokes Bridge and Hartsville areas placed them at the heart of this transformation, even as they remained, first and always, farmers working their own land.
A Difficult Year — 1921
The year 1921 brought the family's hardest blow since Monroe's death more than three decades earlier. Their son James L. Wadsworth, married to Sarah King since 1904, died 23 May 1921 in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, at age 36. His wife Sarah died the same year. Surviving court records from Darlington County show that just days later, on 2 June 1921, John William Wadsworth posted a Guardian Bond, and on 18 June 1921 an Administration Bond, both filed in the Darlington County Court of Probate with sureties including members of the Davis family and John's own son, W. Carl Wadsworth.
Research Note
The surviving probate bonds are difficult to read in places and contain some apparent transcription irregularities in the original court copies (the administration bond, for instance, names the deceased as “J. C. Wadsworth” rather than James L.). Given that both bonds were sworn within a month of James L. Wadsworth's death in May 1921, and that a guardian bond was taken out for a minor or minors at the very same time, it appears very likely these documents relate to the settlement of James's estate and the guardianship of his and Sarah's surviving minor children, though the record as transcribed does not spell this out explicitly. This connection is offered as a research lead for further confirmation, not as an established fact.
A Gift of Land
On 15 August 1921 — just weeks after posting those probate bonds — John William Wadsworth executed a deed of gift conveying 196 acres in Alligator Township, Chesterfield County, to his daughter Mettie Jane McKenzie, “for and in consideration of the sum of the love and affection and the sum of ten Dollars.” The land, bounded by the properties of neighbors Henry Baker, Christopher Blackwell, William McKenzie, and Mercy McCoy, had been acquired by John from J. P. Mangum in 1919. The deed granted Mettie a life estate with the remainder to her heirs, and Margaret formally renounced her own dower rights to the property before a notary two days later, on 17 August 1921. The deed was recorded in Chesterfield County Deed Book 56, pages 340–341, on 18 August 1921.
Gifts of land “for love and affection” were a common way for aging farm families in the early twentieth-century South to pass property to grown children outside of a formal will, often used to provide for a daughter's security during her lifetime while still keeping the land within the family line for the next generation.
Final Years and Passing
John and Margaret remained together at Hartsville into their final years, appearing side by side in the 1930 census — John, 73, and Margaret, 75 — with their daughter Ada still keeping house with them. Margaret died first, on 19 January 1938 in Hartsville, at the age of 84, with her death recorded on South Carolina Certificate No. 000498. John followed less than two months later, dying 10 March 1938 in Darlington County at age 82, recorded on Certificate No. 003542. After more than sixty years of marriage, the couple was buried together at Hebron United Methodist Church Cemetery in Bishopville, Lee County, South Carolina — John's burial following on 12 March 1938, and Margaret's on 20 January 1938.
Legacy
John William Wadsworth and Margaret Emaline Davis raised a family that endured the loss of a child, the loss of a son and daughter-in-law in the same tragic year, and decades of hard farm labor through the changing agricultural economy of the Pee Dee region — and still saw two of their children, Julia Ada and W. Carl, live on into the 1940s, 1960s, and 1970s. Their descendants, through Mettie Jane (McKenzie), James L., and W. Carl, carried the Wadsworth and Davis family lines forward into the twentieth century, and their names remain recorded together on their memorial stones at Hebron United Methodist Church Cemetery, just as they lived — side by side.
Sources
This biography draws on U.S. federal census records (1860, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930); South Carolina death records and certificates; Darlington County probate bonds; a Chesterfield County deed of gift (Deed Book 56, pp. 340–341); Find A Grave memorials #159531411 and #159531426; the John Calvin Davis family Bible; and Chesterfield County estate papers for Charlotte (Hurst) Davis, as compiled in the accompanying family group sheet.
Prepared by
Charles Purvis
