This post was originally intended for a Grindstaff genealogy group on Facebook. However, that platform has said that his post violates their community standards so I am putting it here for now so that my relatives can see it. In the meantime, I will try to figure out somewhere to permanently put this information.
The grandchildren (my generation) of Noble and Edna Grindstaff, had 4 great grandparents; they are Noble’s parents, Daniel Grindstaff, Sarah Fields Grindstaff and Edna’s parents, Elisha Alexander Kennedy and Olive Davis Kennedy. I have hopes, as time permits, to provide some of the genealogical background of these 4 folks.
The first of the four I want to look at is Olive Davis Kennedy, Edna’s mother. I became intrigued by her story while researching Noble and Edna; it quickly became apparent that Olive played a big part in holding things together during some of my grandparents very trying years.
But before I get to Olive, I want to preface her story with what I have learned about her (and our) Davis ancestry.
Davis is the eighth most common surname In the United States (1) with almost one and a half million prospective cousins scattered throughout the United States. The surname ‘Davis’ is a patronymic surname meaning “son of David,” David being a given name that means “beloved.” (2)
‘Davis’ has with Welsh origins, a Celtic ethnic group native to Wales, a part of the United Kingdom.
II have gone down several rabbit holes looking at Davis ancestors and emerged from a couple of them with enough information to say that our Davis family is likely traceable to one of several Davises who emigrated from the United Kingdom’s Wales sometime in the early to mid-1600’s, sailing to the United States. (3) Nope, Our ancestor wasn’t on the Mayflower. I checked. No Davis families on the passenger list.
It is also possible that this English ancestor was a member of the Quaker faith, as were many Welshmen, and his journey was undertaken to escape the religious persecution by the King of England. (4)
Most likely, he landed in New York or Baltimore and I think, made his way to Rhode Island because of that colony’s belief in religious freedom.
Along with information garnered by working backwards from information on our great-grandmother Olive, I can make an educated guess and say that 7 or perhaps 8 generations of our Davis family were born in this country going back to the mid-1600’s. They began their almost 200 year journey from Rhode Island (probably) and slowly worked their way westward, stopping for years at a time in New York , Pennsylvania and Ohio before reaching their promised land in Martin County, Indiana’s town of Dover Hill.
They left some clues of their comings and goings but not near enough to be certain about the ‘facts’ so in this piece, we will go with what ‘facts’ we are certain are true and leave the rest to speculation.
We begin with our great-great grandfather, Joshua Davis, who was Born Oct 10, 1809 in Northampton County, Pennsylvania near the town of Bethlehem, an area populated by members of both the Quaker and the Moravian religions. I am maybe 80 percent sure his parents were Joshua Samuel Davis (10-24-1769 – 3-26-1846 and Hannah Walton Davis (9-29-1772 – 8-2-1859). The two of them had 8 children, one of whom was a boy named Joshua.
There are a ton of Joshua Davis’s in the mid-18th century census records. I tried to find a connection between the Quakers and the Biblical name ‘Joshua’ in the Bible but was unable to find anything. (Sorry, Father Doyle. I expect you figured that I would know my Bible a little more by now). Suffice it to say that in the early 1800’s, there were too many Pennsylvania men named Joshua Davis to make a definite connection. If I were writing a history book, I might have tried a little harder but I’m not so for now, great-great-grandfather Joshua’s parentage will remain a mystery.
What I can say for sure is that Joshua (and likely his parents) were a part of the large migration of Pennsylvania Quakers (as well as Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, medicine men and a passel of assorted heathens) to Eastern and Southern Ohio that took place in the first half of the 19th century.
This became apparent when I started with the 1820 census when I looked for Joshua Samuel. That turned up a couple of hundred Joshua Davis records all over the eastern third of the country including a half dozen from the general area in Pennsylvania where our great-great-grandfather was born.
There were no names other than the head of household listed in that census, only counts of males, females and slaves sub categorized by a range of ages (males under 10, females over 45 and so on). None of the Pennsylvania Joshua Davis records corresponded with the number of family members Joshua Samuel and Hannah would have had in 1820.
I finally found one in Tuscarawas county, Ohio, about 90 miles west of Pittsburgh, PA.. The number and ages of the family pretty much matched what I had learned about our potential third great-grandparents, Joshua Samuel and Hannah.
Ohio was where our Great-great grandfather made his first appearance in Ancestry.Com records when Joshua, at the age of 24 , married 18 year old Aletha Wilcoxen on January 22,1833 in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.
Six years later, the 1840 census records Joshua as working in agriculture in Tuscarawas County and the two of them having 4 children, 3 girls and a boy.
By the time the 1850 Federal Census was taken, Joshua and Aletha (Leathy) had 5 living children and 3 children who had died in infancy. They also owned a farm in Tuscarawas County. This was not a surprise; Farming was not an unusual occupation since according to the census, 64 percent of the United States working population of 7.7 million folks were farmers in the mid-1800’s.
The village of Gnadenhutton, Tuscarawas County, where Joshua and his family picked up their mail, is one of Ohio’s oldest settlements founded in 1772 by German-Americans and Lenape Indians affiliated with the Moravian Church, one of the world’s oldest Protestant religions. Were Joshua and his family members of this church? Possibly but I couldn’t say one way or another. (5)
Our Great-Grandmother, Olive Davis, arrived on this earth on January 4 of 1854 in Gnadenhutton, Ohio, the 10th of Joshua and Aletha’s 11 children. The 11th child, Harriet was born 3 years later in Gallia County, Ohio, some 150 miles south of Olive’s birthplace.
I don’t know what to make of that difference in geography other than to guess that Joshua and his family were on the move. Here’s a wild guess; Gallia County is on the Ohio River. Perhaps they went there to travel west by boat because Joshua Davis shows up in Perry Township of Martin County, Indiana in the Federal census of 1860 with a Dover Hill, Indiana address.
Regardless of how they got there, that question of why they would move to Dover Hill, Indiana bothered me enough that I went looking for an answer. Joshua’s father left him 800 dollars; he may have used that money. Maybe the Moravian or Quaker religions had something to do with it; their beliefs were very conservative and could have troubled Joshua. However, that is only conjecture on my part.
As for why Dover Hill as a place to settle, the village was established by folks of English Ancestry sometime before 1846; that was the year that a Post office was established there. Perhaps friends or relatives enticed Joshua Davis to move there.
The only thing that is an educated guess as to why Dover Hill, Indiana was their choice is that land in Indiana, a comparatively new State at 40 years old, was comparatively cheap at that time.
Regardless of why, the Joshua Davis family found themselves farming in or around Dover Hill, Indiana in the late 1850’s where they prospered and remained for the rest of their lives.
As would be expected, with the exception of the 3 children who died in infancy, the children of Joshua and Aletha, all of whom would be my generation’s great-great Aunts and Uncles, left the family. Joshua died in 1891 and is buried in the old Trinity Springs, Indiana Cemetery. He left behind a 320 farm to be split amongst his heirs. His widow, Aletha, lived on one 40 acre plot until she died in 1900 and is also buried beside her husband in Trinity Springs. Their 11 children were as follows:
1: Louisa (1834 – 1919) married Michael E Sponsler in 1868 and bore 8 children before her death in 1891. She is buried in Indian Springs, Indiana.
2: Lettice (1836 – 1930). was wed to James N Yarnell in 1860 and went on to have nine children before her death in 1930.
3: Hannah (1838 – 1860)) married James D Seibert in Ohio in 1857 and died 3 years later in Martin County, Indiana, leaving behind 1 infant daughter, Lenora Ellen.
4: Infant son born/died 1840 or 1841.
5: Lewis (1844 -1915) had 8 children with his wife Carrie Cogswell Davis .
6: Emily (1845 – 1929) married Albert McBride in 1868, had 4 children, is buried in Missouri.
7: Nancy (1848 – 1848)
8: Marion (1849 – 1849)
9: Emmett (1851 – 1935) married Josephine Douglas. Two daughters were born but there is little information on them.
10: Olive (1854 – 1931) married Elisha Alexander Kenady (1859 – 1894)
11: Harriet (1857 – 1886) Married Edward Hewitt in 1885. She had one child who died in infancy in 1886, the same year that Harriet died. There is no known death certificate but I’m guessing childbirth was the cause.
The offspring of these children have undoubtedly produced hundreds, if not thousands, of distant cousins. I receive almost daily notifications from Ancestry.com that another of these cousins has had their DNA analyzed and this analysis reveals that I have been linked to one more 3rd, 4th or 5th cousin. I suppose I could use some of that data to back up my belief that Joshua Samuel is in fact, our great-great-great- grandfather Davis but I’m already 82 years old and I don’t want to take the time…..
Also, a bit of gossip. Interestingly enough, in the 1880 census, Joshua and Aletha also had a son listed named Leslie born in 1877. At his birth, his mother, Aletha, would have been 62 years old; not possible then. I suspected Leslie was actually Joshua and Aletha’s grandson and they were listed as his parents on the birth certificate because Leslie was most likely born out of wedlock to someone in the family.
Initially, I suspected one of the two unmarried Davis girls, Harriet or Olive, my future great-grandmother. Uh-oh. This was not good. Of course, it could also have been a philandering son in the family. However, after further research,
I came to the conclusion that Lenora Ellen Siebert was the mother of Leslie. Hannah, Aletha’s third child and Lenora’s mother, died in 1860 shortly after delivering her daughter. Lenora was subsequently raised by Joshua and Aletha; later census records identified her as the mother of Leslie. Who was the father? No idea but you know those jokes about traveling salesmen and farmer’s daughters. Soap Opera stuff,.
So how did Olive Davis end up being my great-grandmother? On the last day of 1879, Olive, age 25, married Elisha Alexander Kenady (1859 – 1894) age 20.
And with that, I’m going to stop here because this story is already confusing enough without adding yet another generation.
Besides, I have lots of questions about Olive, most of which will never be answered, but as time permits, I want to take that time to answer as many of them as I can.
Gordon
G2 Notes:
1: The top seven are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Garcia and Miller.
2: From Dictionary.com: “patronymic is a name derived from that of a father or paternal ancestor, usually by the addition of a suffix or prefix meaning “son.” Thus the Scottish name MacDonald originally meant “son of Donald.” Usually the “son” affix is attached to a baptismal name, but it is also possible to attach it to the father’s occupation.” In other words, during the latter part of the Middle Ages, at least in the UK, the last name of a family changed with each generation. I can only imagine the confusion that might have caused (and actually, still causes today).
3: I found a couple of possible candidates but could not definitely tie them down. I’m sure some Davis researcher somewhere has figured it all out and if I had more time, I would look into that but for now, this will have to do.
4: From the Wales history website: when England’s King Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he instigated a wave of religious intolerance which threatened the rights of several groups to worship in the way that they chose. Significant numbers of people – in some cases, whole communities – began to leave Wales. It is only speculation on my part that our ancestor was one of these folks. There are also some records that point to our ancestor leaving England some years before Charles II became king. One further note: I have no idea why Charles II was ‘restored to the English throne’ or even why he was removed in the first place. I should have paid more attention in World History class, I guess. So many kings, so little time.
5: I only mention the Moravians because I am left wondering if my Great-great grandfather Davis, who was born in Pennsylvania, was a member of this church. It is also quite possible that his wife , Alethea (Letha), having been born in Gnadenhutton, may have been a member of thee faith.
A few years back, we visited the southern headquarters of the Moravians in Winston-Salem while visiting with friends in the area. After this visit and after reading the Wikipedia article about the Moravians, in my limited exposure to their beliefs, the group strikes me as similar to the Quakers with a smidgeon of the Shakers thrown in for good measure.
Good times and bad 