When Sarah Davis was born in 1754, in Cedar Creek Hundred, Sussex, Delaware, British Colonial America, her father, Mark Davis Sr, was 22 and her mother, Mary Smith, was 19. She married Samuel Draper. She died about 1819, at the age of 66.
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When the American Revolution began in 1775, the people of Delaware were not sure they wanted to split from England. When it came time to vote for the Declaration of Independence in 1776, even the delegates were split with two delegates in favor of independence and one against. The night before the vote, Caesar Rodney, who was for independence, was in the city of Dover. When he learned that the vote was taking place, he rode 70 miles at night through a thunderstorm to Philadelphia in order to vote so that Delaware would join the other colonies in declaring independence.
In October 1765, Delaware sent two delegates to a congress of the colonies in New York to deliberate on a joint colonial response to recent British measures, in particular, the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765. The two men were landholder Caesar Rodney and attorney Thomas McKean: the two men and assemblyman George Read would continue to play a role in the movement for independence. Delaware declared its independence from Great Britain on June 15, 1776, and signed the Declaration of Independence with its fellow colonies on July 4.
English and Welsh: patronymic meaning ‘Dafydd's (son)’, equivalent to Welsh ap Dafydd, the Welsh form of David . The spelling Davis is more typical in southwestern England northwards as far as Lancashire, where the frequency of the surname largely reflects Welsh migration, but may sometimes represent a native English surname based on Davy (compare Davies ). Davis (including in the sense 2 below) is the eighth most frequent surname in the US. It is also very common among African Americans.
Irish and Scottish: adopted for Gaelic Mac Daibhéid ‘son of David’; see McDevitt . Compare Davies .
History: John Davis or Davys (c. 1550–1605) was an English navigator who searched for the Northwest Passage. — By the 18th century there were numerous persons named Davis in America, including the jurist John Davis, born in 1761 in Plymouth, MA, and Henry Davis, a clergyman and college president, who was born in 1771 in East Hampton, NY. — Jefferson Davis, born in 1808 in KY, was president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865.
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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