When Nancy Ellen Davis was born on 4 March 1861, in Clark, Illinois, United States, her father, Thomas T. Davis, was 25 and her mother, Sidney Lamb, was 23. She married Silas Fitzpatrick on 13 October 1878, in Coles, Illinois, United States. They were the parents of at least 5 sons and 2 daughters. She lived in Ashmore, Coles, Illinois, United States in 1900 and Westfield, Clark, Illinois, United States in 1910. She died on 13 December 1918, in Hutton, Coles, Illinois, United States, at the age of 57, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery, Kansas Township, Edgar, Illinois, United States.
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.
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