When William Josiah Davis was born on 25 July 1863, in Texas, United States, his father, William M Davis, was 25 and his mother, Sarah Ruth Bowmer, was 18. He married Laura Bell Bratton on 24 April 1884, in Travis, Texas, United States. They were the parents of at least 7 sons and 2 daughters. He lived in Justice Precinct 2, Travis, Texas, United States in 1910 and Justice Precinct 6, Williamson, Texas, United States in 1920. He died on 23 August 1936, in Austin, Travis, Texas, United States, at the age of 73.
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Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
"On June 19, 1865, Gordon Granger (Union Major) read General Orders, No. 3 to the people of Galveston. The statement was written as follows: ""The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."""
Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
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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