Research

Charles Davis, born 1870, resided in 1903 in Missouri

This is our mystery man. If you love a mystery, read on.

Here's what we know about Charles Davis: not much!

Charles Davis was listed as the father of "Gilbert Davis" on Gilbert's birth certificate in 1903. We have very little information about him.

We know he was in New York in 1903. We have letter from him to Mary postmarked in New York City in 1903. He had to have been in New York around 1902 to have met Mary Lundrigan. We are assuming that she didn't travel outside her home area. On Gilbert Davis' birth certificate, Charles Davis is referred to as being born in 1870 and is referred to as having a residence in Missouri. Unless given a reason to doubt these facts we should accept them as potentially true.

From the contents of that 1903 letter, we also are led to believe that Charles Davis was returning to St. Louis "soon" and was planning to "go away England soon" and planned to "stay until September" [1903]. So he must have had an occupation that involved travel, like a merchant, or the financial ability to travel easily.

If you are reading this and you have an ancestor named Charles Davis who was born around 1870 and possibly lived or worked in in St. Louis, Missouri around 1903 and who might possibly have had a wife and child in New York City, please contact me!

We also know that his DNA was I2a since that is what my brother Gil tested as. If we were to stumble upon a male descendant of Charles Davis or a descendant of Charles Davis' father, or uncle, or grand-father, and their DNA matches, we could be sure we are related since I2a is not a common Davis DNA type.

We have one close match who matches 62 out of 67 markers. Our close match's first cousin also matches 12 of 12 markers. We were all tested through FTDNA and all of us are listed on the Davis Project website in our own color-coded (we are maroon) sub-project section. Check it out: Davis surname project.

Our close match has a paper trail that leads back to a William Davis from Wales born in 1663 who was a Seventh Day Baptist minister who founded a church in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, New Jersey, then lived some time in Rhode Island and then the entire church group migrated to West Virginia, then to Kansas and finally to Wisconsin. But there is no Charles Davis on this tree near New York in 1870.

Our match and I are both investigating his tree to see where my Charles Davis might have branched off. It could be as far back as 1663 in Wales or even before. It is a daunting project, since Davis is such a common name. But since I2a is not a common Davis surname DNA haplogroup and most men in the Davis surname group are R1b1b2, at least we have that going for us. We are also soliciting specific Davis cousins to DNA test to prove different parts of the tree. More on this soon.