John J. Davis

John James Davis (May 5, 1835 – March 19, 1916) was an American attorney and politician who helped found West Virginia and later served as a United States representative in Congress from that state. Early and family life John James Davis was born in Clarksburg, Harrison County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1835 to master saddler John Davis (1797–1863) and his New York-born wife Eliza Arnold Steen Davis (1799–1866). He had a younger brother, Rezin Caleb Davis (1847-1910, who initially apprenticed with their father, but was a Confederate soldier and later became a lawyer in Kentucky). The family included at least two sisters: Regina (b. 1837) and Ann (b. 1839). Their grandfather Caleb Davis (1767–1834) had been born across the Potomac River at Oldtown, Allegheny County, Maryland but had moved to Woodstock, Shenandoah County, Virginia where J.J. Davis's father John Davis had been born. After learning his trade, John Davis moved to Clarksburg shortly before Virginia authorized construction of the Northwestern Turnpike. John Davis served as the Harrison County sheriff, ruling elder in his Presbyterian church and (unlike his son John James Davis) sympathized with the Confederacy and died in 1863. His wife Eliza (J.J. Davis's mother) was a pioneer school teacher in Harrison County, who taught Stonewall Jackson as well as her sons and many other local children. Either the father John Davis or J.J. Davis owned six slaves in Harrison County in 1860, and his brother Rezin Davis owned two slaves—a 17-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. Young J.J. Davis attended Northwestern Virginia Academy at Clarksburg (the Harrison County seat). When he was 17, he moved to Lexington, Virginia to attend the Lexington Law School (now the law department of Washington and Lee University). Graduating in 1856, J.J. Davis was admitted to the Virginia bar that same year and began what would become his lifelong legal practice in Clarksburg. On August 21, 1862, John J. Davis married Anna Kennedy (1841–1917) in Baltimore, Maryland, her home city. She was the daughter of a lumber merchant and college-educated. They later had a son, John William Davis (1873–1955), who followed his father's career and became a lawyer and congressman, although he eventually left West Virginia and was the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in 1924.