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Collection: Joseph Jonathan Davis Papers
1853-1879
Franklin County, N.C.
Physical Description: 175 items, all letters except for two photographs
Acquisition : Gift, Mrs. Katherine B. Heuper, Washington, D.C., 1987
Description: Joseph Jonathan Davis (1828-1892), state legislator, congressman,
and state supreme court justice, son of Jonathan and Mary Pomfret (Butler)
Davis^ was born in Franklin County and educated at Louisburg Male. Academy ,
Wake Forest College, the College of William and Mary, and the University
of North Carolina. In the last named institution he read law under William
Horn Battle, was graduated in 1850, and in June of that year was admitted to
the bar. His first practice was established in Oxford, N.C., but upon his
marriage to Katherine Elizabeth Shaw of Louisburg in 1852 , he moved his
practice to that town. In political persuasion a Whig and an anti-secessionis
Davis nonetheless accepted a commission as captain of Company G, 47th Regiment
North Carolina Troops, at the end of March, 1862. He served with his company
in the Army of Northern Virginia and in eastern North Carolina. Wounded
and captured following the Pickett-Pettigrew charge at Gettysburg on July 3,
1863, Davis was sent to the military prison on Johnson's Island in Sandusky
Bay, Lake Erie, until March, 1865, when he returned home on parole and
resumed his practice of law.
In 1866 Davis was elected to a term in the House of Commons, and in
1870 and 1872 canvassed for Democratic party candidates (serving, too, as
a state elector-at-large for Horace Greeley in the latter year) . In 1874
Davis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, retiring from politics
after three terms as congressman (1875-1881) . In 1887 he was appointed an
associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court to fill an unexpired
term, was elected to the bench in 1888, and served on the court until his
death four years later.
Nearly all of the letters in the collection were written to Mrs. Davis,
primarily by her husband when he was away from home, or by their daughter,
Katie, while a student at St. Mary's School in Raleigh. The earliest letters
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