Alfred Davis 1850's

DAVIS

Posted By: Serendipity (email)
Date: 7/15/2017 at 01:37:16

I am attempting to find the ancestors of an Alfred Davis who came to Harrison County from Putnam County, Indiana sometime between 1850 (when he was in Indiana on the Federal Census) and 1856 (when he showed up in the Iowa State Census).

He brought his whole family when he came: several children from his first marriage, plus his second wife Elizabeth (nee Harris), whom he married in Indiana in 1843, and their several children.

Mr. Davis didn't stay long, by 1860 he and his family had moved on to Jackson, Missouri.

My interest is in his son James, born in Indiana in 1836, who came to Iowa with him and married an Elizabeth Jane Barnett, Solomon Barnett's daughter, who went by the name Jane.

James and Jane had a couple of children (I think the first one died young), then James enlisted in Iowa Volunteers, Company C, 29th Infantry ... mustered out in 1862 and died in Kentucky in January 1863.

I'm looking to fill out James' genealogy going back, and I know that Alfred is his father, but I can't find any reliable information about Alfred's parents. Or James's mother.

I've searched ancestry.com but there are no original records from a confirmed source, and all of the family trees that list Alfred (as Benjamin "Alfred" Davis) have the wrong parents for him. They're too old, for one thing, and they were born in the wrong states. On the 1880 Federal census both of his parents are listed as having been born in Virginia.

So... I'm hoping to get a sliver of information I can leverage to figure out who Alfred's parents were so I can follow the family line backwards in time.

Also, James's mother - can't find any information about her! Some family trees list her as a Nancy Gill born in 1815. One has her as Nancy Poteet. Both of those leads went nowhere.

Thanks for any help!