The Davis Family

For this post, I am going to stay in Schuylkill County for a little while, with my Brady's.  When I first started researching my family tree, I found my great great grandparents in Gordon in the 1860, 1870, and 1880 Federal Census records.  In each record, they added more children.

The topic of this post is one of their neighbors, the Davises. There was a family name Davis in the 1870 census and the 1880 census.  The Davis family included Patrick J Davis and his wife Catherine.  There were several children through the years, including Mary, Delia, John, James, Rose, and Bridget. The Davises were on the same page as the Bradys in each census record.  As my research continued, I found that when my great grandfather James got married to Madge Bradley, one of the witnesses was a "Davis". When my grandfather Thomas was baptized, one of his godparents was named "Davis".  

There were other things too.  Like the fact that in the 1900 census, my Great Grandfather, James Brady is listed as a boarder in the Davis household.  He is listed as a boarder in their home in the 1910 census also.  In 1910, his son (my grandfather) is also listed as a boarder in the Davis home. So, at this point I began to believe that the families were related. But how?

My assumption was that the maiden name of Catherine Davis was either Brady or Convey (Bridget Brady's maiden name).  Over the years, I was able to locate some records for the Davis family, including Patrick Davis's death certificate. Unfortunately, the death record did not require his wife's name to be listed.  I got property records from the Schuylkill County archives, no dice.  I even found Catherine's will, which was helpful but did not give up her secret maiden name.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to search one of their sons in ancestry.com.  I found that someone else had entered a family tree online for the Davis family. That family tree told me that the mother of James Davis was Catherine Convey.  Of course, after finding this tree on ancestry.com, I started to locate other records confirming this find.

For me, this find ranks right up close to finding "Baby Jack", but the next part of the story is a little spooky, and not just because it ends up in Scranton.