The Pettis/Davis History
By
Alice and Sadie Ponwith
I cannot hope to reprint the whole history that Alice and Sadie Ponwith
wrote on September 15, 1971. I would, however, like to acknowledge their
great efforts and honor their contribution to our family history. While new
facts have come to light since the history was written and new information
continually unfolds, it does not diminish what the Ponwith sisters did for
all of us.
With my sincere gratitude for receiving this history, I would like to thank John Brawford who was kind enough to send it to me. The history has been an invaluable tool. On this page I would like to reprint the "Acknowledgments" page that is at the beginning of the Pettis/Davis History. I think it of great interest: With your cooperation this family history has been possible. Thanks to each of you and an extra thank you to Fannie Harvey Peterson who did the Stephen Wing Pettis family; to Edna Pettis Kanneman for the material on the Charles Pettis family; to Jane Davis Moulton who brought the C. Isaac Davis family up to date; to Redden Davis who collected information on many in the family of Isaac and Catherine Pettis Davis; to Alfreda Cresson and daughter, Ruby Mink, who added data to the Benjamin Barzilla Davis family; to Lydia Thompson who gave additional information on the "Bill" Davis family; to Marcella Dunham Hedberg who shared her data on the Dunham family; to Hubert Davis for his fascinating tales of the Davis brothers' early experiences in Sanborn; to Warren Davis and his sister, Rhoda Davis Wilcox, for the interesting history of the Harry Davis family and to Norman Pettys for the information on our early Pettis ancestors. For the use of clippings and family records we are indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Ira Rogers, Mr. and Mrs. Melville Lurth, Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Ely and Mr. and Mrs. Earl Davis. We are grateful to Josie Stone (Mrs. Marshall) for remembering us when she cleared her files and gave us many Davis-Pettis records. Sorry that we never found her Davis relative tucked away in one of our branches. Thanks to Ruth Wing Sisson who so graciously helped us with the Wing material. Harriet Davis Smith's scrap book proved most valuable. We appreciate Jessie Livingston's lending us her copies of Minnesota in the Civil War and Indian War and Memorial Record of Southwestern Minnesota. Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Ely for the use of their Historical Atlas of 1874. We are grateful to Fannie Peterson, Mabel Ponwith, Orabelle Miner, Mildred Ely Grice, Mrs. and Mrs. Sherman Ely, Ila Pettis Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Ira Rogers, Rosalia Hill, and Leone McGrath Haesecke for pictures. As we look back, it was Marjorie McGrath Haesecke who interested us enough in family history to write down data. We appreciate her generosity in sharing with us the wealth of material on the Davis-Pettis families that she had collected over the years. The needed push to keep at the material and finish it came from Redden Davis and Warren Davis. It is nice to have two who have the Davis name interested in our genealogy. Many, many thanks to Barbara Hanson Schoberg who has done such a beautiful job of typing these pages. When she so generously offered to do the typing, we are sure she had no idea what a time consuming job it would be. It is our hope that those who receive this material will, to the best of their ability, keep the family history up to date.
Alice and Sadie Ponwith "These are My People"
Family history tells that Grandmother Sally Ann Davis was the first white
woman to travel that Dodd Road when she came here in 1853 with her father,
Orange Runnels Davis, to keep house for him in a cabin on the shores of Lake
Emily. The rest of the family soon followed and were joined her -- or preceded
-- by members of the Pettis clan, who came and settled among them, making
a small colony of kinfolk from Pike County, Illinois. Parts of the foundation
of that early Davis cabin are still visible on what is now Shoreland Golf
Clubs 6th hole, overlooking the lake.
Two things brand our ancestors as unusual in our mind and have always
been a bait to our curiosity. For one thing they were "much traveled" and
for another thing they were "much married". The "much-traveled" part we have
figured out by places of birth -- marriage -- and death in the family Bibles.
But the "much marriages" still send us running to the family records to
straighten out.
By the time our ancestors got to Minnesota, their travels had spanned
two hundred years and had taken them across many thousands of miles. They
went from Massachusetts Bay in the late 1600's, west to Connecticut, and
north to New Hampshire and Vermont. They continued on into Canada and back
into the States at New York around 1837, then west to Ohio and south to Illinois
before heading north into Minnesota. The dreams that lured them on were concerned
with new and cheaper land, greater opportunity and more freedom. Their migrations
followed history, too, for whenever a war -- or an Indian Treaty -- or a
soldier bonus in western land opened up new frontiers, these ancestors
of ours packed their pots and pans and took to their covered wagons to avail
themselves of the opportunity. They came to Minnesota, of course, because
the Treaty of Traverse Des Sioux in 1851 had just opened millions of acres
of land to settlement.
As for the "much-marrying" kinfolk, we find an explanation for that too,
which proves they were not just philanderers. When a pioneer couple was wedded
and had a family, life at its best was pure drudgery, and its daily tasks
were really wife-killers. Cutting wood, hauling water, washing beside some
brook, cooking over an open fire, sleeping on dirt floors, evading the irate
Indians, were not what we would call easy living. All these hardships of
pioneer living were tough on the little woman who soon weakened and died, leaving
her young brood motherless in the wilderness. So, the father, needing someone
to care for his little ones, soon married again -- in some cases again and
again. so we can account for that marriage angle. But -- what does stymie
us is figuring out the relationships that resulted from this "much-marrying"
-- making us all half cousins and double cousins and step cousins with
half-aunts and step uncles and the likes.
When Great Grandfather Orange Runnel's Davis came to Minnesota, he had
ten living children. The oldest son, Thomas, never married, as records show
he was subject to "fits" and died therefrom. But, of the remaining nine children,
eight married Pettises. And that isn't too complicated since all the Davis's
were brothers and sisters in one family. The only one who did not marry a
Pettis was Caroline -- "Aunt Cal" to us -- and she married John Hartew. Others
in this pioneer Davis family were: Sidney William "Uncle Bill" as he was
called at our house; Orange Runnels Jr., Isaac, Henry, Ebenezer, Harriet,
Louisa and Sally Ann. They all married Pettises from the family of Great
Grandfather Col. Stephen Pettis, who was married to four wives and had 21
children. So -- it was from these 21 children that came the brides and grooms
for the eight Davises. Those who married the Davises wer NOT brothers and
sisters but half brothers and half sisters and grandchildren of Col.
Stephen.
From Stephen's first wife -- Catherine Wing -- came the family that included
Ann -- who married Dunham -- John and Charles plus some others who were "lost
by shipwreck on Lake Erie".And from the family of their son, Charles -- who
married Sara Hosford -- came the four Pettises who married into the Davis
family. They were Catherine, Olive, Melissa and John.
The really confusing part of all this is that Col. Stephen Pettis had
for his fourth wife, Catherine Hosford, whose sister, Sara Hosford was married
to Stephen's oldest son, Charles. Thus Charles' sister-in-law became his
mother-in-law and the Colonel's daughter-in-law became his sister-in-law.
Descendants of these involvements are indeed related. "Double" everything
-- cousins, aunts, uncles, everything. It is said that when Catherine Hosford
married Col. Stephen, as his fourth wife, she remarked --"NOW" the Colonel
has a wife who will outlive him. And she did, for he died and was buried
in Illinois, while Catherine came to Minnesota to live with Grandpa and Grandma
Pettis and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
My mother used to further describe our ancestors as other than "much married"
and "much traveled". She always said the Davis men were "affable" which means
they wee courteous and civil. She said they had an eye for the women folk
and always drove a hard bargain. The Pettises were more concerned with our
country than with its women and might be found huddled in a corner talking
politics or religion while the Davis men saw to it that mi-lady had her coat
or a chair or was otherwise catered to. The Pettises were thinkers,
mother said. And the Hosfords were the brains of the entire clan -- from
them came professors and ministers and scientists.
If you have read Alice Ponwith's history of our people you probably know
all we have tried to tell you. We would know more if -- when in our teens
-- we had listened to the talkings of all the old Davis and Pettis folk who
came to our house to visit Grandpa and Grandma Pettis. The kitchen would
be filled with coon skin coats and long beards and we kids would say "Why
do they stay so long just gabbing?" If we had the good sense to sit
in a corner and listen we'd know many interesting things about their pioneering
we'll never know. What we DO know, however, is that they all were hardy pioneers
and staunch Americans whose word was as good as their bond and each of whom
yearned to own a thousand acres of land. We look upon them all as strong,
knowledgeable folk and like Charley Weaver, we're proud to say -- when speakin'
of them -- "THESE ARE MY PEOPLE".
Marjorie McGrath Haesecke |