Davis, John A.

Born: 1823-10-25 Crawford County, Pennsylvania

Died: 1862-10-10 Tennessee

Flourished: 1837 to 1862 Stephenson County, Illinois

John A. Davis, farmer and public official, settled in Stephenson County, Illinois with his family when he was fourteen years old. When an agricultural society was organized in Stephenson County in 1854, Davis was named secretary. He and several others laid out what later became the village of Davis about 1857 on land they owned along the Racine and Southwestern Railroad. In politics, Davis opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was a vice president at the 1856 Illinois Anti-Nebraska Convention. He was elected in 1856 and 1858 as a Republican to represent Stephenson County in the Illinois House of Representatives and he also acted as a delegate from Stephenson County at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention. Upon the advent of the Civil War, Davis enlisted in a company of volunteers in Stephenson County, of which he was elected captain. The company reported to Camp Butler in Springfield in September 1861 and he was commissioned colonel of the 46th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Davis was wounded in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, and before returning to combat reportedly turned down a request to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois’ Third Congressional District. He was injured in the Battle of Hatchie’s Bridge in early October 1862 and died several days later in a regimental hospital in Bolivar, Tennessee. Davis married Amy Springer in 1849 and the pair had children.

James Grant Wilson, Biographical Sketches of Illinois Officers Engaged in the War Against the Rebellion of 1861 (Chicago: James Barnet, 1862), 102-3; Addison L. Fulwider, History of Stephenson County Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1910), 1:107, 262-64, 384-85, 477; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Stephenson County, 24 May 1849, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Freeport Journal (IL), 2 March 1854, 2:1, 3; Galena Daily Advertiser (IL), 18 July 1854, 2:1; Freeport Daily Journal (IL), 30 May 1856, 2:1; 29 September 1856, 2:1; Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 88; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 222; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 June 1858, 2:4; 4 November 1858, 3:2; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S., Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, 1861-1865, 10 October 1862, Regimental Hospital (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2012); Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 13 October 1862, 2:3; Gravestone, Davis Cemetery, Davis, IL.