The Family of Will Davis

The missing records for generations 9–12 are not a research failure — the documents physically no longer exist. King William County, Virginia is a famous "burned county": its courthouse fire of 17 January 1885 destroyed nearly all deeds, wills, and order books from the county's 1702 formation onward. Its parent, New Kent County, fared even worse — fires in 1787, 1862, and the April 1865 Richmond evacuation fire (where its remaining records had been sent "for safekeeping"). What survives, and why: land patents (recorded centrally in the capital — free images at the Library of Virginia), the 1704 Quit Rent Roll (the copy sent to London survived), parish vestry books (St. John's, King William), and the Sparacio transcriptions of the few surviving record-book fragments — which is the only reason the crucial 19 May 1702 Davis deed exists at all. This is exactly why a son born c. 1680–95 could live and die leaving no findable paper: the "unknown son" gap is structurally expected, not suspicious. One further honest note: Y-DNA identifies William Davis as Thomas's probable grandfather but cannot say through which son — the link could equally run through his documented sons Benjamin Sr. or John, whose own sons are poorly recorded. Realistic paths to break the wall: the Library of Virginia patent index (Davis patents, King William/New Kent, 1690–1730), the 1704 Quit Rent Roll King William list, the full Sparacio volumes, St. John's Parish vestry book, and contacting the FTDNA Davis surname project admins for the actual Big-Y block tree.

Headline discovery: "Kate Durham" was Kate Durham POLK — Durham was her middle name, so the line long remembered as Durham is actually a Polk line from Marion County, Mississippi. All records below from cross-linked FindAGrave memorials (Lakewood Memorial Park, Jackson, and Perry/Marion Co. cemeteries).

📍 A note on geography, because it is easy to get wrong. This family sits in two separate parts of Mississippi, and conflating them sends research into the wrong county courthouse. The direct Davis line is in Pike and Walthall Counties in the southwest, around Tylertown. The Morgan and Kennedy lines on this panel are not — they belong to Perry and Jasper Counties in the southeast (Runnelstown, New Augusta, Mahned, Heidelberg), with William Gaines Morgan dying across the line in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana. The Polks are a third cluster again, in Marion County. Same state, three different sets of county records.

Reading this branch: William Claude Morgan was the son of Sarah Phoebe Morgan and Joe Kennedy, who never married — so Claude and his siblings carried their mother's Morgan surname even though the paternal blood line is Kennedy. His ancestry therefore splits into two documented lines, shown separately below.

This branch is new. Betty Middleton's parentage was the oldest unanswered question on the Davis side — her card carried the words parents remain untraced from the first version of this site onward. It is now answered, and it opens seven generations behind her, running Mississippi → Georgia → South Carolina → Virginia → colonial Maryland to an immigrant transported into Maryland in 1671. Two of the links rest on eighteenth-century deeds rather than on compiled trees, which makes this one of the better-evidenced colonial branches on the whole site. It also reopens — properly this time — the question this family has asked for years about the Middletons of South Carolina. That verdict is at the foot of the panel, and it is not a flat no.

⚖ The Arthur Middleton question — the honest answer is “not proved, but worth chasing.”

First, a correction of record. Arthur Middleton (1742–1787) signed the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. He was one of four South Carolina signers; his father Henry Middleton presided over the First Continental Congress; the family seat, Middleton Place on the Ashley River, still stands. Their line runs back through Henry to his father Arthur Middleton the governor, and to Edward Middleton, who came to Carolina from Barbados in 1678.

Betty's line runs back to a different colonial Middleton — Robert Middleton, born about 1651, transported into Maryland before February 1671. So the real question is not whether Betty descends from Arthur (she plainly does not), but whether Robert of Maryland and Edward of Barbados belonged to the same English Middleton family.

And there is an old, independent claim that they did. A published local history of Judge Holland Middleton Bell — a descendant of this same Holland Middleton family — discusses his Maryland ancestry and then states outright that “a cousin of Judge Bell, Arthur Middleton, of Middleton Place, South Carolina,” was a signer of the Declaration. That sentence sits in a historical document, not in a modern online tree. It is not proof: the article supplies no genealogical chain for the cousinhood, and at least one nearby statement in it is imprecise. But it matters for a different reason — the Arthur Middleton tradition in this family did not begin in the internet era with somebody matching a surname. There is an older Middleton and local-history tradition connecting Holland Middleton's descendants with the Middleton Place family. The story Will inherited has historical depth behind it.

Three outcomes remain open. (A) Robert of Maryland and Edward of Barbados prove to share a father, grandfather or earlier Middleton ancestor, and the families are genuinely one. (B) They are collateral cousins with a common ancestor further back in England — which would fit the old “cousin” tradition rather neatly. (C) The tradition is simply wrong. A or B is plausible enough to be worth real work; neither is proved.

What has changed is that the problem is now precise. We are no longer searching indiscriminately for Middletons. There is exactly one question to answer: who were the parents and English family of Robert Middleton, born c.1651, in Maryland by 1671? That, together with Mary Wheeler and Elizabeth Teares as parallel gateway investigations, is the standing assignment on this branch.

Either way, the branch has earned its place. A question that had no answer at all now runs back to a Maryland tobacco county in the reign of Charles II, anchored by two eighteenth-century deeds and a proved will — and it is older than the question was.

Newly researched: the ancestry of Will's great-great-grandmother, previously untraced. Sources: FindAGrave (memorial 48122362) + a detailed RootsWeb Pike County genealogy.

⚠ The Lincolnshire claim — tested twice now, and it does not stand. A widely-copied claim extends this line to the Coney gentry of Bassingthorpe, Lincolnshire (Robert Coney, b. c. 1397). It is unsupported and we do not carry it. Re-examined: the compilation behind it lumps Jeremiah’s Maryland family together with an unrelated Virginia Coney and a Massachusetts Coney under a placeholder ancestor, and its own compiler states outright that the relationship is undetermined. Nothing ties the Maryland Coneys to the Bassingthorpe pedigree. Having already had to retract the Woodhouse gateway from this site, we are not going to walk into the same trap a second time.

Jeremiah Coney I’s parents are a genuine brick wall, and there is some comfort in the company: a second serious researcher — Dekle Coney, a Georgia state legislator corresponding on this family in 1973 — hit the identical wall, and his own record simply lists the father as “(RESEARCH QUERY) CONEY.” Two careful people stopping at exactly the same point is itself a finding.

Includes a certified Revolutionary War patriot ancestor.

The four surnames long attached to Jane in family lore turn out to be exactly her four ancestral lines, in four consecutive generations — a Welsh Baptist rice-planting family of the South Carolina Pee Dee. Solved. No royal gateway here: the payoff is depth (Wales c. 1701, Scotland c. 1630), a second colonial-Virginia Davis line, and a possible new Revolutionary patriot.