DAR highlights Revolutionary War patriot John Davis

Patriot John Davis was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, March 25, 1762.

At age 14 he enlisted in the Pennsylvania Continental Militia and was assigned to the 4th Artillery Brigade under Col. Proctor. In September 1777 his brigade joined the Battle of Brandywine and then the Battle of Germantown, where they were defeated, and Davis was injured when an artillery carriage rolled over him.

He was captured there and was initially imprisoned on the British prison ship Jersey in New York Harbor for two months. Davis was 15 years old. He was then transported with other prisoners to Yarmouth, England, where he was imprisoned for the next three years.

He was finally released to the United States and eventually was honorably discharged in New Jersey in December 1780. He lived the rest of his life partially blind and handicapped by the artillery carriage accident. He became a boot and shoemaker; however, his handicap limited his ability to work.

In 1781 he married Elizabeth McFarlen in Virginia, herself a patriot mother of Revolutionary times. She lived in Norfolk, Virginia during the great struggle for American independence and witnessed the burning of that city by the enemy.

According to the Wooster Democrat paper of March 24, 1842, “She was frequently engaged, with hundreds of other patriotic females of the day, in making clothing and bandages for the sick and wounded Continental soldiers.”

After they married, they moved to Cadiz from about 1808-19, where they completed their family of 10 children.

It was shortly after the Davis family came back to Wayne County in 1819 that John Davis applied for a veterans pension because he was unable to work enough to properly support his large family. Found in his sworn pension deposition to the Wayne County Common Pleas Court was a list of 30 former neighbors in Cadiz who swore to his good character and described him as a sober, honest, industrious but poor man.

After reviewing his application and declaration of his property (which the court accepted as worth a total of $77.75), he received his pension in March 1824.

Elizabeth Davis died March 23, 1842, at age 81. The Wooster Democrat noted her death, printing this: “After a long life of usefulness, she has been called to bid adieu to her aged husband and all the transitory scenes of this world.”

John Davis died Aug. 21, 1856, at age 94. His probate records indicate his estate paid $11 for a rough wood coffin and $25 for a headstone that was to be made and placed whenever the stonecutter was called upon to do so. Whether or not it was ever created is unknown, as John Davis had no marker for many years.

The Wooster-Wayne Chapter NSDAR arranged for John Davis to have a government marker placed in fall 2024 at his final resting place in Plain Township, Wayne County.

For questions or more information, email jolene.dyer@gmail.com.

Editor's note: The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Wooster-Wayne Chapter is submitting a series of articles about Revolutionary War patriots buried in Wayne County. This is the first of the series.