Guide to the Papers of Samuel W. Davis c1820-1914
- Repository
- Heinz History Center
- Title
- Papers of Samuel W. Davis
- Creator
- Davis, Samuel W.
- Collection Number
- MSS#17
- Extent
- 2.25 cubic feet (5 Boxes)
- Date
- c1820-1914
- Abstract
- Samuel W. Davis was a Methodist Episcopal Minister who was active as a missionary and temperance reformer in Southwestern Pennsylvania and surrounding states in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. Davis was assigned to Methodist Episcopal Church congregations across the region and also worked with the Coke Mission, set up to preach to the Hungarian and Slovak coal and coke workers in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. These papers include diaries, a book of sermons, correspondence, essays, and other sundry items. The bulk of these papers are Samuel Davis' diaries that cover the years 1868 to 1914 in Clarksburg, West Virginia and the Pennsylvania towns and cities of Dale City (Meyersdale), Uniontown, Belle Vernon, Mt. Pleasant, Homestead, McKeesport, Pittsburgh, and Wilkinsburg. Samuel Davis recorded entries, often lengthy, nearly every day between 1868 through 1914. The Samuel W. Davis Papers have been digitized and are available online, as part of Penn State's Civil War Era Digital Archive project.
- Language
- The material in this collection is in English.
- Sponsor
- This finding aid has been encoded as a part of the Historic Pittsburgh project a joint effort of the University of Pittsburgh and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Funding for this portion of the project has been donated by the Hillman Foundation.
- Publisher
- Heinz History Center
- Address
- 1212 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222
library@heinzhistorycenter.org
URL: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org
Biographical Sketch of Samuel Wesley Davis (c1839-1914)
Samuel W. Davis was a Methodist Episcopal Minister who was active as a missionary and temperance reformer in Southwestern Pennsylvania and surrounding states in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. Davis was assigned to Methodist Episcopal Church congregations across the region and also worked with the Coke Mission, set up to preach to the Hungarian and Slovak coal and coke workers in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He was born on November 9, 1839 in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. After serving as a teacher for one year, Davis attended Allegheny College in Meadville (Crawford County), Pennsylvania for two terms in 1861. Davis left the College and studied privately to earn a license to preach in the Methodist Church. In 1868, Davis accepted his first post as a minister in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Besides serving as an extremely active and fervent minister in these early years, Davis was closely involved in temperance work both in West Virginia as well as at the national level. Though Davis' temperance society activities subsided in the years after he was assigned to the Coke Mission in the early 1890s, he spoke out relentlessly against the evils of consuming alcohol. Although apolitical for the most part, Davis called himself a Republican and each year noted that he had voted for the Prohibition ticket.
In March of 1870, Davis was reassigned to a church on Wheeling Island, in Wheeling, West Virginia. Here he continued his temperance work, and became involved in a greater variety of activities suited to urban life, such as weekly preachers' meetings, and social visits to members of his church. In Wheeling, Davis became friendly with the family of Reverend Stone, whose daughter, Mary, he married in 1872. After a brief ceremony, Mary and Samuel embarked on an extended honeymoon, visiting relatives as far away as Chicago and St. Louis. The Davis' first child, Anna May (c1872-1883), was born in this first year of their marriage. Mary and Samuel Davis had six more children: Alfred (1875-?), Bessie (1878-?), James (1880-c1881), Wilbur (1882-1884), Nellie (1886-), and Blanche (1890-?).
In 1873, Davis met with problems within the Methodist Church's West Virginia Conference, and requested employment in the Church's Pittsburgh Conference. He was subsequently assigned to Dale City (later Meyersdale), Pennsylvania, a mining community in Somerset County. In Dale City, Davis was active in soliciting funds to build a new church building for the town. In 1876, Davis moved to a congregation in Uniontown (Fayette County), Pennsylvania, a community he much preferred to Dale City. An avid traveller, Davis spent several days in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the Centennial Celebration and in 1878 accompanied his father-in-law, the Reverend Stone, on a seven month trip to Europe and the Middle East. Following his return from overseas in the spring of 1879, Davis accepted a new assignment in Belle Vernon (Fayette County), Pennsylvania. Davis disagreed with members of that congregation concerning the amount of time he spent paying pastoral visits throughout the area and he sought a new assignment. In 1881, Davis moved to a congregation in Mt. Pleasant (Westmoreland County), Pennsylvania. The early 1880s proved to be a disruptive time for the Davis family. While still in Mt. Pleasant, Samuel's son James died before his second birthday. In 1883, Samuel Davis moved the family once again, this time to Homestead (Allegheny County), Pennsylvania. While Davis was very happy to be near Pittsburgh, financial problems at the church would force him in 1885 to move to McKeesport (Allegheny County), Pennsylvania to a new congregation. Tragedy struck the family twice during this period as the Davis' first child, Anna May, died in 1883, and two year old Wilbur died in 1884 in a measles epidemic. Davis was never satisfied with the appointment in McKeesport, feeling that his salary was too meager and the congregation was too small. Fortunately, then, Davis received an appointment to the Walton Church on Pittsburgh's South Side, where he was pleased by its "large and desirable field." While at the Walton Church, Davis began to write and edit a church newspaper called The Messenger, a project which occupied a great deal of time he had previously spent on prohibition work. As an example of Davis' compassion and zeal for providing assistance, he rushed to Johnstown (Cambria County), Pennsylvania in early June 1889 after the devastating flood that killed two thousand people. After two years at the Walton Church, Davis accepted a post in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he remained until accepting the Coke Mission assignment in the Pittsburgh area in 1894. The Coke Mission was established to provide assistance to the recent immigrants working in the coal mines and the coke plants in Fayette County and elsewhere in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Many of these immigrants came from Eastern Europe including Hungary, Slovakia and other countries. During this time, his son Alfred enrolled at Washington and Jefferson College, and Bessie began Normal School at Indiana, Pennsylvania. While working with the Coke Mission, Davis' family lived for three years in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh while Samuel travelled far and wide throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania in his missionary efforts. In 1897, the family built a house in Wilkinsburg (Allegheny County), Pennsylvania, and remained there until 1913. Also in 1897, Davis' daughter Bessie became a teacher, and Alfred graduated, eventually accepting an engineering job with a railroad company.
After 1897, Samuel Davis gave himself completely to the missionary effort among the Slavic immigrants of the mining towns surrounding Pittsburgh. He recruited both native speakers of the Slavic languages, as well as recent college graduates from Oberlin, Baldwin-Wallace, and Dickinson Colleges to serve in the missionary effort, and often even solicited funds from Andrew Carnegie or Henry Clay Frick. In 1906, Davis founded a missionary training school in Uniontown, and appointed his daughter, Bessie, to serve as the head of it. Also by this time, his wife Mary was also involved in missionary work, teaching English to Italian immigrants. In 1912, with all their children either married, with careers of their own, or in college, the Davis household amicably broke up so Mary and Samuel could each pursue their own calling. Mary Davis went to Boston to do missionary work there, and Samuel Davis moved to Uniontown to be nearer the training school he established. It is unclear when Davis actually died, though entries in his diary end after a long illness in the spring of 1914.
Scope and Content Notes
These papers include diaries, a book of sermons, correspondence, essays, and other sundry items. The bulk of these papers are Samuel Davis' diaries that cover the years 1868 to 1914 in Clarksburg, West Virginia and the Pennsylvania towns and cities of Dale City (Meyersdale), Uniontown, Belle Vernon, Mt. Pleasant, Homestead, McKeesport, Pittsburgh, and Wilkinsburg. Samuel Davis recorded entries, often lengthy, nearly every day between 1868 through 1914. By using blank record books and not standard diaries, Davis was not limited in the amount of information to include for any given day. Furthermore, Davis often pasted items of note in the books including newsclippings, correspondence, publications, photographs and other items. Davis' diaries are primarily spiritual in tone as he fears often for the state of his faith and prays incessantly for the salvation of his soul. Although such personal introspection may not at first glance be historically especially useful, Davis often went beyond the mere personal to explore the meaning of larger issues in nineteenth century life, such as the death of several of his children, or natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and train wrecks. Also, since Davis documented his life extremely closely, with an entry for nearly every day between 1868 and 1914, one gets an incredible view of the life course of a man living in the late nineteenth century. One can clearly sense the transition from a young preacher who writes that "calmness and patient waiting...seem not to be my virtues yet" to a well-established family man, and an important member of the community responsible in part for thousands of lives. Davis wrote of his personal experiences in such a way that it is easy to see the link between his own beliefs, values and desires and larger events and phenomenon shaping late-nineteenth century thought and action. Davis wrote detailed descriptions of his travels to various temperance conventions, his 1872 honeymoon when he witnessed the devastation wreaked by the Chicago fire the year before, Philadelphia, Europe and the Middle East, Washington, D. C., and Boston. However, descriptions of the towns in which Davis lived and worked are lacking; there is no mention of the kinds of social or economic interaction that went on in these areas, aside from church activities. The diaries also contain detailed descriptions of the Methodist ministers conferences held yearly in Pittsburgh, which are quite useful for understanding and determining issues surrounding religion in the Pittsburgh area at the turn of the century. Furthermore, the diaries kept while Davis was affiliated with the Coke Mission provide very strong documentation of the Methodist Church's efforts to assist the recent immigrants in the Fayette County mining towns. Besides diary accounts of his work with the Mission, publications and letters are pasted in the books to provide additional documentation of the relief effort.
In 1870 Davis wrote: "I have wondered if it would not be well to note interesting public events in this book, so as to impress the mind and interest me in the doings of the world at large." Davis did keep up the project for a few weeks, but these entries concerning "public events", as well as others in later volumes are not especially useful. They are kept completely objective, and Davis does not respond to them with any of his own personal convictions. The events Davis seemed to savor the most, and for which he gave nearly lurid descriptions often involved people dying violent deaths from drinking alcohol, trains killing small children playing in the tracks, armed robberies, and the like. Despite being a minister, it is quite obvious from the entries that Davis had a typical Victorian penchant for the slightly off-color. Occasionally, Davis provides personal insight into these social problems and disasters. One clear example is the series of entries following the Johnstown Flood of May 1889, where Davis writes in detail about his efforts to get to Johnstown to assist in the flood relief and his observations once there.
Davis' diaries also provide a sense of their family life. Davis wrote warmly about his oldest daughter, and the tone of the entries changed drastically after she died, indicating a personal change in Davis himself. Davis was obviously proud of his children, and had great respect for their lives. It is more difficult to understand the relationship between Davis and his wife, though at times he would praise her to the skies in his diary, and even mentions helping with the wash at times when the servant was not available. Their separation in 1912 when Mary went to Boston was clearly not due to marital problems; rather it indicated the strength of their union that Davis was able to give his wife the freedom to pursue her own fulfillment.
These diaries also include a record of his trip to Europe, 1878-1879, and various genealogical and family papers. The diary of his trip to Europe, 1878-1879 is located in the regular diary volume dating from June 11, 1894 until May 23, 1898. Included are numerous published items that were picked up along his travels with his father-in-law, the Reverend Stone. The genealogical information is found throughout the diaries and includes lists of family members, dates of birth, death and marriages, and a small selection of original documents that were pasted into the diary. Of note are family material located in the second volume (1873-1878) that include correspondence and financial records from the ancestors, who lived in Fayette County, in the 1820s and 1830s.
One volume of Davis' sermons date primarily from c1864 through 1890 and cover a variety of issues. A total of 28 sermons are included in the volume and a list for the titles may be found on page 510. These sermons occasionally draw upon incidents in his life or those in the news including one telling of a story of an embezzling bank cashier in Wheeling, West Virginia (p. 75) as well as those dealing with ways his congregants should lead their lives. Other items of note include loose materials such as essays, notes for sermons, correspondence, and other sundry items. These loose items primarily date from the 1850s through the 1870s, while Davis was in school. Many of these items appear to be essays and lectures written by Davis for schools he attended including his secondary school, Allegheny College in 1861 and private study in Ohio starting in 1862. Many of these items are fragments and provide little information or context for their original creation. Of note are a temperance lecture given in 1865 and an essay on the role of war, written at Allegheny College in 1861, on the eve of the Civil War. The correspondence primarily includes letters written by Davis' colleagues in the Methodist Church from across the region. Additional correspondence, newspaper clippings and publications are often found pasted in his diaries.
Mary Davis' diary is not as comprehensive as the diary of her husband, but provides an accurate picture of a nineteenth century woman. Her diary documents events in her life between 1876 and 1884, often with brief and sporadic entries. In accordance with the times, Mary worried often about the state of her faith, and her ability to remain patient and to keep her temper when dealing with her children and her husband. She wrote that she often felt "burdened on account of the children," and mentioned occasional bouts of what she herself called "mental depression." That Mary also had opportunity to escape some of these trials and that she involved herself with larger issues, such as presidential elections and her own election as president of a chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was of course, also not unusual for the times.
Arrangement
The Samuel W. Davis papers are housed in five archival boxes and are arranged alphabetically by folder and volume title with loose materials arranged to the rear. Loose materials including essays, notes for sermons and correspondence were randomly inserted in the volume of Davis' sermons with no clear method. These items have been pulled and arranged in chronological order when possible.
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is currently being digitized and is not available for use. .
Immediate Source of Acquisition
These materials came in one accession.
Acc# 1992.161 Gift of Mrs. Catherine Davis, (Catherine Davis is the grand-daughter of Samuel Davis). 1992
Preferred Citation
Papers of Samuel W. Davis, c1820-1914, MSS#17, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Jennifer Geller on September 15, 1994.
Revision and rearrangement for the encoded version of the finding aid provided by Susan M. Allen on December 1, 1999.
Existence and Location of Copies
The Samuel W. Davis Papers have been digitized and are available online, as part of Penn State's Civil War Era Digital Archive project.
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights reside with the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or publish, please contact the curator of the Archives.
Subjects
- Methodist Episcopal Church -- Pennsylvania.
- Allegheny College (Meadville, Pa.)
- Coke Mission.
- Methodist Church (U.S.). -- Pittsburgh Conference.
- Women's Christian Temperance Movement.
- Davis, Mary K.
- Davis family
- Crawford County (Pa.) -- Education.
- Europe -- Description and travel
- Fayette County (Pa.) -- Religion.
- Fayette County (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- Homestead (Pa.) -- Religion.
- Homestead (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- Johnstown (Pa.) -- Flood, 1889.
- McKeesport (Pa.) -- Religion.
- McKeesport (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- Religion.
- Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- Somerset County (Pa.) -- Religion.
- Somerset County (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- West Virginia -- Religion.
- West Virginia -- Social life and customs.
- Westmoreland County (Pa.) -- Religion.
- Westmoreland County (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- Wilkinsburg (Pa.) -- Religion.
- Wilkinsburg (Pa.) -- Social life and customs.
- Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fayette County.
- Coal miners -- Pennsylvania -- Fayette County.
- Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Westmoreland County.
- Coal miners -- Pennsylvania -- Westmoreland County.
- Floods -- Pennsylvania -- Johnstown.
- Hungarian Americans -- Pennsylvania -- Fayette County.
- Immigrants -- Pennsylvania -- Fayette County.
- Slavic Americans -- Pennsylvania -- Fayette County.
- Slovak Americans -- Pennsylvania -- Fayette County.
- Temperance -- Societies, etc.