Beverly Arnold Davis (23 January 1820–25 February 1894), member-elect of the House of Representatives, was born near Sycamore in northern Pittsylvania County. Location of landholdings, family naming patterns, and other circumstantial evidence suggest that his parents were most likely Thomas B. Davis, a farmer, and Ann "Nancy" G. Arnold Davis. As a young man Davis worked for about three years in a Lynchburg store. On 22 June 1846 he executed a marriage bond and on that date or soon afterward married Mary P. Williams, of Halifax County. They had at least five sons and two daughters.
Heeding a call to the ministry, Davis had been licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church by 21 December 1846, by which time he had returned to Pittsylvania County. Most likely a Whig, he served as postmaster at Galveston for about two years beginning on 23 April 1852. By late in the summer of 1859 Davis had moved to Patrick County, where he purchased 20,277 acres of land, including a yellow sulfur mineral spring at which he established a Methodist school, opened in July 1860 and incorporated the following year as Patrick Springs Female College. In 1860 he owned ten slaves, seven of whom were age twelve or older.
During the Civil War, Davis's stature in the community garnered him several positions of responsibility. In June 1861 the Patrick County Court authorized him to issue $20,000 in bonds to cover the costs of equipping local volunteers for Confederate service, and the next year it designated him to purchase salt under a state contract and to ensure its fair distribution. In November 1861 Davis unsuccessfully sought election in a four-candidate field to the Confederate House of Representatives from Bedford, Carroll, Franklin, Henry, Patrick, and Pittsylvania Counties.
In the autumn of 1865 Davis joined seven other candidates vying for the Fifth District seat in the United States House of Representatives. Success in the contentious race hinged on whether candidates could present themselves as able to take the prescribed test oath affirming that they had not borne arms against the United States or otherwise supported the Southern cause. One of the other candidates later remembered that Davis, noted for his fine conversation and powerful oratory, had electioneered six days of the week across the sprawling district comprising Bedford, Campbell, Franklin, Halifax, Henry, Patrick, Pittsylvania, and Roanoke Counties, as well as the cities of Danville and Lynchburg, and had preached on the seventh, frequently a funeral sermon for a local Confederate who had died during the war. The tactic worked; in the October election Davis carried Franklin, Patrick, and Pittsylvania Counties and polled well enough in Bedford and Halifax to eke out a victory with 29 percent of the vote, a scant 43 votes ahead of the second-place finisher. A northern-born candidate who had received only 39 votes of the 5,895 cast announced his intention to contest the results on the grounds that he alone of all the office seekers could legitimately take the test oath, but the opportunity to prove his challenge never arose. Radical Republicans in the Thirty-ninth Congress denied Davis and all other members elected from the former Confederate states their seats by instructing the House clerk to omit them in the organizational roll-call.
Davis continued to preach and by early in the 1870s was living in Danville. During the postwar years he became a Democrat. Twice voters of Pittsylvania County and Danville elected Davis to the House of Delegates. During the 1881–1882 assembly he sat on the Committee on Enrolled Bills and during the 1889–1890 assembly on the Committees on Propositions and Grievances, on Asylums and Prisons, and on Officers and Offices at the Capitol.
About 1892 Davis and his wife moved to Lynchburg to live with his namesake son (1862–1930), the founder and president of a series of Virginia business schools, including Virginia Business College of Richmond, Virginia, and Davis-Wagner Business College, in Norfolk. Beverly Arnold Davis died suddenly of apoplexy at his son's home in Lynchburg on 25 February 1894 and was buried in Bedford County, probably in the Davis family cemetery near Joppa Mill.
Sources Consulted:
Halifax Co. Marriage Bond Register, 1:181; Patrick Co. Deed Book, 16:469, 485, 492, 515, 530; Patrick Co. Order Book, 8:375, 413; Patrick Springs Female College, Patrick Co., Va. (1860); 1861 poll for the Horse Pasture precinct in Henry Co., Polls Taken for Various Elections (1861–1863), Henry Co. Court Records, Accession 40076, Library of Virginia; Daily Richmond Whig, 24 Oct. 1865; Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 Oct. 1865; Lynchburg Daily Virginian, 26 Oct. 1865; The Tribune Almanac and Political Register for 1866 (1866), 64; John Goode, Recollections of a Lifetime (1906), 76; Robert Enoch Withers, Autobiography of an Octogenarian (1907), 235–236; Alan B. Bromberg, "The Virginia Congressional Elections of 1865: A Test of Southern Loyalty," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 84 (1976): 87–89, 97; Death Register, Bedford Co. (variant death date of 26 Feb. 1894), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; obituary (with full name and birth and death dates) in Lynchburg News, 27 Feb. 1894.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Sara B. Bearss.
How to cite this page:
Sara B. Bearss,"Beverly Arnold Davis (1820–1894)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Davis_Beverly_Arnold, accessed [today's date]).
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