Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/112

92 eighteen months before his death. lie was a fine pulpit orator, and published numerous sermons, a collection of which appeared after his death (Lon- don, 1767) and passed through several editions, both in this country and in Great Britain, one of which (3 vols., New" York, 1851) contains an essay on the " Life and Times of Davies " by the Rev. Albert Barnes. Dr. Davies also wrote verses of merit, including an elegy on his old preceptor, Samuel Blair. — His son, William, leaving Prince- ton college in' 1765, entered the army, became in- spector-general under Steuben in 1778, and enjoyed the friendship of Washington. He was afterward in the auditor's office, in Richmond, Va.

DAVIES, Thomas, clergyman, b. in Kinton, Herefordshire, England, 21 Dec, 1736 ; d. in New Milford, Conn., 13 May, 1766. His grandfather, John Davies, emigrated from England about 1740, and settled at Davies Hollow, then a part of Litch- field, Conn., but now a part of the town of Wash- ington. He was the first Episcopalian in the town, and by his efforts the present parish of St. Michael's was organized in 1745. He gave it a tract of land, and contributed largely to the erec- tion of a church. There is a tablet to his memory in the present St. Micliael's church, Litchfield. Thomas was graduated at Yale in 1758, and pr- dained by the archbishop of Canterbury on 23 Aug., 1761. He then returned to this country with a commission from the Society for propagating the gospel, as missionary to New Milford, Roxbury, Sharon, New Preston, New Fairfield, and Litch- field. Here he labored zealously, holding occa- sional services also in other towns. Though he met with many obstacles from tlie intolerance of the times, he overcame them by his prudent and conciliatory spirit, and to him the growth of the Episcopal church in that part of the state was largely due. The church at New Milford and sev- eral others were built under his care.

DAVIESS, Joseph Hamilton, lawyer, b. in Bedford county, Va., 4 IMarch, 1774 ; killed in the battle of Tippecanoe, 7 Nov., 1811. He accom- panied his parents in 1779 to Kentucky, where they settled first in Lincoln county and then near Dan- ville. Young Daviess received his education in an academy at Harrodsburg, becoming an excellent classical and mathematical scholar, and afterward pursued a wide course of reading. He served for six months as a volunteer in the Indian campaign of 1793, and then studied law. In 1795 he was admitted to the bar and, settling in Danville, en- tered on a career that made his name a household word in the west. Being a federalist, he was ex- cluded from any hope of political advancement, and consequently devoted himself to his profession and attained a high position at the bar. His ec- centricities made him famous. Instead of " riding the circuit," he used to shoulder his rifle and range the woods from town to town ; and he usu- ally appeared in court in a Inmting costume. In 1799 he acted as second to John Rowan in a duel in which Rowan's antagonist was killed, when both principal and seconds fled to avoid prosecution. Daviess was for some time a fugitive; but, after hearing that Rowan had been arrested, returned, appeared in court as his counsel, and secured his acquittal. It is said that he was the first western lawyer that ever argued a case in the U. S. supreme court. He came to Washington in a dilapidated hunting uniform, gained an important suit, and returned home in the same peculiar costume. About tills time he married a sister of Chief-Jus- tice Marshall, and afterward became U. S. attorney for Kentucky, in which capacity, on 3 Nov., 1806, he moved for an order requiring Aaron Burr to appear and answer to a charge of levying war against a nation with which the United States was at peace. The judge overruled the motion ; but Burr appeared in court next day and requested that the motion be granted. After this was ac- complished. Burr, with his counsel, Henry Clay, boldly courted investigation ; but the witnesses upon whom the prosecution relied could not be brought into court, and it was impossible to sus- tain the charges. This event almost entirely de- stroyed the popularity of Daviess, which even the subsequent revelation of Burr's plot could not fully restore. In 1811 he joined the army of Gen. William H. Harrison as major of Kentucky vol- unteer dragoons, and served in the campaign against the northwestern Indians. In the battle of Tippecanoe he led a successful cavalry charge against the savages, but fell, mortally wounded. Counties in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Mis- souri have been named for him. He published "A View of the President's Conduct concerning the Conspiracy of 1806" (1807) and "The Sketch of a Bill for an Uniform Militia of the United States, with Reflections on the State of the Nation, ad- dresscnl to the Secretary of War" (1810).

DAVILA, Gil Gonzalez (dah'-vee-lah), Spanish- American author, b. in Avila, Spain, in 1570; d. in Madrid, Spain, in 1658. He was an attendant of Cardinal Deza at Rome, studied there, and returned to Spain, where he published several works that met with public approval, and was appointed preb- endary of the cathedral of Salamanca, chronicler of Castile, and in 1612 chronicler of Spanish America. His publications include "Historia de las anfiglie- dades de Salamanca" (1606); "La vida de Don Alonso Tostado de Madrigal Obispo de Avila " (1611) ; " Teatro de las grandezas de Madrid " (1625) ; " Vida del rey de Castilla Don Enrique III." (1638) ; " Teatro de las igiesias de Espana " (1640); and "Teatro de las igiesias de las Indias Occidentales, sus arzobispos y obispos y cosas memorables" (2 vols., 1645-'9). He left unpub- lished works, including " La vida de Felipe III." He was the fii'st to write the ecclesiastical his- tory of Spanish America.

DAVILA, Nepomnceno, naturalist, b. in Castro Urdiales, Spain, in 1574 ; d. in the city of Mexico in 1647. He was a monk, and arrived in Mexico about 1600, and devoted his whole energy to the founda- tion of a convent for his order. In 1619 he acquired for $3,000, from the Count de Cortina, the title-deed of the ground on which afterward the convent of San Augustin was built, which to-day is occu- pied by the National library. But he did not live to see his work finished, as in 1640 he was thrown, by order of the Inquisition, into its dungeons, on a charge of sorcery, and died after seven years of incarceration and torture. Davila was a close stu- dent of natural history, especially the Mexican fauna, and wrote several treatises, of which the most notable one is "Afinidades entre algunas plantas y los mamiferos." The principal cause of his imprisonment was, besides his advanced ideas about the sensibility of plants and the in- telligence of certain animals, and the relations existing between them, the finding in his cell of many dried and stuffed animals, and collections of plants, as Davila devoted his leisure to studies of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He wrote also the following works, which have never been pub- lished, but are preserved in the National library of Mexico ; " Un aiio de caza en Sierra Madre," " Los Anfibios del Pacifico," " Los Fosiles de la Mesa Central," and " Los Paquidermos de America."