Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/90

 78 Southern Historical Society Papers.

that is found in the early lists of membership. In February, 1716, Martha Thomas disappears and the name of Martha Dafis occurs for the first time. My hypothesis is that she had mar- ried, meanwhile, one of the Davis young men. In the year 1732 the case of Martha Dafis was brought before the Church, and the records give the following account of it:

"The rebellion of Martha David against the Church appeared, (i) In opposing the truth which she one professed to the church according to the commandment of Christ and the prac- tice of the Apostles under the ministry of the New Testament.

(2) In refusing instruction, and despising advice tho' offered many a time by the brethren in particular, and by the church in general.

(3) In breaking covenant with the church by carrying uncon- nected pieces of what was talked in the church to the Presby- terians to have their opinion of them, tho' the church charged her beforehand not to do so.

(4) In being so false and unfaithful in carrying her tales so that she has curtailed the truth and increased her falsehoods ; and thereby hath wronged the church by her change of opinion, and putting a false gloss upon what was said to her — and putting it in the power of enemies to blaspheme— also to renew the variance between us and the Presbyterians, for which causes she was put out of the church Mar. 4, 1732.

N. B. She was President Davis's mother." (Records, p. 26.)

I have striven in vain to discover the Christian name of the father of President Samuel Davies of Princeton College. James David, whose name appears last on the list of charter mem- bers, may have been his father, but of that point we cannot be certified. According to Dr. Foote (Sketches, p. 158), the father of Samuel Davies was born in the year 1680, he died on the nth of August, 1759, apparently in Hanover County, Virginia ; but the records of that county were destroyed at the close of the Confederate War, and it will hardly be possible to obtain any further information concerning him. Richard