Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/93

 Genealogy of Jefferson Davis. 81

When did Evan Davis remove to the Colony of Georgia? If his son Samuel Davis was born in the year 1756, the union with the Widow Williams must have taken place before that time. But Georgia was an unlikely place for Evan Davis to obtain any but an Indian wife prior to the year 1756. More- over the language of Mr. Davis does not appear to certify that Evan Davis married Mrs. Williams in Georgia. He may have removed to Georgia some time after his marriage to her.

It seems possible, in fact, that Evan Davis may have obtained his wife from the communicants of Welsh Tract Church in Pennsylvania. A family of the name of William, which later came to be written Williams, was established in the Welsh Tract community as early as the year 1710, at which time Mary Wil- liam from Kilcam in Wales was received as a member of the church (Records, p. 14). Shion William appears to have been the head of the family. He signed the Philadelphia Confession of Faith in 1716 (Records, p. 20), and was buried under the name of John William on the 30th of September, 1718. Mar- garet William was also a signer of the Confession (Records, p. 20).

During the years 1735, 1737 and 1738, quite a number of people were sent forth from Welsh Tract church in Delaware to build another church on Pedee River in South Carolina. Their names are all carefully preserved in the records (Records, Pt. I, pp. 83-85). The new church that was established in Carolina was styled Welsh Neck, in memory of the mother church from which it had sprung. It is still an influential com- munity, and Welsh Neck Association has grown up about it an organization of more than twenty churches, that is highly respected in all sections of the Southern country.

It seems natural to conclude that Evan Davis in traveling Southward should have called at Welsh Neck, where many peo- ple resided with whom he had been on familiar terms. Mar- garet William of Welsh Tract had become a member of Welsh Neck (Records, p. 84), and it does not appear a violent hypo- thesis that one of her sons may have married a Miss Emory