THE PIONEER DAVIS FAMILY
OF LOPEZ ISLAND, DUNGENESS

More than 100 years ago the earliest members of this
many-branched clan came to the N. W.

At least 100 years have passed since the many-branched Davis family of Dungeness and Lopez Island migrated to Northwest Washington.

When members of the family got together in 1958 for a reunion at the old farm on Davis Bay, on the southwest side of Lopez Island, 104 descendants of Hezekiah Davis were present. Ten reside outside the state, some 73 live in Seattle and most of the others live in nearby counties.

Lopez Island boasts not only a Davis Bay, but a Davis Point, on its northwest side. The latter is a military reserve, known to the Davises as Jack Shearer’s Point, for John Shearer, an Englishman nicknamed “Panama Jack,” who squatted there for a quarter of a century.

It is a mystery how the name Davis Bay got on the English Admiralty chart of 1859. American coast surveyors had discovered the anchorage in 1854 and called it Shoal Bight, a name soon forgotten.

The Davises did not establish homes in Washington until 1860, but there may have been another man of the same surname ahead of them.

The 1870 census listed Benjamin Davis, farmer from Massachusetts, on Lopez.

Benjamin, who was no relation of Hezekiah and his offspring, probably was the American who tangled with military authorities on San Juan Island in 1865. He had been living on Lopez, running livestock there for several years, an account says, and went to San Juan to farm a seven-acre tract on shares.

After working three months, Davis visited Lopez, to see how his cattle were getting along. On his return to San Juan, he spied a goat, which he said was his property, in the possession of the military officers.

The commander of the post paid Davis a $5 greenback for the animal. Ben demanded gold instead of devaluated currency. Captain Gray, annoyed, asked Davis how long he had been on San Juan and if he did not know that he needed permission to remain there. Davis professed ignorance of the military occupation rules. He said he wanted to stay. Gray told him the request was too late; Davis must settle his affairs within a week and depart.

The settler returned to Lopez. If he was indeed Benjamin Davis, he was still there in 1870, with his Indian wife and child.

Meanwhile, James L. Davis, a son of Hezekiah, had taken his family to Lopez and built a log house near Davis Bay. None of his descendants ever heard of Benjamin Davis, who must have gone soon after Hezekiah’s arrival. Ben was not around when the 1880 census was enumerated.

The Davis clan in the past year became interested in its lineage and several members have pieced bits together. They traced their genealogy back to 1777, when an ancestor received a crown grant of timberland in Eastern Ontario, Canada.

Hezekiah, born in 1802 within four miles of Niagara Falls, was taking care of the sawmill and logging business on the family tract when two of his five sons caught the gold-rush fever. It is thought that two were Clark and Alonzo Davis. They came west by ox team from Independence, Mo, in 1849.

Only Alonzo, who later settled at Dungeness, in Clallam County, left a history of his wanderings. He stopped to mine in Nevada and at the Yuba, Pitt, Feather and Sacramento River diggings in California. In 1853 he returned to Canada and the family lumber business.

At least one of the Davis brothers, maybe two, moved north up the Coast across Oregon and Washington and into the Cariboo area of Canada, thence overland to Ontario.

The wanderers told their father about the dense forests they had seen on Puget Sound and urged him to sell out and move west. They proposed Dungeness as a likely place for a lumberman, but, when Hezekiah made the journey in 1860, he found a large mill already operating at Port Discovery, a dozen or so miles to the east.

“Grandfather would not open up in competition,” said Mrs. Eunice E. Troxell of Oak Harbor, Whidbey Island, who has been assembling some of the Davis history. “But he did get a farm at Dungeness and one for his son, Hall, who had come west with him.

“After seven years and much persuasion, my father, James L., and mother sold their home and came west, also. They were at Dungeness and Port Discovery two years before going to Lopez Island, which still was considered British territory.”

James, with his wife and three children and 9-year-old nephew, Rowland, moved to the island in September 1869. Some members of the family think that his brother, Clark, may have located land at the bay before Jams went there.

Mrs. Amelia Davis, James’ wife, was the first white woman on Lopez. It was a lonely place for her. The 22 other settlers were bachelors or had Indian wives.

James shipped in cattle from Texas by way of San Francisco and contracted to supply meat to the British garrison on San Juan. He hired Indians to clear land for him and, after the international boundary dispute in the San Juans ended three years later, he raised matched teams of Percheron horses and branched into dairying.

Within sight of James’ hose and directly south of Davis Bay lay 58-acre Long Island, which had been the soldier’s homestead of J. J. Culpepper. In 1874 the veteran sold his squatter’s rights to Robert First of San Juan for $20, less than half the value of a cow.

Hezekiah Davis bought the claim from Firth, moved to Long Island and completed proving up, receiving his patent in 1878. His wife died in 1877.

Hezekiah stayed on Long Island for some years before returning to Dungeness, where he died in 1890.

Alonzo Davis had made a final move to the West in 1862 and, after a jaunt to the Cariboo, he took up dairy farming. Hezekiah deeded Long Island to Alonzo in 1884.

Both Alonzo and Hall Davis made names for themselves as pioneer dairymen in Clallam County. Alonzo took the first Jersey cows to Dungeness in 1875 and Hall built up the initial Holstein herd in the area. The brothers made butter for the Seattle grocery trade.

Meanwhile, the Davises on Lopez Island multiplied. James and Amelia had ten children. The first born on the island was James Ernest, to whom his father sold the homestead in 1902. His son-in-law and daughter Lenore (Mr. And Mrs. Lincoln Weeks) live there now.

James L. had increased his holdings to 210 acres, a portion of which went to another son, Herbert, who died 30 years ago. Herbert’s widow, Mrs. Mary Davis of Garrison Bay, San Juan Island, was killed in an automobile accident last December, closing one chapter of the ----.