1. Scotland

The Davis line probably began in Wales, where Davies was a common name, but the surviving narrative locates them in Scotland. There, the Davises were part of a community of devout Presbyterians whose beliefs brought them intro conflict with the Church of England. Queen Mary – Bloody Mary, they called her – executed hundreds of Protestants who refused to renounce their faith, and drove thousands more into exile. In the mid-1600s, Britain saw decades of civil war along political and religious lines, with monarchists, parliamentarians, Scottish Presbyterians, and Irish Catholics battling over faith and power.  

The story of one of my forebears from this era is worthy of a movie. John Nisbet was a professional soldier in Europe’s 30 Years War before returning to his native Scotland for another kind of fight. He was a man of deep faith, a direct descendant of Murdoch Nisbet, who first translated the New Testament into Scottish. John drew the ire of the authorities when he had his son baptized by a banned Presbyterian minister. He became a leader of the Covenanters, promoting religious liberty and resisting the authority of the crown.

Nisbet was wounded, stripped and left for dead in the battle of Rullion Green in 1666, but crawled away after dark and lived to continue the fight. He fought in skirmishes at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, where he served as a captain. The British put a price on his head, but he eluded them for years. They finally caught up with Nisbet in 1685 – he was betrayed by a cousin – and he was tried and executed by hanging in Edinburgh, a victim of what is referred to in Scottish history as “The Killing Time.” In the earliest family lore, he’s known as “John the Martyr.”

The Covenanters left Scotland for America rather than sign an oath of loyalty to the king. Other Scots fleeing religious persecution went by way of northern Ireland, where they first became known as the Scotch Irish, a descriptor that followed them to America. “In the late 1600s all the news in Ireland and Scotland was of the wonders of the New World –  Religious freedom and plenty of land,” Aunt Hattie Bell writes, “so the Scotch Irish began to flock to America in great numbers.”

Among these immigrants were Robert Davis and his wife, Margaret Pickens Davis. They landed near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania having been declared a haven for all faiths, and by 1722 they were registered as members of a church in Bucks County. Later they owned land in Lancaster County, Penn., before moving south. Robert obtained land grants, first in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, then in the Waxhaws region in the Carolinas, where his travels ended.

 I don’t know what it took to be given large tracts of land in colonial America, what kind of pull Robert Davis had with the English crown to obtain such documents, or how that system worked. We only know that King George had granted him 1,105 acres in Mecklenburg County, NC. But let’s be clear about what was happening. These lands were not the king’s to give. They were home to native peoples but were no one’s property. Land grants were the king’s authorization to steal the land from the people who were living there. Robert Davis, my ancestor, was part of that theft.