California Biographies

Source: History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of 
the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with 
its growth and development from the early days to the present (1919)

History By Paul E. Vandor 
Illustrated, Complete In Two Volumes 
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1919
 
Notes: Missing+page1185-1186

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


I. E. DAVIS. � A worthy representative of a long-established American 
family, for generations identified with the East, who has come to associate 
his life with the development of California, is I. E. Davis, who was born near 
Marengo, Morrow County, Ohio, on June 21, 1856, the son of John Davis, 
who was also born in the same vicinity. His grandfather was Samuel Davis, 
and he removed from New York to Ohio. This journey he made on a raft he 
had constructed himself, onto which he loaded his family and his household 
goods ; he floated down the Monongahela to the Ohio River to Portsmouth, at 
which point he took a position as jailer for two years. At the time of the War 
of 1812, he went up the Scota River by raft, when men pulled it by hand, and 
then to Columbus, where he ran up to Delaware County and bought a small 
farm in heavy timber. He hewed a farm out of the wilderness, built a log 
house, sold it later and bought another farm three miles away. He improved 
it, and this farm I. E. Davis owned until just before he came away. The 
grandfather died there. John Davis, who became a prominent Republican, 
died on the same old place. He had married Annie Mosier, a native of 
Morrow County, and the daughter of Daniel Mosier, an early settler and a 
pioneer farmer, who also hewed a farm out of the woods. She died in Ohio, 
the mother of two children, one of whom, Daniel, is a well-known citizen of 
Morrow County. 

Brought up on a farm, I. E. Davis attended the public schools and when 
twenty-one began to farm for himself. He tried the home place for a while, 
and later bought that ranch. He then bought Grandfather Mosier's farm and 
went in for general farming. He also bought other farms and sold them again. 
The two he had longest, including the Mosier estate, he disposed of when he 
decided to come to California. 

While in Ohio Mr. Davis married Miss Clara Davis, a native of Illinois, 
where she was born in Kankakee County; and on account of her health, he 
sold his farm lands in 1910 and moved to Nunn, Colo. He bought a grocery 
store and ran the business for a year; but in 1911 he decided to move still 
farther West and came out to Fresno. 

He bought five acres on Olive Avenue and ran it for a year; and then he 
sold it and bought his present place of twenty acres on Blackstone Avenue five 
miles out of Fresno. Fourteen acres of his ranch are devoted to the growing of 
Muscat, Thompson seedless and Sultana grapes, and the balance of the 
acreage is in figs. He makes a specialty of the Calimyrna. and also raises the 
Capri figs, caprifying the same. He is a member of the California Associated 
Raisin Company and of the California Peach Growers, Inc. 

Mrs. Davis, who was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, died 
on November 25, 1918, aged fifty-seven years, widely esteemed and beloved. 
Mr. Davis is a loyal Republican and a member of the Knights of Pythias, 
Lodge No. 216, Marengo, Ohio, wherein he has been identified thirty years.