Tulare County Biographies

WILLIAM NEWELL DAVIS

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        William Newell Davis, district superintendent of schools, with offices 
at Dinuba and recognized as one of the most efficient factors in elementary 
school administration in this section of California as well as a student of 
general communal and social welfare problems, is a native son of the old Buckeye 
state, a fact of which he never ceases to be proud, but is a citizen of 
California by choice and inclination and is quite content to regard himself as 
much a Californian as any, a resident of this state for almost fifteen years and 
enthusiastic in his praise of the manifold merits and advantages of the Golden 
state as a desirable place of residence and a wonderful field for effective and 
appreciated personal service along the lines to which he has been devoted from 
the days of his youth.
        It was in 1911 that Mr. Davis, with an established record of effective 
service in school administration in Ohio, came to California to accept the 
position of principal of the Court school at San Luis Obispo. In the next year 
his services were secured by the school board of Kingsburg in Fresno county and 
for five years thereafter (1912-17) he served as principal of the grammar school 
at that place. It was then, in 1917, after six years of effective labor in this 
state, that his services were secured in behalf of the schools of Tulare county 
and he has since been serving as district superintendent of schools here, 
attached to the schools of Dinuba. Mr. Davis' favorite theme during the many 
years he was engaged in high school work in Ohio was mathematics. For years 
during the period of his service in Ohio he was a staff contributor to the 
mathematical department of The Ohio Teacher and he attained a considerable 
reputation as a master of higher mathematics. During the period of his service 
in California he has specialized in the problems of elementary school 
administration and is frequently called on to speak before public gatherings in 
a presentation of such problems and the policies essential to their proper 
solution as well as on topics of general communal interest. Mr. Davis has always 
taken an active part in the civic affairs of the communities in which he has 
lived and has been closely identified with such welfare movements as those 
fostered by the Young Men's Christian Association and the Boy Scouts of America. 
He is a firm believer in the theory of education which emphasizes training for 
citizenship and which places character building above the so-called 
fundamentals.
        Mr. Davis was born on a farm in Hamilton township in Jackson county in 
southern Ohio, May 8, 1882, and is a son of Joseph W. and Eliza Ann (Parks) 
Davis, both of whom were born in that same county, the latter in 1855 and the 
former in 1856, members of pioneer families in that section of the Buckeye 
state, the Davises having entered there from Pennsylvania and the Parkses from 
Virginia. An instinctive and thoughtful student, William Newell Davis had so far 
progressed in his studies that when fifteen years of age he was enabled to pass 
the examination for teachers and was granted a certificate to teach school. The 
school authorities, however, could not see their way clear to giving a fifteen 
year old boy a school and his ambition to become a teacher was restrained until 
he was seventeen years of age, when (in 1899) he began teaching in the public 
schools of his home county. For five years he continued teaching in the rural 
schools, meanwhile carrying on his own schooling by spring and summer courses in 
Ohio University, and then, in 1904, when but twenty-two years of age, was made 
principal of the high school at Oak Hill, a town of about fifteen hundred 
population in his home county. Two years later he was made superintendent of the 
schools of that place and was thus engaged until in 1911, when he came to 
California and entered upon his useful educational career in this state, 
principal of the Court school at San Luis Obispo, as has been set out above. 
During the time of his service in the schools of his home county back in Ohio, 
Mr. Davis was an influential factor in the work of the schools there. In 1906, 
under appointment of the court of that county, he was made county school 
examiner, charged with the examination and licensing of teachers, and for five 
years occupied that important position. For a year or more (1906-07) he rendered 
further local communal service as the assistant editor of the Jackson Sun, the 
leading newspaper in the county seat, and made his presence felt in the 
political affairs of the county, a leader in the promotion of the cause of the 
republican party there. He was a member of the executive committee of the 
Southeastern Ohio Teachers Association, widely and favorably known in his 
profession, and was for several years in charge of the Teachers Institute of his 
home county. Since coming to California Mr. Davis has attended several terms of 
summer course work in the University of California and has also taken extension 
work with that institution, ever keeping abreast of the amazing advances that 
are being made in his profession.
        On August 12, 1912, at San Francisco, William Newell Davis was united in 
marriage to Miss Elizabeth Alice Glenn, his back-home sweetheart who had come to 
California to fulfill the troth they had plighted before his departure for this 
state the year before, and to this happy union five children have been born, 
four daughters : Louise Glenn, Mary Grace, Alice Anita and Barbara Kimball, and 
a son, William Newell Davis (II). Mrs. Davis was born in Coalton in Jackson 
county, Ohio, June 5, 1887, and is a daughter of Milton Kimball and Alice 
(Phillips) Glenn, both also natives of Ohio and members of old families in that 
state, the former born in 1855 and the latter in 1860. Mr. and Mrs. Davis are 
members of the Dinuba Presbyterian church and Mr. Davis is a member of the 
session (an elder) of that congregation. He also is the superintendent of the 
Sunday school. In April, 1923, he became a member of the locally influential 
Rotary Club of that city and during the term 1924-25 was president of the same. 
He is a member of the fraternal organization of the Knights of Pythias, having 
become affiliated with the Oak Hill (Ohio) lodge of that order in 1904, and is a 
past chancellor commander of the lodge.
 
Source:  History of Tulare County and Kings County, California � Kathleen 
Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. II, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1926., p. 440