Theme #4 for the year is Photo Highlight – in which we’ll focus on one photograph from our family tree. It could be a photograph physically in my possession, one I found online, or one sent to me by email. This week we are taking a look at the following photo of my fifth great-granduncle, Nathan Davis.
This is not a photograph from my collection but is one that I’ve found on several different websites, including Find a Grave.1 It’s fascinating to be able to access a photograph of a relative who died more than 150 years ago. Nathan Davis was born 21 June 1772 in New Jersey and was the son of my 6G-grandparents, Nathan and Ann (Gifford) Davis. In 1794 he married Jane Sutton in New Jersey; they would have eight children.
In 1807 Nathan, along with his brothers William and Joseph (the latter of whom was my 5G-grandfather), purchased 20,000 acres of land in the area that would become West Union, West Virginia. They moved to the area in 1808, though much of their land they sold to Lewis Maxwell. Nathan Davis lived in a brick house where the courthouse later stood.2
In the 1850 census, Nathan and Jane were enumerated in West Union. Living with them was Jane’s 99-year-old father, Cornelius Sutton (who was also my 6G-grandfather). Cornelius died a month shy of his 100th birthday, on 30 September 1850. Jane died on 27 April 1857. In 1860 Nathan was living with his son Lewis’s family. Nathan died in West Union on 23 May 1866. He was 93 years old and was preceded in death by at least 3 of his children.
As I noted, the photograph of Nathan Davis is not physically in my collection. This next photograph, however, is, as I took it myself. In September 2010 Mom, Dad, Sammy the Dachshund, and I went on a genealogical road trip to West Virginia. We visited the Old Seventh Day Baptist “Block House” Cemetery in West Union, and there I took a photo of Nathan’s gravestone, with another smaller one leaning up against it. If you take a look at the photo of Nathan’s gravestone that appears on his Find a Grave memorial, you can see that in the 15 years that have passed since we visited, someone has cleaned the grave, and the small one is no longer resting on it. Maybe it’s time for another road trip.
- Find a Grave, (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72692098/nathan-davis: accessed January 24, 2026), memorial page for Captain Nathan Davis, Find a Grave Memorial ID 72692098, citing Old Seventh Day Baptist Cemetery, West Union, Doddridge County, West Virginia, USA; Maintained by Guernsey Girl (contributor 51468294). ↩︎
- Hardesty’s 1883 History of Doddridge County. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wvpioneers/genealogy/doddridgecountyhistory.html ↩︎