Author: Davis, John
Biography:
by
Jackson, Heather (HJ)
DAVIS, John (1775-1854: findmypast.com)
Davis is best known as the popularizer of the Pocahontas story, having been the first writer to have claimed that she was romantically attached to John Smith. He was baptised at St. Edmund's, Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 20 Mar. 1775, the son of James and Ann Davis. He went to sea at the age of fourteen, first with the East India Company--which sent him to China and India--and then with the British Navy. Largely self-educated, he began writing poetry and essays for publication and travelled independently in the US from 1798 to 1802 with the aim of publishing his observations, as he ultimately did in his major work, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States (1803). In America he earned his living by occasional work as a journalist, hack writer, translator, and tutor. On a return visit from 1805 to about 1817, he travelled widely and engaged in several failed enterprises, including a bookshop and a school, but finally returned to England. He also married at some point during the second trip: the name of his wife is not known, but the couple had four daughters. The RLF made the first of a series of grants to him as an author in distress in 1838, at which time he was living in Winchester and received £15. In 1840 he was awarded £5. His wife, however, was dead by June 1841, when he made a third application as a single, homeless man, and received £15. In 1842 he went to Paris to teach English but found there more teachers than learners of the language; the RLF gave him £15 to enable him to return. In 1843 his fortunes improved, thanks to further RLF support (£20) and a private subscription to which Dickens and Macaulay contributed. At last, in Oct. 1843, he was admitted as a charity case to the Charterhouse, where he died over a decade later, on 24 Apr. 1854. (findmypast.com 21 Aug. 2025; Thelma Louise Kellogg, "The Life and Times of John Davis," University of Maine Studies ser. 2:1 [1924] 3-139; RLF #936; Church and State Gazette 28 Apr. 1854; information from AA) HJ