Author: Davis, John
Biography:
DAVIS, John (1774-1854: WBIS)
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 born in Salisbury to 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 two daughters. Davis's wife died about 1841, and in 1843 he was admitted as a charity case to the Charterhouse, where he died ten years later. (Thelma Louise Kellogg, "The Life and Times of John Davis," University of Maine Studies ser. 2:1 [1924] 3-139) HJ