Letters

Ellen Davies-Rodgers’ great-great uncle Robert’s poignant letter, written to brother William in 1801 - one Methodist minister to another, as they began their saddlebag ministry:

"Dear Brother: I have made a start towards my long journey, but my horses does not work true, and I expect to go through a bundance of fatigue, but let that be as it may, I shall not forget my public and private duties to my God and my fellow mortals......Dear brother William, I do not expect I ever shall see you in the friendly world again, O what I would give to see you once more, but also I cannot enjoy the sight of you. Lord be merciful unto us both and guide our feet on the right way, faithful in our private duties to our God, and if we never see each other in this life I hope we shall meet in a better world where we shall part no more......
        Farewell, Farewell Brother
        Signed Robert Davies"

From later letters we learn of her grandfather and great uncle who came into Fayette County to hold a farm at the tender ages of 12 and 14, then moving onto land in Shelby County which has been in the Davies family for over a 100 years thence.

We know all the battles in which great uncle James Baxter Davies fought during the Civil War and how the trauma of his experience affected his life afterward.  From the cotton factors’ letters and the ledgers kept by the Davies brothers, we know how the price of cotton and corn and hogs wavered, fell and rose.

We can trace the bad times in Texas just before the Civil War through the letters written to the Davies men in Shelby County by sister Mary in Bosque County, Texas. On the eve of the warm she desperately needed her share of their father’s estate. She was concerned about cattle rustling and Indian raids and thought the men should stay home to fight those ‘wars,’ not enlist in the Confederate or Union army.

The letter she wrote in May of 1861 tells us: "I have more calve since you left. I am happy to think of having plenty to live on next year if nobody steals it. There are so many that have turned out bad. They hung 3 men for stealing cows..... A hundred men took up five of them and hung three of them on one live oak limb and turned two of them aloose. They were boys 16 or 17 years of age...... I expect there will be a great deal of trouble here this fall with the Indians, abolitionists and cow thieves."

Diplomas saved tell us that after the Civil War, a determined effort by the Civil War veteran’s sons to better their lives led them both to ‘read medicine’ with country doctors at Brunswick and then graduate from Vanderbilt as physicians.