If Harold Lenoir Davis had been born in Jefferson County, how would his life have been different?  Would he still have won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, or might his novels have been set here, perhaps with local residents providing the basis for his characters?

According to research by Dan Davis, of Albany, Oregon, moving West was a life-altering experience for Harold's father, James, who started life amid great excitement in Jefferson County.

James Davis' father, Alexander Emerson Davis, was born in Jefferson County, possibly the son of Joseph Hamilton Davis.  Alexander owned a farm near White Pine, where he had a number of slaves.  He married Martha Dinsmore Scruggs before 1862.  Martha was born in Greene County to Abijah Scruggs and Elizabeth Brown, of Warrensburg.  Her sister, Sarah Elizabeth Scruggs, married Joseph Hamilton Davis in 1862, and they had a farm in what is now Hamblen County, where they raised their children:  Nellie J., William A., Samuel A., Thomas W., and Kate, who married John R. Sams and lived on the Davis farm.

Alexander E. Davis was the son of Joseph Hamilton Davis, who married Amanda Maria Jarnagin in 1837 in Grainger County.  Joseph was the son of Benjamin Alexander Davis, and Amanda was the daughter of Jeremiah Jarnagin, who owned the Red House Inn in Grainger County.

Family tradition holds that Alexander Davis enlisted in the Confederate Army in the place of his brother, who had a wife and young children.  According to their agreement, the brother would look after Alexander's wife and unborn child.  Alexander, who was probably a member of Vaughn's Brigade, was killed at the Battle of the Big Black River Bridge (Vicksburg Campaign) May 17, 1863, while trying to rally his company during the Union assault.  His friend and fellow Jefferson Countian, Samuel Vance Moser (a member of Ashby's/2nd TN Cavalry, CSA), returned Alexander's personal effects after the battle.  In 1867, Samuel Moser married Alexander's widow, Martha.

While Alexander was away, his farmhouse was burned by Union troops on June 1, 1862.  During the siege, James Alexander Emerson Davis was born in a corn crib.  After such an exciting start, James Davis' life was filled with unusual incidents. James lost a leg when he was about 6-years-old in an accident at his uncle's sawmill (probably the Moser's mill).  He attended Oakhill Academy at Leadvale , where his instructor was George T. Russell.  James took a post-graduate course with Professor Russell after moving to Roseburg, Oregon.

James Davis was studying law at Emory and Henry College, in Virginia, when he learned his mother needed to move for health reasons.  James moved to Sheridan, Yamhill County, Oregon, in May, 1884, with his mother, stepfather, and half-brothers (William A., Robert G., John P., Charles Edward, and Walter Moser).  Martha Scruggs Davis Moser died at Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1915.  The Moser family is pictured below.

James started teaching school in Sheridan, Oregon, and went on to become principal of high schools in Douglas County, Oregon.  He became Superintendent of Schools in Antelope, Wasco County, Oregon, about 1907; assistant Wasco County Tax Assessor about 1909; and, from 1913 to 1928, Wasco County Tax Assessor.  While he was Assessor, James developed a county tax roll system that was adopted throughout the state of Oregon.  This system is still used by several Oregon counties.

In addition to being the Wasco County Tax Assessor, James prepared income taxes.  His grandson recalled seeing James work on taxes while in his sick bed.  James also became a successful agent in Wasco County for Oregon Mutual Life Insurance.  The company offered him the position of head actuary but, James turned in down because of health concerns for his wife.

James married Ruth Ellen Bridges in 1893 in Douglas County, Oregon.  She was born in Santa Rosa, California, to Daniel Walter and Eusebia Myrtilla (Owen) Bridges.  Daniel, who was born in Tennessee, was a carpenter and Southern Baptist minister.  The couple's wedding portrait is shown at right.

Even missing one leg, James weighed close to 200 pounds as an adult.  He used a crutch and a cane for support.  James rode horses and once had a horse go crazy on him.  He raised up and hit the horse between the eyes with the crutch, bringing it to its knees.  The horse behaved itself after that.

James Davis was also serious about respect.  Calling others certain things was a deadly insult at the turn of the 20th Century.  In Roseburg, Oregon, James was charged with assault after a man very severely insulted him using profanity.  James pled guilty.  The judge observed, "Mr. Davis, I have to fine you $50 for hitting the man; but, if he calls you that again, hit him harder next time."

While he did not drink, James went to the local saloons to socialize as an elected official.  Once, when he was sitting in a saloon in The Dalles, Oregon, a man named Frank Driver came up behind him, slapped him on the back from behind, and said, "Jim Davis, you old S of a B, how..."  James rose up and hit Driver so hard, witnesses thought he had killed the man.  It took Driver an hour to regain consciousness.

James Davis was highly regarded in the communities where he lived.  His son, Quentin, recalled a story about one stormy night at Antelope, Wasco County, Oregon.  One of the local sheep men had been arguing with a cattleman, Mr. Brogan, for months.  The man's daughter came to James for help.  The sheep farmer was waiting at the gate of the Brogan property with a gun to shoot Mr. Brogan when he came home.  James talked the sheep man into going home.  Ironically, Mr. Brogan did not come home until the next day.

James Alexander Emerson Davis died May 19, 1932, in Pendleton, Umatilla County, Oregon, almost seventy years to the day of his father's death.  He and Ruth had four sons:  Harold Lenoir (1894-1960), Percy Vane (1896-1909), Quentin Daniel (1901-1977), and Richard Harding (1911-1996).

Harold Lenoir Davis was born in 1894 north of Roseburg, Oregon, at Rone's Mill (Nonpariel) in the Umpqua River Valley, at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.  Although his official biography lists 1896 as his birth year, family members report, "Harold like to pad the truth his past."  No one in the family knows where Harold's middle name originated.  It may have been a family surname.  It may have honored a family friend -- there were Lenoirs in Jefferson County.  Or, it may have been for the Lenoir who was a veteran of the Battle of the Big Black Bridge, where Harold's grandfather died.  Harold's nephew observed, "Lenoir means 'the black,' which is an apt middle name for my uncle," because Harold was decidedly different from the rest of his family.  In the photo at right, Harold was 16-years-old (1910).

Harold Davis worked as a cowboy, typesetter, surveyor, banker, railroad timekeeper, and other jobs before being recognized for his writing.  When his father, James A. E. Davis, became County Tax Assessor (1912), Harold became his deputy, a position he held off and on for several years.  During his final two years as deputy, Harold saved nearly $1,500 and took off for Stanford University.  He quickly discovered that his money would not get him through even one term and promptly returned home.  Harold served briefly in the military in 1918.

His first literary success was from poems, which imitated the work of Detlev von Liliencron, a 19th-century German poet.  Harold's first published work in the April, 1919, edition of Poetry magazine, brought immediate praise from future poet-laureate Carl Sandburg.  The following November, that group of poems was judged winner of the magazine's Levinson Prize, garnering a $200 cash award.  Harold's poems continued to appear in Poetry throughout the 1920's.  He also sold poems to American Mercury, whose editor, H. L. Mencken, suggested that Harold try his hand at prose.

The same themes that later characterize Harold's prose are also found in his poetry:  ironic views of death, the fleeting nature of life, and the isolation of man, portrayed against the natural landscape.  His poetry also illustrates Harold's breadth of knowledge.  While Harriet Monroe characterized Harold as "a pastoral poet of the great western ranges," his biographer, Paul Bryant, observes, "he had the same depth of cultural background as those American poets not born so far west."

Harold's first experiments with prose were short pieces -- sketches and short stories.  The sketches were generally historical accounts of people, towns, and areas during pioneer times or the period immediately following.  Among his first was A Town in Eastern Oregon (1928), a typically irreverent history of The Dalles, which "stirred up quite a hellaballoo among the newspapers of the region" when it was published.  Apparently, Harold's sharp commentary and biting wit, while befitting the piece, came too close to reality to be ignored or laughed off.  The photo at left shows Harold in 1929.

Harold went to Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship and stayed to write Honey in the Horn (1935), an epic novel of Oregon homesteading at the turn of the 20th Century.  It won the Harper Prize, a $7,500 cash award, for the best first novel of 1935.  The following spring, Honey in the Horn won the Pulitzer Prize.  Characteristically, Harold did not go to New York to receive the prize, saying he did not want to make himself a subject for exhibit.

The Pulitzer Prize secured Harold's reputation as a novelist of the West, with slow-moving books that explored the magic of landscape.  His style was wry, ironic, and cryptic, with the plot remaining secondary to the quiet, overall portrait of the era when the last pioneers flooded into Oregon.  Many reviewers dismissed Harold Davis' work out-of-hand, but others, such as novelist Robert Penn Warren, observed a similarity to the style of Mark Twain, while recognizing Harold was not primarily a humorist.  Warren writes, "humor is simply the basic way which he asserts his objectivity and his control of the material."  Harold mistrusted heroics and, instead, wrote honestly of the problems facing frontier men and women.  He wrote four more novels:  the highly acclaimed Winds of Morning (1952), Harp of a Thousand Strings (1941), Beulah Land (1949), and The Distant Music (1957).

Harold Davis and his wife moved to Napa, California, where he continued to work on novels; however, short stories were his primary source of income.  Many of his stories were published in Collier's and Saturday Evening Post, sometimes under pseudonyms.  Many of Harold's stories have been reprinted in anthologies, and most of his books are still in-print.

Over a ten-year period, Harold Davis faced a divorce and a battle with his publisher over royalty payments.  After remarrying in 1953, Harold's personal life got back on track, but his health began to fail.  He died in San Antonio, Texas, on October 31, 1960.  His legacy is one of writing realistically about the West instead of following the romanticized stereotype of the heroic cowboy.

Harold Davis stopped in White Pine while on the train during the 1930's or 1940's.  He later told his brother, Quentin, that someone must have heard he was on that train, because there were a number of cousins at the train station to meet him.

For a more-complete discussion of Harold Lenoir Davis' life and works, visit the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission's Web page, H. L. Davis:  Bard of the Oregon Landscape.

The photos and Davis family history data were provided by:
Daniel Paul Davis
1655 Hill SE
Albany, OR 97321
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Other Davis Family Pictures:

Quentin Davis, age 26	J. A. E. Davis, 1888	J. A. E. Davis late in life