ALFRED W. G. DAVIS
1831 he moved to the Mississippi Delta to plant cotton and was soon elected major general in the Mississippi militia. Davis married a Virginian in 1834 and established a homestead on the Greenbrier River, southwest of Lewisburg, W.Va. In the years following his marriage, Davis moved from western Virginia, first to Texas and later to Mississippi.
In 1836 General Davis moved to Virginia, where he resided until 1844, in which year he went to Texas and there made his home for three years. And during General Taylor's campaign in Mexico, when the destruction of Old Rough-and-Ready's" troops by overwhelming Mexican forces was reported imminent, the men of his section of Texas selected him as their leader and he led 1,000 men into Mexico to the support of Taylor. The battle of Buena Vista had been fought and won before his arrival and the column returned. Their sufferings during this march through the arid mountainous regions of Mexico were great, and their leader reached his destination barefooted. In 1847 General Davis returned to Virginia from Texas and built a residence at The Cliffs," on the Greenbrier River in Greenbrier County, about eight miles west of Lewisburg.
In 1855-56 he represented the County of Greenbrier in the Virginia Legislature, and was elected a member of the Virginia Convention which passed the Ordinance of Secession. He took an active part in the convention and did his utmost to prevent the adoption of the Ordinance and to stay the secession movement, which he knew and said meant absolute ruin for hjs beloved South. Finding his efforts useless he returned to his home and reported that he had to do with a set of madmen."
By the time of the secession crisis, however, he was back in Virginia, a member of the state legislature and delegate to that state's secession convention. Although Alfred Davis had initially opposed secession, in the opening years of the war he became active in organizing resistance to Northern invasion and began niter production
At the beginning of the War Between the States General Davis was about fifty-five years of age, and therefore accepted a commission in the Quartermasters Department, C. S. A., as major. He labored unceasingly to care for the armies in Western Virginia until transferred to South Carolina, where he continued his valiant and unselfish work until disabled by disease.
In December, 1863, whi1e making his way home, he was .stopped by a Federal force, under Averill, on their way to Salem, Virginia. He was captured and his horse taken from him, and his captors endeavored to make him march on foot. This the courageous soldier refused to do, stating that they might kill him. but that he would not walk. They finally left him after stripping him of his officer's coat, and General Davis, ravaged by disease and scantily clad in bitter winter weather, made his way home as best he might by way of Union, Monroe County, where he was received and given food by Mr. Campbell, the father of Judge A. N. Campbell. After a few days he was stricken by paralysis at his home doubtless brought about by his treatment at the hands of Averill's ruffians, but continued to live for another year marked by intense suffering, finally passing away January 20 1865, and being buried in the family cemetery at The Cliffs."
General Davis was a man of noble heart, generous and quick-tempered, but not vindictive and during his career assisted a score of young men to start out in life. Fraternally he was affiliated with the Masons.
His eldest son, Runnels, who was a captain in Col. William L Jackson's command, was killed in battle during the war between the states; his second son. Charles L., a captain in the Twenty~seventh Virginia Volunteer Infantry, was wounded and invalided for life, and his third son, Llewellyn. who entered the army in his sixteenth year emerged unwounded. Several of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of General Davis make their home in West Virginia. He had a younger brother, Co1. Alexander Davis, of Saint Louis, who held the rank of colonel in the Confederate army, and who was afterward selected by the settlers and miners in the great mining region of Montana and the Dakotas as their judge at Virginia City. Montana, and officiated there in both civil and criminal cases, as described in Mark Twain's work, "Roughing It." He had another brother, James W. Davis, who was also colonel in the Confederate service.
In September 1862 he was commissioned a major in the Confederate Quarter Master Department and received orders to assume the duties of Post Quarter Master at Greenville. Rachel Stuart (Lewis Stuart, Capt John Stuart) was born May 30, 1816 in Greenbrier and married Alfred Davis and they lived near Fort Spring Station.