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A Family Site for the Amerine, Davis, Mageors, and Wheat Family

Webmaster: htpauldavis@hartwelldavis.com

The Davis family name is one of the difficult names to trace because of the patronymic form of naming children by the Welch. In patronymics, the son’s surname came from the first name of the father. Therefore, if the father was named David, the son was named Davis. If the father’s first name was John, the son would be a Jones.

Nevertheless, my father’s family has been traced to Orange Davis of South Carolina, born in 1810 in Pendleton, SC. The 1860 census of Polk County and the 1850 Census of Jones County, MS have been used to establish prior residence. My father, Junius Davis was one of 6 children, and it was in Polk County, Texas that the Davis, Amerine, and Wheat families have old Texas roots. The family cemetery is Pine Grove Cemetery near Moscow, TX. The Pine Grove Cemetery has an internet web site - just click on the link.

My mother, Gladys Mageors was the youngest of 10 children. Almost all of the Mageors with this peculiar spelling are descendants of Joseph Mageors (1820). His son George Mageors is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, AL. He was a private with the 4th Mounted Tennessee during the Civil War. The family migrated from Tennessee and Alabama to Texas and California in the middle 1800s. The descendants of James Carroll Mageors went to California, and later two sons of his brother, Samuel Morgan Mageors, followed. Our great grandfather George Mageors had 18 children, 12 by his first wife and 6 by our great grandmother, Elizabeth Smith.

I have not been able to trace my grandmother, Sarah Moody - wife of Samuel Morgan Mageors from Murfreesboro, TN (Aug 1873). However, my grandmother on my father’s side is an Amerine which has been traced as far back as to John Henry Amerine that came to Bedford County, PA in 1754 on the Halifax. The Amerine family is greatly researched on the Internet, with many living in Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. There are many branches to this family including Crowson, which has been traced to the 1500 in Nottingham, England, having settled in Virginia as one of the early settlers in the 1690.

My great grandmother was a Wheat. There is a large family of Wheats and Nowlins in Polk County, Texas. Ancestral names include the Fletchers of Virginia, the Townsends of North Carolina, the Wards and Collins of Virginia. The Wheats and Nowlins are among those who fought in the Texas Revolution, The Mexican American War, and the Civil War. It appears that the Nowlins and the Amerines, the Wheats and the Davis crossed paths in Tennessee before coming to Texas. Bryan Ward Nowlin for example is buried in Bedford County, TN as is George Amerine, who is buried in the Amerine Cemetery in Miller Cove, TN. There is a google book on the Nowlin-Stone Genealogy that is interested reading. Just click on the link.

Share in this interesting family search, and if any of our families cross, be sure to write me at htpauldavis@hartwelldavis.com. It would be a joy to speak to more of this large family group.