Beverly Andrew Davis (26 September 1868–31 May 1944), member of the Convention of 1901–1902, was born in the Snow Creek area of Franklin County and was the son of David Henry Davis, a farmer. His mother, Nancy Garner McGhee Davis, died in 1872, and beginning in May 1877 Davis grew up under the care of his stepmother, Martha Evelyn White Davis. Educated in the local schools, he began teaching in Henry County at age sixteen and in 1889 received a teacher's certificate from Shenandoah Normal College (later Old Dominion Academy), then located in Harrisonburg. By the next year Davis was working as a United States Census Bureau clerk in Washington, D.C. In 1891 he received an LL.B. from Georgetown University. Davis married Nettie Norma Barrow in Petersburg on 17 April 1892. She died soon after giving birth to their daughter the following February. Davis married Mary Lee "Mollie" Gravely on 24 December 1893, in Franklin County. They had three sons and one daughter.
After several years of teaching, Davis received a license to practice law in Franklin County on 5 February 1895 and on 1 July of that year began a four-year term as commonwealth's attorney. In 1896 and 1900 he unsuccessfully sought nomination as the Republican Party's candidate for the Fifth District seat in the House of Representatives.
On 23 May 1901 Davis defeated John Penn Lee, a county court judge and nephew of Robert Edward Lee, by a tally of 1,831 to 1,604 votes to win election representing Franklin County in the state constitutional convention that met in Richmond from 12 June 1901 to 26 June 1902. One of only eleven Republicans and one Independent elected to the convention, Davis served on the Committees on Taxation and Finance and on Final Revision. He and his family were returning to the Richmond convention from Rocky Mount, in Franklin County, when their train derailed near Danville on 27 August 1901. Davis suffered critical injuries that forced the progressive amputations of his left hand and forearm over a two-week period. He resumed his convention seat on 18 November.
Davis introduced a resolution to abolish county courts, which were subsequently replaced by circuit courts in the new constitution. He opposed suffrage restrictions intended to end African American voting on the grounds that citizens who paid taxes to support the government should be entitled to vote. On 3 April 1902 Davis informed his colleagues that although he could support a poll tax, if necessary, he opposed requiring voters to answer questions posed by election officers before being allowed to cast their ballots. He warned that such a measure was "not justice. . . . It is bad government, and it is bad legislation. It will deprive a great many of the white people, as well as a great many of the negroes in this State, of the God-given right of suffrage." Davis voted on 4 April against the provision to restrict the franchise, on 29 May against proclaiming the constitution in effect without submitting it to a popular referendum, and on 6 June as one of the ten delegates against adoption of the constitution.
Davis secured nomination on 17 July 1902 as the Republican candidate for the Fifth District seat held by the incumbent Democratic congressman, Claude Augustus Swanson. The new constitution's disfranchisement of African Americans hurt Davis's chances. He was soundly defeated by a vote of 10,363 to 6,414 and did not carry his home county. He considered challenging the election results but finally declined. In 1906 Davis lost another bid for the Republican congressional nomination. Two years later he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
On 19 April 1904 Davis became postmaster at Rocky Mount, a position he held for almost ten years until resigning to return to practicing law. In 1915 he won a four-year term in the Senate of Virginia, representing Floyd and Franklin Counties. As a Republican in a Democrat-controlled General Assembly, he held the lowest-ranking seats on the Committee on Privileges and Elections, the Committee on Public Institutions and Education, the Committee to Examine the Clerk's Office of the Senate, and the Joint Committee on Special, Private, and Local Legislation. He did not seek reelection at the end of his term.
Davis lost a final bid for the House of Representatives in 1916. The following year he ran for lieutenant governor, but the Democratic candidate, Benjamin Franklin Buchanan, defeated him by a vote of 59,483 to 22,677. Davis was a Republican presidential elector in 1920 and eight years later served as the temporary chair of the Republican State Convention.
Throughout his political career, Davis maintained a law practice in Rocky Mount with his sons. Their clients included several of the accused moonshiners in the notorious Great Moonshine Conspiracy, a case tried in the federal court at Roanoke from April to July 1935. While his namesake son carried most of the trial load, Davis memorably argued that defendant Tom Cooper was a simple mountaineer who had made liquor as his ancestors had done but had not engaged in any conspiracy, as he did not know the meaning of the word. Cooper was found guilty but received only a four-month sentence.
After suffering a stroke, Beverly Andrew Davis died in a Roanoke hospital on 31 May 1944 and was buried in High Street Cemetery, in Rocky Mount.
Sources Consulted:
Biography in Philip Alexander Bruce, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, and Richard L. Morton, History of Virginia (1924), 6:559 (with variant birth date of 27 Sept. 1868); Birth Register, Franklin Co., and Marriage Registers, Dinwiddie Co. (1892) and Franklin Co. (1893), all in Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); Secretary of the Commonwealth, Election Records, 1776–1941, no. 47 (1901), Record Group 13, LVA; lieutenant governor election results in Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), 1918 sess., 49–51; Richmond Times, 12 June 1901; Richmond Dispatch, 23 Nov. 1902; photograph in Members and Officers of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia, Richmond, 1901–1902, LVA; Journal of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia [1902], 50, 487, 504, 535; Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Virginia (1906), 1:84–85, 1557–1558, 2:3058–3061 (quotation); [Resolutions of the Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902] [1901–1902], no. 91; T. Keister Greer, The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935, 2d ed. (2003); obituaries in Richmond News Leader and Roanoke World-News, both 31 May 1944, Richmond Times-Dispatch and Washington Post, both 1 June 1944, and Rocky Mount Franklin News-Post, 2 June 1944.
Image courtesy of Library of Virginia, Visual Studies Collection.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Emily J. Salmon.
How to cite this page:
Emily J. Salmon,"Beverly Andrew Davis (1868–1944)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Davis_Beverly_Andrew, accessed [today's date]).
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