Dictionary of Virginia Biography: Source list

Sources consulted for the biography of:

Samuel Davies

Primary Sources
  • Birth, marriage, ordination, and death dates in Davies Family Bible Records, 1723–1943 Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia

  • Davies letters, diaries, and other manuscripts in:

    • Rush Family Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia (on deposit with Historical Society of Pennsylvania), in Samuel Davies Papers, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    • Office of the President Records, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
    • Samuel Davies Collection, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

  • Other correspondence in:

    • Letters from the Rev. Samuel Davies, &c., Shewing the State of Religion in Virginia, Particularly among the Negroes (1757)
    • William Henry Foote, Sketches of Virginia: Historical and Biographical, 1st ser. (1850), 157–307 (first quotation on 205)
    • Literary Manuscripts, Dr. Williams's Library, London (second quotation in letter to Mr. Forset, L61/3/1)
    • Fulham Palace Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, London, England (third quotation in 14:269–270)
    • William Dawson Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  • George William Pilcher, ed., The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad: The Diary of a Journey to England and Scotland, 1753–55 (1967)

  • Richard Beale Davis, ed., Collected Poems of Samuel Davies, 1723–1761 (1968)


Published Sermons
  • Davies, The Curse of Cowardice: A Sermon Preached to the Militia of Hanover County, in Virginia, at a General Muster, May 8, 1758 (1758), with fourth and fifth quotations on 13, 19

  • Davies, Sermons on Important Subjects (several editions)


Secondary Sources
  • George William Pilcher, Samuel Davies: Apostle of Dissent in Colonial Virginia (1971)

  • J. A. Leo Lemay, "The Rev. Samuel Davies' Essay Series: The Virginia Centinel, 1756–1757," in Lemay, ed., Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis (1977), 121–163

  • Dan M. Hockman, "'Hellish and Malicious Incendiaries': Commissary William Dawson and Dissent in Colonial Virginia, 1743–1752," Anglican and Episcopal History 59 (1990): 150–180

  • Jeffrey H. Richards, "Samuel Davies and the Transatlantic Campaign for Slave Literacy in Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 111 (2003): 333–378


Obituaries
  • Philadelphia Pennsylvania Gazette, February 12, 1761