Ancestors

Sarah Florence Davis

Sarah Florence Davis was born at Tunnelton, in Preston County, West Virginia, on 20 September 1881. Her death certificate names her parents as Ben Davis and Mary Catherine Jones. She was called Flo.

In the spring of 1898, at sixteen, she eloped with Walter Crane Morris, a jeweler at Tunnelton eleven years older than she was. She told her family she was going to Rowlesburg to visit friends. Walter took a train east, she boarded the same train, and they were married by a minister at Oakland, Maryland. The marriage was not known at home for several days. When the couple called on Walter's parents, the family learned of it only when they produced their marriage certificate. They set up house in the two-story building Walter and his brother had just put up at Tunnelton.

She and Walter had seven children: Agatha Lucile (1899), Ellsworth Crane (1902), Harry Edwin (1904), Mary Elizabeth (1907), Margaret Matilda (1911), David Davis (1915) and Sarah Catherine (1921). The family lived at Terra Alta in the early 1900s, where Walter kept a jewelry and sewing machine business, and later at Kingwood. In April 1901 she went back to Tunnelton for the funeral of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Davis.

She lost two daughters in two years. Agatha Lucile died on 23 March 1912, at 13. Mary Elizabeth died at Kingwood on 2 June 1914, at 7, of an abscess on the brain. Both lie in the family lot at Maplewood Cemetery in Kingwood. Her last child, Sarah Catherine, was born at Kingwood on 11 July 1921, when Flo was almost 40.

Walter died at their home in Reedsville in February 1943, when Sarah was 61. She lived on at Reedsville as a widow and housewife for almost eighteen more years. She had hardening of the arteries for twelve years, and in her last three years it reached her brain. She died at Reedsville on 12 December 1960, aged 79. Her daughter, signing as Sarah C. Zinn of Reedsville, gave the particulars for the certificate. She was buried at Maplewood Cemetery in Kingwood on 14 December 1960, beside Walter.

If Sarah Florence Davis is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Sarah Florence Davis (1881-1960)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/sarah-florence-davis-1881-1960-0a0587.