Captain
Joseph Jonathan Davis of Company G, Forty-seventh North Carolina
Regiment, was born near Louisburg 13 April 1828 of distinguished
ancestry. His parents were Virginians who had moved to North Carolina
after marriage, and sent their son to be educated at Louisburg Academy,
Wake Forest College, College of William and Mary, and later to study law
at the University of North Carolina where he graduated in 1850.
When
war was declared he raised a company of men and though knowing little
of military tactics, led them bravely in battle in Pettigrew’s Brigade.
On the third day at Gettysburg he was one of those who went farthest
during Pettigrew’s Charge, but captured by the enemy twenty yards from
General Armistead when he fell. Wounded in the shoulder on the first
day of battle, a Northern doctor had to cut the sleeve off his coat as
it was stiff with blood.
He
was sent first to Fort Delaware, later to Johnson’s Island on Lake
Erie. Paroled on 24 February 1865, he was sent to City Point, Virginia
to await exchange – returning home on 3 April,
a few days before Appomattox. He was active in the State Legislature
1868-1870 as North Carolina fought carpetbag rule, then resumed the
practice of law. Davis was elected to the United States Congress
1875-1881 and later elected to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. He
passed away after ten years on the bench, 7 August 1892, and was buried
in Louisburg’s Oaklawn Cemetery. It is said of Captain Davis that he led
“a most useful life, crowed with honors, a man in whom there was no
guile, one of God’s noblest creatures.”
(Confederate Veteran, April 1930, pg. 140)
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial
“The Official Website of the North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission”
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