318. Bagdad's John Alexander Davis 1948

Eighteen-year old James Oliver Wilson (1843-1916) walked down to the recruiting station in Bladen County, NC on November 5, 1861 and enlisted as a private in Company "B" " of the 2nd North Carolina Light Artillery Regiment. They were also known as the Cape Fear Regiment and as the Bladen Guards. After their acceptance into the Confederate Army, the 2nd Artillery was active in defending the Cape Fear area. Some were assigned to Fort Fisher and some to Fort Campbell and Wilmington. By December 1864, they were involved in the defense of Savannah and later the battle of Fort Fisher. Following its capture, they were transferred to the infantry during the Battle of Bentonville. Soon after the Army of Tennessee surrendered, James returned home and eventually married Martha Eliza Sessions (1835-1923). Martha would bear him two children: Meriam Juanita (1873-1949) and Absalom Sessions Wilson. Absalom (1876-1945) would retire from the railroad as a telegraph operator whereas Meriam would live out her life in Milton, Florida. Her parents were eventually buried Johnson Family Cemetery, Bladen County, North Carolina.

In 1893, Meriam would meet and marry John Alexander Davis from Waynesville, Haywood, North Carolina. He was the son of Allen Davis who married his mother Nancy Jane Justice (1847-1926), daughter of John and Sarah Keeter Justice in 1876. Allen would pass away prior to 1880 and Nancy married shortly thereafter to Andrew J. Boyd. Both of them are buried in Ratcliff Cove Cemetery in Waynesville. Before Allen's premature death he and Nancy would have three children: John Alexander (1869-1948), William C., and Mary Hazeltine (1874-1935). His sister Mary would pass away from apoplexy and was buried with her husband James Albert Francis in Ratcliff Cove.

In the meantime, with an 8th grade education John and Meriam decided that farming was not for them and the 1900 census found them in Orange, Liberty County, Florida. There, John went to work manufacturing lumber, which justified the purchase of his own home for his wife, two young children and a live-in servant as well. They also took in five boarders for added income. By 1910, they had moved once again to Florala, Covington County, Alabama where at the age of 40 John opened his own real estate business. He and his wife bought another home, totally free of mortgage so business must have been pretty good! But, once again the census of 1920 found them entrenched in Santa Rosa County, Florida with a third child and another purchased home in what is known as "Water Works." At the age of 50, he expanded his entrepreneurial quest into the insurance business while opening a new real estate company in 1921 by the name of "Milton Investment Company" and served as its president.

John continued his real estate business for the rest of his life, but towards the end he became seriously ill. Finally, he was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital where he succumbed on December 16, 1948. He was returned to his beloved home and lay in state awaiting burial in Bagdad Cemetery in the Davis family plot. Meriam would join him the following year in 1949. Their youngest son, Wilson Brown Davis (former bookkeeper for a Tampa lumber mill in 1930) followed them both in death in 1951. The three graves in the Davis Plot are unmarked for whatever reason, however their graves are only fifteen feet from their two grandsons Leo Vance Jr. and John Harold Davis.