BlackGrandPa aka Matt Davis

I love being a Grandpa and Blackgrandpa has a special meaning given to me by my first Grandchild it's a term of endearment and I embrace it unapologetically



Our Family history

 

                         This is Grand Dads Grand parents Thomas and Julia Collins Davis

My great, great, Grand Father aka my Dads ,Fathers grand father,  he was born  November 1847 that would be 175 years ago,  he was born a slave in Virginia on a plantation where his father was the White slave owner and mother was a slave washer woman, at the tender age of 11 his father would sale him into slavery for $900.00 and he would end up in Natchez Mississippi, where he would meet his wife Julia Collins  who was a descendent of  Prince Abdul Rahman, this linage would explain the 57 percent DNA in Nigerian,Ghanaian,Liberian and Sierra Leonean regions of Africa 

 The newly weds would get married (December 19, 1866) the following year of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by a Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth who ironically I use to date one of his descendants and I can only imagine the number of flips he did in that grave :)1865 is the last year Harriet Tubman would lead the underground Rail Road  to the free slaves. October 23, 1883 they had a son named Eddie Davis Sr this would be my fathers grand father, and his children would be Eddie Davis Jr born November 15, 1906-11/14/67 i was only 9 years old at his passing,  i over heard the story from conversation with my uncle sharing with my dad what happened and how did he die, he was helping  his brother-inlaw repair the cotton picker tractor , the shoot was not closing and he stuck his head up inside to see and thats when it started up and decapitated him, his siblings were Martha Mary jones 1890 and brothers name Nelson ,and Andrew whom he named their first born after, Lee Andrew followed by my dad Laydell and 11 other sibling

 

Mr Eddie Davis Jr as resent as a year ago doing research did i discover my Grand Father was a Jr, his father was Eddie Davis Sr. he was also known as Mr Bullet, it is said because he always carried a gun with him, I don’t know the reason but if i had to speculate if you lived only 3 miles from the murderer (J.W.Milam) the man who killed Emmett Till in 1955 there in the small town of Glendora Mississippi and got away with it, then carrying a gun to protect yourself and family would be a good idea, i’m convinced that if J.W. and his brother had come to my grand dads house at 2:00 a.m. that night, Black History would have taken a different turn there in Glendora Mississippi, I have only seen 3 photos of my grand Dad, this one and another of him on the phone to his ear and another with him holding his gun, Mr Bullet had a reputation , he did’nt take no shit off nobody and he spoke with authority . There was a time it was late at night and Dark outside at grandma’s house , i could here the men outside talking and then I saw grand dad shooting at the moon with his riffle, i don’t know what that was about but what I remember most is grandma telling, me don’t be looking out the window at night someone might shoot you in the eye, so to this day when I look out the window at night I think of grandma and who might wanna shot me in the eye

 

This is my fathers Mom, all my life the only name i knew was Madea, all the way into my adult life i did not know her name was Lela Mae Davis, i think i learned that at the memorial when she died, until Tyler Perry i thought she was the only Madea in the world, lil did i know that it was a term of endearment to a black  mom “mother Dear” but as blacks from the country names were shorten and so was the term she was born 1911 and grand dad was born 1906, and she would give birth do 13 children as recorded in her Bible the birth year of each of her children 

 

grand Ma’s bible listing the birthday of all in the the family

 

the yellow stars have move on and missing in this photo is uncle Bob at the time

 

Grand moms mother ,Great grandma name was Alice harridan and sister name hanna  they share the same father not mom ,hanna grew up in Greenwood  and minter city Mississippi, not far from Glendora,, the story is that grand ma’s dad removed her from her moms home because the grand dad was a known child molester who would eventually commit suicide, she was a small child and by the time she would get married to grand dad she learned that her mom had died never having seen her since a child only learning of her moms death from her sister, i learned of this photo 2 years ago 2020

 

this is a rare photo of all the Davis Girls the only two remaining are Gertrude and Eddie Mae

 

This photo has the whole Davis Klan there are 5 girls and 8 boys total 13 , i found it interesting that large families were common, Thomas Davis the great great grand father had 10 and Anthony Collins the father of Julia collins Davis had 11 kids , all but 3 of them would reside in Augusta Ga, fallowing the death of Grand Dad in 1967 grand mom would move to Augusta at the urging of my dad her oldest son,

 

Every year doing the Christmas holidays we drove to Mississippi (540 miles)to visit grand parents and meet new cousins, in this photo is dads siblings on top standing with exceptions of Carie Jean and those on the bottom are me and my siblings, notice there is not a sad face in the photo, these were the good old days, the joy of family is cultivated as we gathered at grandma’s house our biggest worry was getting bit by mosquitos at night and dodging the flying wasp in the house in the day, and the fear of finding a snake.!

This video is a collection of the Davis Family in Glendora Ms

This is Grand Dad’s only sister Mary, her husband was called “Son Red”i was only about 8-9 years old and never knew his real name, i was at her home when i over heard Grand dads brother Nelson  AKA “uncle Bro” he needed help with a broken  Cotton picker tractor as Grand Dad (Eddie Davis Jr) was the head mechanic , i over heard him telling the story to my dad how grand dad died fixing the  shoot that was not closing, this is the thought that i have every time i am fixing Garage  door that is about to fall, and i have to stick my hand in an areas that if the door slips i can loose it,Grand Dad also had 2 brothers Nelson and Andrew, did you noticed i did’nt say much about his sister Mary, and the simple reason is its all i know,  all that i can recall is going to their house with dad and my cousin Lee Jr was with me and he suggested we go out side and scare the Geese by throwing rocks at them, they actually scared me because i had never seen a bird so big that could fly, they were bigger then chicken , and that Alford Hitchcock movie was fresh on my mind “The Birds”

Yup this is the spot where it all began over 100 years ago, mom was born here and dad was born here and so was Grand mom  Carrie Thomas, in all those years life was  hard and must have been scary too like a bad movie you never wanna see again, for myself  just thankful they left this place before i was born, the story is moms older brother Clarance  had joined the Army and was gonna be Based in Augusta Ga at the Forth Garden Military base she went with him to help keep his kids, letters were exchanged between mom and dad and he would later join her in Augusta, and thats where they got married and raised their family , as a child i remember each year the long drive in the back seat with Mary Jane driving to Mississippi to visit both our grand parents and there was no electric and the bathroom out house was across the field and at night the lighting was  kerosene  lamps with big buzzing  mosquitoes joining you under cover and getting at your legs , it was not my favorite place to be , i was always glad to be back home in Augusta Ga.  i went back to visit in 2015 and nothing has changed, grand moms house is not there anymore but i saw the utility pole and the Black Bayou  the river that ran in front of grand moms house and the same river they threw the dead body of Emmet Till in ,  lil did i know the significants of that river  and the gravel rocks on the road smelled the same. 

Note to all my cousins that live in Augusta, the Davis klan , now you know the answer to the question of how did the Davis get to Augusta  and where did they come from, and if you are like me  i  thank god that my moms brother  joined the military and she agreed to go with him to help him with his kids baby sitting  in Augusta, i shutter to think what otherwise could have been and what detours my life would have taken , so i say thank you uncle Clarence for joining the military, and thank you mom for being willing to leave and go help him with his kids,  and thank you Dad for having the courage to leave your birth place and follow mom to Augusta Ga. and later be joined by grand mom and the other siblings, 

   Our family history traces back this way, before  arriving in Augusta for over 100 years they lived in the small city  Glendora Mississippi, and before that Natchez Mississippi where many generations were born and before that Louisiana and before that Virginia  where our great great grand father  Thomas Davis was conceived by the white slave owner  and the slave washer woman  and from their Africa  some of them arriving on the  slave ship driven by the Captain  Ben Sturdivant , captain of the Steamer Boat named J.M. Sharp  he was accompanied by the Company C of the 20th Mississippi infantry with over 200 slaves he was the original owner of the Due West Plantation. the video below  was taken summer of 2021 By a photographer from New York , Isabelle Armand

Our Grand father and Great grand father and his father Thomas Davis were from Natchez Mississippi, this video presentation gives a back ground view of what life was like back at that time it also better explains why Grand Dad  earned the name  Mr Bullet and why he felt it necessary to carry a gun, its my effort of looking back and feeling for myself what it must have been like for them at that time ,Natchez has a  civil rights history  months before things broke out in Selma with MLK its as if the boycotts strategy got its start with “The Deacons” in Natchez ,  the Deacons were the first black Panthers  they were the black men who  had guns and stood up to the KKK members when the local police were not protecting them.

This is my secret sauce of the information i have gathered and compiled for this site, 2 years ago i was blessed with meeting  a professional genealogist Dr.Antoinette Harrell, the “slavery detective of the South,” . it was her that found my great grand father and for the first time i learn that my grand father was a Jr. and was born in Natchez Mississippi . Dr. Harrell was involved with producing a mini T.V. series and  our family was one of 5 episodes, the setting was about an older sister who lived on the plantation (due west plantation) sharing the stories with her lil brother about life there, we had many 3 way zoom and tele conversations where i learned first hand things for the first time , sadly my older sister Carrie Jean would pass away October 2021 and whats lost are the many more untold stories she had to share, the day my sister died i could hear the voice of Dr. Harrell in my head playing where she said “we have got to get the stories of our elders while they are still with us”. those were the words of my “Y” to build out this site.

Slave research press release, (click here to read)

 

“Matt’s sister, Carrie Jean, was born on Due West Plantation; she remembers her grandma, Carrie’s own baby sucking one tittie and Mike’s son sucking on the other tittie,” said Carrie. “After I left the plantation and saw the television series Roots in 1977, I realized that I was living the same way,” she said. “We had what you called ‘across the tracks’; If you lived across the tracks on Due West Plantation, you were a slave. The other side of the tracks was the free side,” said Carrie Jean.

“Dr. Harrell researched the history of the original owner of Due West Plantation, Capt. Ben Sturdivant, and found him to be the Captain of the steamer J.M. Sharp,” according to the Yazoo Pass Expedition, February 14 to April 8, 1863, Capt. Sturdivant’s steamer J.M. Sharp. He was accompanied by Company C of the 20th Mississippi Infantry plus 200 slaves and their overseers.

Due West Plantation, a plantation that consists of 12,000-acres, got its name many years ago. During the 1850s, the farm was part of the Twilight Plantation. Mike Sturdivant, the owner of the plantation, was a highly successful Delta planter and millionaire businessman.

Matt Davis told Harrell his mother and father both were born on Due West Plantation. Davis’ grandfather, Richard Coleman, was a farmer from Lincoln County, MS, and went to the Delta searching for farm work, “My father Ladell Davis, Sr. was born in 1934 and worked as a tractor driver,” said Carrie Jean.

For more details about Dr. Antoinette Harrell and her work, visit www.AntoinetteHarrell.com

 
This site is built with love to share with my 4 Grand kids the history of our family with photos and accessory research all the way back to the Motherland in Africa and the slave plantations in Mississippi .