John davis biography
•
John Davis (explorer)
English explorer and navigator (1550–1605)
For other people with similar names, see John Davis (disambiguation).
John Davis (c. 1550 – 29 December 1605) was one of the chief navigators of Queen Elizabeth I of England. He led several voyages to discover the Northwest Passage and served as pilot and captain on both Dutch and English voyages to the East Indies. He discovered the Falkland Islands in August 1592.
Life and career
[edit]Davis was born in the parish of Stoke Gabriel in Devon circa 1550, and spent his childhood in Sandridge Barton nearby. It has been suggested[by whom?] that he learned much of his seamanship as a child while playing boats along the river Dart, and went to sea at an early age. His childhood neighbours included Adrian Gilbert and Humphrey Gilbert and their half-brother Walter Raleigh.[1] From early on, he also became friends with John Dee.[2]
He began pitching a voyage in search of the
•
DAVIS (Davys), JOHN, navigator and explorer, discoverer of Davis Strait and the Falkland Islands, compiler of first Sailing Directions for the East Indies; b. 1550? on a small freehold at Sandridge near Dartmouth, Devon; married 29 Sept. 1582, to Faith Fulford, daughter of Sir John Fulford, by whom he had a daughter and four sons, three of whom survived him; d. 27 Dec. 1605 off Bintang Island, East Indies.
His childhood neighbours and lifelong friends were Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert and their younger half-brother, Walter Raleigh. Nothing is known of his early life, but his writings and his later friendships with the outstanding English mathematicians and cartographers of his day suggest he had at least a grammer school education, and certainly, by 1579 he was already highly regarded as a seaman and navigator.
Like many of his contemporaries, he was convinced of the existence of a northwest passage; his great ambition was to discover it and t
•
Early Years
Davis was born of mixed-raced ancestry probably during the 1820s. His mother may have been Vina Roane, who resided in his household in 1880, but his birthplace and his father’s name are unknown. He may have been the freeborn John Davis who was about twenty-seven years old in March 1847 when his name appeared in a Lynchburg förteckning of free blacks or the John Davis, formerly the slave of M. Omohundro, who was enumerated with his wife, Ann, among the city’s black population in 1865. Davis married Ann Eliza Stuart, a tobacco stemmer, sometime between April 1, 1863, and July 27, 1870, when the couple lived near Lynchburg, in Campbell County. Most likely they did not have children.
In 1869 Davis purchased a city lot and worked as a grocer. bygd 1874 he was also operating a saloon. Davis bought additional properties, but in 1874 he had to cover his debts by placing in trust three lots along with buildings, a $1,000 life insurance policy, and the furniture from h