Chasing George Davis: A Research Journey to Find the Well-Connected Ghost of Lewis County and NYC

Today we are excited to share the research journey we embarked upon to find a needle in a haystack in order to bring one 19th century ledger to market.

To view the ledger for which this month-long effort was undertaken, click here: 1810–1812 & 1825–1827 Ledger of Belleville-Born Ship Captain and New York Merchant George Davis Documenting Atlantic Shipping, Elite Mercantile Networks, and Later Land Development and Welsh Settlement in Lewis County

When we received this ledger, it had been identified only as an accounting ledger for the vessel "Edward". A few minutes into reviewing the pages, I became convinced that this was much more than that, and so began my journey down the research rabbit hole. I had questions:

• Who did this ledger book belong to?
• Why were there entries made in 1810-1812 and then nothing until over a decade later?
• Why were the earlier entries labelled "New York" and often written in a beautiful calligraphic hand while the later entries were largely scrawled?
• Why was there a single name written on the front cover while another name was scrawled repeatedly on the back cover? 

George Davis (birth and death dates still unconfirmed) was a man with a name so popular in 19th century America, he may as well have been named Anonymous. Researching him felt like chasing a ghost through the archives, as his parents (names still unknown) bestowed upon him the country's fourth most popular first name with its eighth most common surname.

It took over a month of intensive digging to even begin piecing George Davis' reality together. It required painstakingly cross referencing handwritten manuscript ledgers with numerous digitized documents on genealogy databases, newspaper archives, almanacs, gravesite data, and so much more. 

The struggle also involved a massive battle with paleography. Reading a 200 year old manuscript ledger means every hastily scribbled name must be ruthlessly checked against historical data. It is incredibly easy to misidentify a handwritten surname in a 19th century daybook. 

Who is This Cotten? Or is it Colten? And What's With the "B"?

Perhaps the best example of this research struggle is a faint, cryptic scrawl on the inside front cover that looked like "B Cotten's Day Book" or maybe "Colten." I lost a tremendous amount of time working on the assumption that B Cotten was the lynchpin, but there didn't seem to be a B. Cotten (nor a derivate of that name) in existence in 1810 New York. I was fairly certain that this book belonged to a partner of one of the mercantile firms consistently named in the early entries, but I couldn't feel confident in this until I figured out who could have claimed the book as their own. Eventually, the ledger entries themselves provided the clue! Tucked into the accounts were payments for cooperage services:

• “To King & Callen for buckets… $8.90” [Nov 19, 1810]

• “To King & Callen for cooperage… $89.76” [Dec 18, 1810]

Cotten was likely Callen. Genealogical digging revealed Callen & King as coopers operating out of 48 Beaver Street, run by James King and William Callen. Could the "B" stand for Bill, short for William? Or perhaps William’s sister (tracked down on a genealogy database), Bevanna, temporarily kept the daybook for a local firm that worked with her brother? Unclear. But it gave me enough peace of mind to move forward in my hunt for the real owner of the book.

Pattern Recognition & Really Old Newspapers: Finally Finding George

To confirm George Davis as owner of the ledger book, I first had to find the firm he worked with in 1810-12, as the ledger entries were clearly for a corporate entity, not an individual. And so, I searched for patterns in the ledger entries.

In the 1810-1812 section, I saw dozens of mentions of a select few names and companies. Two particular mercantile firms stood out: John W. & Philip Kearny and Kearny & Davis. The ledger itself was centred around the costs and revenues associated with three vessels: ship Edward, ship Aurilla, and brig Emeline.

Using an online newspaper repository, I cross-referenced the name Kearny (and Kearney, another frequently used spelling) with the three ship names. After an easy Google to find the proprietors of John W.  & P Kearny, there was only one possibility. I could now confidently determine that the ledger was, in 1810-1812, kept for and by New York merchant firm Kearny & Davis.

The name George Davis was present repeatedly in the ledger, even written on the last page of the ledger almost as a signature, but so were many other names of known NY merchants.

I found my golden thread in the digitized 1813 Longworth’s American Almanac. The firm "Kearney & Davis, merchants" was listed at 306 Greenwich Street. In the same index, "Davis George, shipmaster" was also listed at 306 Greenwich. That shared address directly connected the sea captain to the high rolling mercantile firm.

The mystery was solved definitively when I reviewed the 1825-1827 Lewis County farming and land content, and cross-referenced the land deals mentioned in the ledger entries with the data available in the digitized historical database, New York land records, 1630–1975. Sure enough, Davis' deals with people and estates named in the ledger and throughout Lewis County historical documentation popped right up. We found our guy! 

Above, the land deal whereby George Davis purchased land in 1817 from James McVickar is officially documented. 1818 purchases from William Constable, Thomas Alsop, and others also appear.

Above is the evidence of Davis' purchase from the Estate of Silas Markham in 1825, which he references in his ledger entries.

"New York, Land Records, 1630-1975", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:DDVY-6YPZ : Sun Apr 13 03:27:06 UTC 2025), Entry for George Davis and James Mc Vickar, 17 Dec 1817.

Further evidence was unearthed through the intensive genealogical research I conducted and, while the real George Davis never fully revealed himself, I was able to find hard evidence connecting George Davis the captain/merchant/pioneering land developer to the De Peyster family, the David Ireland Greene bank fraud scandal of 1820, and much more...

George Davis Married Into a Powerful Family: The De Peyster Alliance

Finding verifiable data on George Davis' spouse was the key to following his journey from Belleville, New Jersey to New York City to Lewis County.

An simple Google search for "George Davis Lewis County" brings up a digitized version of Hough's 1883 book, History of Lewis County, in which a summary of Davis' earliest landholdings are recorded, as is information on his brother-in-law, who was involved in a bank fraud scandal that Davis himself may have had a hand in. 

Turns out, David Ireland Greene (1782-1826) was George Davis' brother-in-law by marriage. Greene was married to  Catharine Adrianna de Peyster, and George was married to Catharine's sister, Hannah Berthia de Peyster (1775-1831). 

Finding Hannah B. de Peyster in genealogy databases and publications was much easier than tracking down her husband. Using Ancestry.com and a digitized book titled The De Peyster genealogy by W.P. Belknap, I quickly determined that Davis and de Peyster were married on October 12, 1805, and that this was Hannah's second marriage. She was first married to Charles Holmes in 1799, and had since been widowed. 

Finding George Davis' association with the de Peysters explained a lot. It was suddenly clear how Davis was grouped among the high rollers of New York City and Lewis County. His wife's family was tied to all the huge players in commerce, landholding, and was a staple within elite kinship networks. 

With great frustration I discovered that, even after locking down his marriage to one of New York's most famous families, tracing George's own origins remained impossible. Beyond the marriage certificate, he remained a total ghost. He was a man who seemingly materialized out of thin air to marry into the elite.

Inconsistent Data and the Davis Children

George Davis & Hannah De Peyster Davis seem to have had two children. For a woman of Hannah's societal position, it is frustrating and surprising how well-hidden these children remain.  

Their daughter, Cornelia Van Rensselaer Davis (1807-1867), emerged under the name "Cornelia VR Davis" in New York Land Records and was readily found as she was buried in Claverack Cemetery along with her mother, and her gravestone reads "Daughter of George & Hannah B. Davis". Easy peasy! 

Find a Grave. Find a Grave®. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi.

I was initially confused by her middle name "Van Rensselaer", a name I had seen in the ledger book associated with one of George Davis' business associates. Genealogical records clarified that the middle name comes directly through Cornelia VR Davis' maternal family network. Hannah had a sister, Cornelia de Peyster, who married Jacob Rutsen Van Rensselaer of Claverack. Jacob R. Van Rensselear was not only a business colleague of George Davis, but another brother-in-law. This further reinforced the mystery of George Davis coming out of nowhere to hob-knob with the New York elite. 

The second child, a son named Pierre de Peyster Davis, was discovered in the Hannah de Peyster write-up in Belknap's 1956 book on de Peyster genealogy. Oddly, Cornelia VR Davis is not mentioned:

Newspapers and Periodicals. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

The Agony of the Doppelgänger

George Davis' name is so frustratingly common, finding out which guy was an 1810 New York merchant who then became a prominent 1820s Lewis County pioneer required a genealogical smoking gun. 

Throughout my research process I was repeatedly drawn into a trap, whereby another George Davis, this one a doctor from Ostego County, seemed like my winner. As I struggled to learn more about "Ledger George Davis", "Doppelgänger George Davis" kept popping up. Complications included:

• Land record research implied that Ledger George Davis likely died in Spring of 1833; Doppelgänger George Davis is confirmed by burial records to have died on May 12, 1833. 
• We do not have a DOB on Ledger George Davis, and Doppelgänger George Davis was born in 1772. This puts Doppelgänger George Davis at the right age to be engaging in business in New York in 1810, just like Ledger George Davis was. 
• Information compiled in Belknap's The De Peyster Genealogy indicates that Ledger George Davis was the husband of Hannah Berthia De Peyster; Doppelgänger George Davis was also married to a woman named Hannah (Cox). 
• Neither George Davis seem to have a documented middle name. 

Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: New York County, District and Probate Courts.

Belknap, W. P. (1956). The De Peyster genealogy. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/depeystergenealo00belk

I had to keep Doppelgänger George Davis in mind at every step of my research, double checking that it wasn't his data before I could confirm that I had found new information about Ledger George Davis. 

I was able to do this by immediately removing any information that came up with a Doctor or MD note, and keeping an eye out for the last name Cox, which was Doppelgänger Davis' wife's maiden name. Doppelgänger Davis had children named John, Juliana, Isaac, George, Lewis, and William, so links to those Davis offspring were also disqualifying. 

The two George Davis' lived at similar times in different parts of New York state, and days of research were wasted before I landed on the details that allowed me to differentiate the men. A reminder of exactly why every single detail in these ledgers must be verified.

Finding the Kearny in Kearny & Davis

The first 138 pages of the ledger plunge directly into the high stakes world of New York City maritime shipping just prior to the War of 1812. It is logical that George Davis, being a native of Belleville, New Jersey, would have known and aligned with the Kearny family, who also hailed from Belleville. I knew that Kearny & Davis worked in close partnership with John W & Philip Kearny, but no documentation existed as to which Kearny would have partnered with George Davis. 

This one required deductive reasoning. It was quick and easy to find that the businesss John W & Philip Kearny was operated by John Watts Kearny (1778-1850) and Philip Kearny (1780-1849). They were the two eldest males born to Philip Kearny (1704-1775) and Susanna Watts Kearny (1749-1823). 

I was able to rule out the three youngest Kearny siblings, because they were still children in 1810. This left Robert Kearny (1783-1832) and Archibald K. Kearny (1786-1868) as possibilities. Archibald K. Kearny was both a shipmaster and ship broker, who was documented to have worked in the Wall Street and brokerage world. His connection to maritime trade, and Robert's less convincing business profile lead to the hypothesis that Archibald was the Kearny in question. 

The Kearny's prominence in the merchant and maritime trades likely contributed to the large-scale maritime operations the Kearny brothers undertook. For example:

• Ship Edward: Half owned by Kearny & Davis, outfitted for lucrative voyages to Madeira and Bristol, heavily provisioned with flour, pork, and ship chandlery.

• Ship Aurilla: A joint venture split in perfect thirds between Kearny & Davis, J.W. & P. Kearny, and B.W. Rogers & Co., sailing to Savannah, Cork, and Java.

• Brig Emeline: Another fractional venture requiring heavy disbursements to riggers, sailmakers, and blacksmiths before heading to Gibraltar.

This was not a small time operation. Davis and the Kearny brothers were moving vast sums of money, securing massive marine insurance policies with the Ocean Insurance Company, and trading in bulk commodities like indigo, copper, muskets, and pipes of gin. Deducing which Kearny was the missing piece of the puzzle wasn't mandatory to tell Davis' story, but it certainly gives it some flair! 

The Phoenix Bank Scandal: A Conspiracy in Lewis County

This fascinating bank scandal, reported on heavily in the newspapers of the day and referenced in the History of Lewis County and The De Peyster genealogy, was one area in which the ledger provided evidence to the available online data, not vice versa.

It is a scandal that suggests Davis's sprawling upstate land empire may have been built partially on stolen money.

The newspapers of the time reported breathlessly on Greene, a bank clerk who resigned after a salary reduction and was then found to have overdrawn his account by $147,500. 

“Another blow up!” (1820, July 25). Rochester Telegraph, p. 3.

In Hough's History of Lewis County (1860) it is reported that Greene purchased Lewis County land from his brother-in-law, George Davis, and, after being caught out by his employer, Phoenix Bank, he escaped by way of Champlain to Quebec and France. Hough notes that Davis was strongly suspect of being privy to Greene's crime and that packages of money were seen arriving for Davis in the mail. This may have meant Davis helped Greene hide stolen funds for land purchases. Greene was then said to have returned to America and gone to George Davis' home, where he stayed until he died. 

David I. Greene's land transaction with George Davis are recorded in Lewis County land records. 

The ledger does not confirm whether Davis was an accomplice to Greene's crimes, but it does provide tangible evidence of his return and death in his home:

“Mr. David Greene died at half past four o’clock in this morning” [Sept 5, 1826].

Following Greene's death, Davis notes in the ledger that some of his minor children moved in with their uncle, William De Peyster, and Davis helped them out by buying them sundries with money donated by another De Peyster brother, Arent De Peyster. 

The ledger also provides context for the Greene-Davis relationship. Hubbard & Greene, a mercantile firm in the 1810-12 portion of New York is evidenced, through newspaper records, as being a partnership that included David I. Greene, and this firm had strong business relations with Kearny & Davis, demonstrated in the ledger. 

Whether Davis was a part of Greene's bank fraud we may never know. We can confirm, however, that George Davis and David Ireland Greene, two men who did not come from elite routes and who married into the elite De Peyster family, will go down in history not for the good they did for the De Peyster bloodline, but for questions and accusations surrounding fraudulent activity. 

The Thrill of the Hunt: A Who's Who of Early New York

What made this gruelling process of cross referencing so incredibly addictive was the sheer adrenaline of turning a page and deciphering yet another massive historical name. The true reward of this ledger is the guest list.

When you spend weeks staring at 200 year old cursive, you expect to find a lot of anonymous clerks. But this single book reads like an absolute VIP list of early 19th century America. Finding just one of these names in a manuscript is a researcher's dream. Finding them all interacting, trading, and borrowing from the same man is downright staggering.

Just look at the historical giants George Davis was doing business with:

• The Wall Street Founders: His primary maritime partners were the Kearny family. Philip Kearny wasn't just a merchant. He was a wealthy financier who is historically recognized as one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange.

• The Merchant Princes: His shipping accounts routinely drop names like LeRoy, Bayard & Howland, arguably the wealthiest mercantile house in early American history.

• The Patroons: The ledger casually tracks promissory notes connected to Jacob R. Van Rensselaer, a prominent politician and a core member of the massive upstate patroon family that practically owned early New York (and his brother-in-law through marriage).

It isn’t just a record of one man’s life. It is a physical bridge connecting the high society founders of Wall Street directly to the rugged pioneers carving out the Lewis County frontier.

A full list of my transcription of land deed records where George Davis granted deeds to other citizens is below. 

Conclusion: The Paradox of George Davis

After over a month of staring at his handwriting, navigating past false leads, digging through Ancestry, and unraveling his ties to a massive banking scandal, the central paradox of George Davis remains intact.

How does a man so deeply embedded in the most powerful family networks of early 19th century New York leave behind such a faint paper trail?

He was partnered with the Kearnys, married to a De Peyster, and harboured an accused fugitive who allegedly stole a fortune from the Phoenix Bank.

Yet, he has no recorded birth date or death date. 

His son, Pierre, is a ghost but for a one-line death notice. While the History of Lewis County claims he lost his wealth after the death of David I Greene and died at sea off the coast of South America, the actual public land deeds tell a quieter story. Land transfer records in Lewis County show George Davis personally signing deeds over until early 1833. By April 1833, those exact same land titles are abruptly transferred to the Administrators of George Davis. He likely passed away right there in March 1833, leaving behind his sprawling, controversial upstate empire.

George Davis is the ultimate historical enigma. The history books barely remember him, and the digital databases constantly confuse him. But for a few intense weeks, his working ledger brought him roaring back to life, proving that sometimes the most fascinating figures in history are the ones hiding right in the margins.

Transcriptions of a Large Selection of Land Deeds Granted by George Davis to Others in Lewis County, New York

Deeds Granted by the Estate of George Davis, 1833 (April and Later)

"New York, Land Records, 1630-1975", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:DDVY-6YPZ : Sun Apr 13 03:27:06 UTC 2025)