DAVIS, MATTHIAS (1761-1849). Private, Suffolk County Militia. The son of Elnathan Davis and Elizabeth or Sarah Hannah Mills, Matthias Davis was born on October 12, 1761, in Southold, Suffolk County, New York Colony, as shown in cemetery and online family records (although military records show his day of birth as October 14, 1760). As usual regarding 18th century records, names or dates are not always certain. His father was born in Brookhaven, Suffolk County, in 1730 and his mother was born in 1742. Matthias had at least four siblings: Nathan (1752-1843), Rebecca (1775-1845), Elnathan (1778-1848), and Jonathan (1789-1873.) Other siblings, as listed in his mother’s 1818 will, may have been Sarah or “Sally,” Juliana, and Elijah. Matthias’s grandfather was Captain Samuel Davis (1703-1761) of Mount Sinai (Town of Brookhaven), Suffolk County.
Records show that Matthias enlisted in the military in Suffolk County as a private. He served in the Suffolk County Militia, under Colonel Josiah Smith, as an enlisted manunder the“First Regiment of Minute Men,” as recorded in James A. Roberts’s New York in the Revolution as Colony and State (1898). Most sources list him as having served in the First Regiment, but the Revolutionary War Burial Index shows service in the Third Regiment. The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut by Frederic Gregory Mather (1913), also lists him as having served as an enlisted man in Captain Selah Strong’s 7th Company. The online database of the Sons of the American Revolution lists him as a patriot for his service in Colonel Smith’s regiment. The Daughters of the American Revolution online database notes that he signed the Oath of Allegiance to the King in 1778; many patriots had no choice but to do so or risk exile and confiscation of their farms.
According to online information from Family Search wesite and longislandgenealogy.com, Matthias married Frances Havens about 1790 on Shelter Island, Suffolk County. Frances was born on December 20, 1765, or December 21, 1766, on Shelter Island, and was the daughter of Captain James Havens and Elizabeth Bowditch Havens. The couple had seven children: Charles Davis, who died when he was six months old (1791-1792), Frances Havens (1793-1828), Nancy Bowditch (1795-1864), Charles Havens (1798-1870), Elvira D. (1800-c.1878), Mary C. (1807-1884), and Julia Gardiner (1810-1874). Matthias’s father, Elnathan Davis, died in Coram on December 20, 1815, while Matthias’s mother died in 1818.
The 1800 United States federal census shows Mattias residing with his family in Southold. There were five people in the household, one of whom was an enslaved person. The 1810 census shows seven household members in Huntington, Suffolk County, while the 1820 census also lists seven persons in Huntington, all free and white. Two people were engaged in agriculture. The 1830 census shows eight people, all free and white, in Huntington, and the 1840 census lists five free and white people in Southold, with four employed in agriculture. Matthias’s wife, Frances, died on April 20, 1831, in Huntington.
Mathias died on December 12, 1849, in Manhasset, North Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, according to Family Search and cemetery records. Both he and his wife, along with their young son, Charles Davis, and their daughter, Frances Havens Davis (she had the same name as her mother), are interred in Huntington’s Old Burying Ground. Josephine Frost, in her “Cemetery Inscriptions From Huntington, Long Island, New York (1911)” records this inscription on a gravestone there: “Matthias Davis, died Dec. 12, 1849. Age 88 years, 2 months.”
