My Genealogy Hound

Goldsmith Chandler Davis, a prominent nurseryman and fruit grower of Osage Township, Benton Co., Ark., was born in the “Hoosier” State in 1844 and is a son of Benjamin P. and Ruth J. (Chandler) Davis, who are of Welsh and Irish-English descent, respectively. The father was born in Ohio in 1820 and was married in his native State. After residing alternately in Ohio and Indiana until 1853, he moved to St. Paul, Minn., where he was engaged in merchandising one year. The following eleven years he kept hotel in Scott County, and was also engaged in farming and running a lime kiln, supplying the city of St. Paul with its lime for several years. In 1867 he became a citizen of Bentonville, Ark., where he kept a hotel, and was also postmaster for about eight years. In 1878 he immigrated to Los Angeles County, Cal., and has since been engaged in raising oranges, grapes and small fruits. His wife was born in Ohio in 1830, and is a descendant of Oliver Goldsmith the poet. She is the mother of five children: Goldsmith C.; Phoebe wife of R. C. Brown; Rose A., Nannie and Benjamin F. Goldsmith C. was educated in the public schools of Minnesota and came to Arkansas with his parents. His father owned a farm of eighty acres near Bentonville, and the mother in the spring of 1869 planted a pint of apple seeds, which Goldsmith C. grafted in the spring of 1870. He gradually increased his stock until the cold winter of 1880-81, when all of his trees were killed. He immediately set to work with renewed energy, and purchased eighty acres of land where his house now stands, and without paying a dollar down, began setting out trees. He now has the largest nursery in the county, if not in the State, and is the owner of 640 acres of good land. His orchard consists of 20,000 trees and his nursery stock comprises 1,000,000 trees from one to four years old. He is doing a highly satisfactory business, and his trees are shipped to nearly every State in the Union. In 1875 he was married to Miss Sallie West, a daughter of A. A. West, of Carroll County Ark. She was born in Alabama in 1856, and is the mother of five children: Betsey Trotwood, Benjamin Franklin, Catherine, Lou Duskey and John Chandler.