T. Frederick Davis Papers

Thomas Frederick Davis (writer and historian) was born in Chatham, Virginia on April 24, 1877. He was the son of Horatio Davis, a prominent Virginian lawyer who moved his family to Gainesville, Florida in 1886 (and later served as mayor from 1908 to 1909).

T. Frederick grew up in Gainesville and attended East Florida Seminary. He then joined the National Weather Bureau and worked in Galveston, Texas, Jacksonville, Florida, and Curacao in the West Indies. In 1902, upon his return to the United States, he worked in the Weather Bureau's Washington, D.C. office and wrote a history of Curacao. In 1905, he moved back to Jacksonville and continued his interests in research and writing by compiling a history of Jacksonville's climate. The National Weather Bureau accepted this compilation and published it as an official reference.

In 1911 Davis published the book for which he is most noted, The History of Early Jacksonville, Florida. He later revised this book and republished it in 1925 as The History of Jacksonville and Vicinity, 1513-1924.

In 1914 Davis retired from the Weather Bureau and started his own insurance company. During World War I, he played an active role at home, enlisting in the Duval County Militia and working on the Home Front. He also wrote extensively for the Florida Historical Quarterly. Among his better-known articles are "MacGregor's Invasion of Florida, 1817," "History of Juan Ponce de Leon's Voyages to Florida, Source Records," and "US Troops in Spanish East Florida, 1812-1813." In 1939, Davis published another important work: Digest of Florida Material in Niles' Register, 1811-1849, an index to articles about Florida published in the 76 volumes of the Register. The Florida Historical Society described it as a "continuous, contemporaneous and semiofficial history of the United States." Beginning in 1943, he also wrote a series of narratives for the Quarterly called Pioneer Florida.