D. W DAVIES is proprietor of the North Eaton Lumber and Coal Company at North Eaton.  While a native of Lorain County, Mr. Davis was a farmer and business man in Missouri, but some years ago returned to this county and has since occupied a fine country home in Eaton Township and has also built up a large business in lumber and builders supplies.  He is regarded as one of the substantial citizens in that section of the county.
     His birth occurred Dec. 24, 1861, on what is now known as the Fauver Farm in Eaton Township.  Mr. Davis takes much interest in local history and it was at his suggestion that a paragraph was inserted in this history regarding the old Revolutionary soldier, George Fauver, who is buried in the Butternut Ridge Cemetery in Eaton Township.  Mr. Davis is a son of Thomas Jefferson and Mary (Brooks) Davis, both of whom were natives of St. Lawrence County, New York.  Mary Brooks was brought to Lorain County by her parents in 1831, when she was about one year old.  Thomas J. Davis grew up in New York State, married his first wife there, and after her death and when he was about thirty-five years of age he came to Lorain county, and established a wagon shop at Eaton Center.  Here he met and married Miss Brooks.  He was an expert mechanic, and continued his wagon business until he removed to Hodgman County, Kansas, where he secured quite a tract of land and spent a number of years in developing it.  From Kansas he removed to Carroll County, Missouri, where he remained until his death on Feb. 11, 1903, at the age of about eighty years.  His widow died about fifty days later in Chicago, Illinois.
     Mr. Davis' mother was a daughter of Alva Brooks, who was one of the early settlers in Lorain County.  He gave her a farm of about eighty-four acres at the center of Eaton Township, and it is still owned in her name and belongs to the estate.  It was on this farm that L. T. Davis spent his boyhood  He attended country schools, also took one year in Baldwin University at Berea, and at the age of seventeen went to live with an uncle in Carroll County, Missouri.  While in Missouri he attended a college at Avalon.  His uncle was administrator of the property left him by his grandfather Brooks, and after a time he bought 200 acres of farming land in Carroll County and applied himself with characteristic industry to its cultivation and management.
     While in Carroll County, Missouri, Mr. Davis was married Sept. 1, 1886, to Miss Mida Roberts of Livingston County, Missouri.  By this marriage he has two daughters: Jessie, wife of Newton Hoskin of Eaton Township and the mother of four children: and Freda, wife of Don Cook, also of Eaton Township, and the mother of three children.
     During his residence in Missouri Mr. Davis acquired about 360 acres of fertile farming land and was also interested in a planing mill at Carrollton.  His wife died at Carrollton and on Jan. 23, 1894, he was married in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, to Miss Elizabeth Shearer.  Mrs. Davis was born on a farm in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a daughter of Hiram and Frances (Garrard) Shearer.  She grew to womanhood in Pennsylvania, received a common school education, and met her husband during a visit with a friend in Missouri.  Mr. and Mrs. Davis have two children, both of whom were born in Carroll County.  Frances is a graduate of the Elyria High School and also took a course in the Kent Normal has taught one term, and is still at home.  The son James Garfield is a graduate of the Elyria High School and is also at home.
     In 1903 Mr. Davis sold out his interests in Missouri and moved to North Eaton, where he now occupies the farm which his mother formerly owned and in which he has a half interest.  After a year or so as a practical farmer, in 1905 he established his present business as a coal and lumber merchant at North Eaton and has succeeded in building up a very profitable trade in that section of the county.  Mr. Davis is also the heaviest stockholder in the North Eaton Telephone Company, which was organized in 198 and of which he has since being secretary.  As a republican he cast his first presidential ballot for James G. Blaine in 1884, and claims that he has always remained true to the essential principles of the party.  In 1914 the progressives nominated him for the office of county commissioner, and while he was not elected he had the satisfaction of leading his ticket.  He is a member and elder in the Disciples Church, while Mrs. Davis is a Methodist.  He also belongs  to the Grange in Columbia Township. 
Source: A Standard History of Lorain County, Ohio - Vol. II by G. Frederick Wright - Publ. 1916 - Page 606

     John Day, the Lorain County pioneer, and a son of Captain William, was born Feb. 3, 1774, and in 1816 brought his family to Sheffield, Ohio.  He was married in 1794 to Lydia Austin of Sheffield, Massachusetts.  He died in Lorain County Oct. 8, 1827.  The record of their children is as follows:  Rhoda, born Nov. 26, 1794, and died Nov. 24, 1795; William, born Dec. 15, 1796; Rhoda Maria, born Mar. 29, 1799, died Oct. 10, 1825; John 2d, born Mar. 23, 1801; Norman, born Jan. 24, 1803; Fanny, born Apr. 3, 1805, and married on Apr. 15, 1834, to William H. Root of Sheffield, Ohio; James, born Aug. 27, 1807; Lydia, born Mar. 5, 1810, and married Setp. 17, 1840; Kendrick K. Kinney of Oberlin; Kellogg, born Jan. 23, 1813; Frederick, born Feb. 12, 1815; Edmund, born Feb. 24, 1818; and Eleanor, born July 13, 1820, and married Apr. 3, 1840, James Austin of Sheffield.  John Day, the father of these children, was in the fifth generation from the original Robert Day.
     In the sixth generation was William Day, a son of the pioneer John Day.   William was born Dec. 15, 1796, and was about twenty years of age when the family came to Sheffield, Ohio.  He died Nov. 9, 1889.  He was married May 6, 1832, to Augusta Burrell, of Sheffield, and also a representative of the group of pioneers who settled at Sheffield 100 years ago.  She died Oct. 9, 1887.  Their children were:  Huldah Maria, born Mar. 5, 1833; William Augustus, born June 14, 1835; Henry Kellogg, born Aug. 22, 1837; Marietta, born Sept. 30, 1839; Sumner Burrell, born Apr. 19, 1842; Eugene I.,  born Apr. 12, 1847; and Everett E., born Nov. 3, 1850.
     Sumner Burrell Day, who therefore stood in the seventh generation of the Day family in America, grew up in Lorain County, gained his education at Sheffield and at Oberlin, and in early life was connected with the lumber industry.  His home was in Elyria since 1885, and many important business achievements and institution are associated with his name.  He was president and builder of the Elyria, Grafton & Southern Electric Railway.  From its foundation to his death he was a director in the Lorain County Banking Company, was its first vice president, and held that office until elected preident, an office he held eight years.  He was a director in the Elyria Lumber & Coal Company, in the Perry-Fay Company, and owned considerable real estate both at Elyria and elsewhere.
     Mr. Day served as a trustee of the Lorain County Children's Home from its establishment.  In politics he was a republican.
     On May 28, 1867, at Russell, New York, he married Miss Sue Maria Knox, daughter of William Knox.  Their two children, in the eighth generation of the family, are Lee Sumner and Edith M.  Lee S. Day is a lawyer by profession.  He married Maude Allen Oct. 1, 1910 and the children of that union are: William Allen, born June 27, 1911; Bernice Elizabeth, born June 1, 1912, and died June 7, 1913; and twins Donna and Doris, born May 22, 1915; Edith M. is the wife of Asaph R. Jones, a well known Elyria citizen and a member of the present city council (1915).  Mr. and Mrs. Jones were married Nov. 9, 1898, and their children are:  Ernest Lee, born Apr. 1, 1901; Sumner Richard, born Nov. 6, 1903; Roderick Orlando, born June 4, 1911; and Edith Lucile, born May 19, 1915.
     In the genealogical register of the family of Robert Day is found an interesting account of the pioneer services rendered by various members of the family who came to Sheffield, Ohio, in 1816.  In order to make this individual record more complete and also for its general historical importance considered with respect to Lorain County, the following is taken without formal quotation from the register already mentioned. 
     In 1794 John Day and Lydia Austin were married in Sheffield, Massachusetts, where they resided for twenty-one years until their removal to their new home in Ohio.   Meanwhile ten children had come into the household.  How in the world the mother, who at the time of her marriage is described as "a frail delicate girl of nineteen summers" could care for so large a family and look after the affairs of the household as they had to be looked after in those days it is difficult for us of this generation to comprehend.  The youngest one of her children, Eleanor, thus describes these duties: "In the spring the flax was to be spun, woven into cloth and whitened for the family supply of linen.  That is a very short statement of the matter of supply and conveys to those of the present day no idea of the amount and severity of the labor to be performed, of the many, many weary steps to be taken, the aches to be endured to accomplish all this.  Later in the season the same process of spinning and weaving the wool was to be gone through with for their winter clothing; all this cloth had to be made up of course.  The modern woman even with the aid of a good sewing machine considers it a great task, a burden she can scarce endure to do the family sewing and her housework too.  What would they think if they had to make their cloth as well as our mothers did.  Besides there was the butter and cheese to make, a large family to be fed and cared for, washing, ironing, mending, baking, brewing, cleaning and the many other things all housekeepers find to do, went on continually in the old home, the theater of our mother's unceasing industry. * * *"
     The journey from Massachusetts to Ohio, which can now be made with comfort in sixteen hours, required then twenty-two days of arduous exertion and strenuous self denial.  In January, 1815, Capt. John Day joined with Jabez Burrell in the purchase of the tract of land now known as Sheffield, Lorain County, Ohio.  After persuading several other persons to share the purchase with them they came to Sheffield in June to explore the township and to select lots for themselves and friends.  On the 27th of the following July, Captain Day and his wife and his nine children arrived at their destination in Ohio, after a journey in covered wagons of more than three weeks.  As told also in another chapter, the heavy household goods and farming utensils had at Schenectady, New York, been loaded on a small, half-decked schooner of about fifteen tons burden which was sailed up the Mohawk, locked around the obstruction of Little Falls and thence drawn through the rude canal which led into Oneida Lake and thence through the Oswego River to Lake Ontario.  At Queenston the schooner was unloaded, put upon cart wheels and drawn past Niagara Falls to Chippewa and there launched.  Her cargo followed in like manner and was there reloaded.  The schooner then proceeded through the lake and up Black River to the mouth of French Creek, where her cargo of salt and goods was landed on the Big Bottom.
     A log house was soon built and the slow work of clearing the heavy forest begun.  Here in the course of four years two other children were added to the household, making twelve in all.  But they were surrounded with other households of proportionate size.  Captain Burrell with his eight children arrived a few days later.  Henry Root and his wife and six children had preceded them by two or three month, while Captain Smith with his eight children were already on the ground.  Deer and bear abounded in the forest and fish were abundant in the river, thus affording ready made a considerable portion of the food which they required.  But bears were not altogether pleasant neighbors. 
     True to their traditions the Day family in Sheffield immediately set up religious and educational institutions.  In the winter of 1816 religious meetings were commenced at the house of Captain Burrell, and in the absence of a clergyman a sermon was read.  In the spring of 1817 Alvan Coe preached the first sermon.  In the fall of the same year Rev. Alvin Hyde began regular services in Sheffield and adjoining towns, and in 1818 the Congregational Church was formed, William Day being one of the original members.  A long schoolhouse was soon built, near where the church now stands, and the first school in it was taught by Preston Pond from Keene, New Hampshire.  In June, 1824, the Town of Sheffield was organized by the county commissioners, and John Day chosen as one of the trustees.  The interest in religion and education thus shown has continued in all the descendants of this pioneer family.  At one time or another nearly all of those who were born in Sheffield have pursued their higher education in Oberlin College, and it still remains true that nearly all the members of the family are professors of religion, and with Aunt Eleanor we can point with pride to the fact that the descendants of John Day "have never from their number furnished a criminal, or a drunkard, or a disreputable person of any kind."  Not satisfied with knowledge attained in school, May, daughter of James Day, granddaughter of Capt. John Day and niece of Norman Day, became a recognized authority in the botany of Lorain County, so that she was constantly consulted by professors of Oberlin.  The herbarium which she presented to the college contains some specimens that had not before been discovered in the county.  Lydia, daughter of Norman, became an equal authority in the botany of the Rocky Mountain region.
     In due time the new hive swarmed; and as pioneers went out from Sheffield to Massachusetts, so again they went out from Sheffield, Ohio, to carry with them their habits of industry, economy and upright life and spread broadcast the leaven so successfully brought from their ancestral home.  Kellogg Day was for many years a missionary among the Cherokee Indians.  Alfred, a son of John II, after having served three years in the Civil War took up his residence and reared a large family in Mondovi, Wisconsin.  Many others went out from Lorain County and made their mark and impress on the citizenship and growth of various localities.  The members of the family who served their country in the Civil war were:  Hiram A. Disbrow, husband of Marietta; G. F. Wright, husband of Marie; Alfred, son of John; Henry C. Bacon, husband of Eliza F.; Cyrus Yale Durand, husband of Celia; and Frederic O., son of Frederick; while Carl Edmund, son of Frederic O., served in the Cuban war.
Source: A Standard History of Lorain County, Ohio - Vol. II by G. Frederick Wright - Publ. 1916 - Page 562