William Harvey Davis Sr.

William Harvey “Bill” Davis Sr. was the youngest of Homer Edward Davis and Bessie Marie (“Marie”) Hill Davis’s four children — born 20 August 1941, more than fifteen years after his sister Dorothy (born 1925) and almost seventeen years after his eldest sister Mary Louise (1924). His father Homer was 41 and his mother Marie 36 at the time of his birth. His older siblings were:

• Mary Louise Davis Murdock (b. 17 January 1924) — married name Murdock per Betty’s 2015 obituary.
• Dorothy Marie Davis Wildermuth (b. 24 February 1925) — Chuck’s grandmother
• Betty Jean Davis Wolfe (b. 16 March 1926) — Chuck’s great-aunt
• William Harvey Davis Sr. (b. 20 August 1941)

He lost his mother at age nine. Marie was diagnosed with lung cancer at 40 and died at 44 in 1950; Bill Sr. was the youngest, nine years old, when she died. His sister Betty (age 24) had been her primary caregiver. The motherless childhood years from 1950 onward shaped him through his teens.

He is the second-youngest sibling figure on the maternal Wildermuth-Davis side of Chuck’s family — substantially younger than his sisters, born during the war year his oldest sisters were already in their late teens. His mother Bessie Marie Hill Davis would die in 1950 when Bill was only nine; his father Homer would live to 1982.

The Davis-Angel marriage — 16 August 1963

Bill Sr. married Rebecca “Becky” Lynne Angel — daughter of Faye Angel (Chuck Eesley’s godmother) and Theodore “Ted” Angel — on 16 August 1963 in Washington Township, Monroe County, Ohio. He was just turned 22; Becky was the Marietta-area young woman whose parents had moved to Marietta in 1939, the year she would have been born or about to be. This marriage — not a younger generation’s — is the structural bridge connecting the Angel and Davis-Wildermuth lines in this archive. Faye Angel was Bill Sr.’s mother-in-law, not Bill Jr.’s. The Marietta-to-Marietta wedding, with Bill Sr. coming out of his small-town Ohio motherless boyhood and Becky coming out of the Christ United Methodist Church and Marietta College Book Store world her mother Faye ran, joined the two families.

Bill Sr. and Becky had at least one son and one daughter — including William Harvey Davis Jr. (the son named for his father in the JR/SR pair) and Homer Edward Davis (presumed second son, named for his grandfather Homer Edward Davis Sr.). The daughter is presumably Kimberly Ann Davis, who appears in the front row of the c. 1992 Davis-Angel family portrait.

The West Virginia later life

By 2008 Bill Sr. lived in Gap Mills, Monroe County, West Virginia — a small Appalachian community in the southeastern corner of the state, about 110 miles south of his Marietta-area home. He died there or nearby on 22 April 2022, age 80, and was buried in Ronceverte, Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Becky Angel’s Indiana residence (Fishers, IN, per her mother Faye’s 2011 obituary) suggests she and Bill Sr. may have lived apart by Becky’s later years, or that the Indiana reference reflects a daughter’s home.

A note on Betty’s obituary. Betty Wolfe’s 2015 obituary names her surviving brother as “William Homer Davis, Carmel, Ind.” That’s an apparent middle-name error (Homer for Harvey, perhaps via confusion with their father Homer Edward Davis or with Bill Sr.’s son Homer Edward Davis Jr.) and a location that may either be transient or refer to a son/nephew rather than Bill Sr. himself. The marriage, parental, and death records Chuck has surfaced confirm William Harvey Davis Sr. as the documented brother.

In the 1992 portrait

He is back row right of the c. 1992 Davis-Angel family portrait — identified in the typed caption as “William Harvey Davis, Sr.”, in his early fifties at the time of the portrait, standing with his wife Becky’s family and his own — the patriarch of the Davis-Angel branch.

He is Chuck’s great-uncle on the maternal Wildermuth-Davis side — the youngest brother of Chuck’s grandmother Dorothy and the husband of Chuck’s godmother Faye Angel’s daughter Becky.

Sources: Davis-Angel family marriage and life record (16 August 1963 marriage in Washington Township, Monroe County, Ohio; Gap Mills, WV residence 2008; death 22 April 2022; buried Ronceverte, Greenbrier County, WV); Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Davis family record; c. 1992 Davis-Angel family portrait typed caption; Betty Jean (Davis) Wolfe obituary, Marietta Times, 16 September 2015.