WINFIELD J. DAVIS

  The name of no resident of Sacramento is more inseparably connected with the journalistic interests and intellectual progress of this section of the state than Winfield J. Davis, who has been identified with a number of leading papers of Sacramento County.  Of Welsh lineage, he was born in Utica, Oneida County New York, December 5, 1851, his parents being William and Elinor (Parry) Davis.  In 1862 the family removed from the Empire state to California, making the journey by way of the isthmus route.  The father purchased a ranch near Lincoln, in Placer county, where he resided until 1869, when he came with his family to Sacramento.  Thus reared on a farm, our subject became familiar with all the duties and labors that fell to the lot of the agriculturist.  Before coming to Sacramento, however, he began the study of shorthand in 1867, having a small book entitled The Young Reporter.  His lack of elementary text-books was a great hindrance to him in his work, but he persevered until he became one of the leading shorthand reporters on the Pacific coast.  He entered the first grade of the grammar school of Sacramento September 19, 1869, in the midst of the school year and was graduated April 22, 1870 in the first rank with ten others in a class of thirty-four.  Among his classmates were many who have attained prominence in the various walks of life, including Mrs. Ella Haskell Cummins, the celebrated writer of juvenile literature, and the late C.F. Crocker, who became the vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

   After his graduation at the grammar school Mr. Davis pursued a high school course until January 1871, and on the 2nd of February that year he entered the office of the Bee to learn the printing trade.  In June of the same year he became an employee of the Daily Union, his service being that of compositor and shorthand reporter.  His first task in the latter line was the reporting of the proceedings of the Republican state convention held in June 1871, at which time Newton Booth was nominated for governor.  At the close of the legislative session in 1872 he was engaged as one of the local editors of that paper, under the direction of Captain J. D. Young, late state printer.  On the 7th of  October, 1879, Mr Davis was admitted to the bar.  In the meantime, on the 31st of August, 1874 , he was appointed, after a competitive examination, official shorthand reporter of the sixth district court by Judge Ramage, the district comprising Sacramento and Yolo counties.  He was retained in the office under Judge Denson, and filled the position until the abolition of the court by the new constitution.  When the Superior court was organized to take its place he was appointed official reporter of the Superior court and held that office until  1897.  In that capacity he reported some of the most important cases that have ever been tried in the courts of the state.

   He has also been prominent in political affairs and is unwavering in the advocacy of Republican principles.  For several years he was the chairman of the Republican city central committee and during the Blaine campaign of 1884, also the Swift campaign of 1886 and the Markham campaign of 1890, he was chairman of the Republican county central committee, having the general supervision of the those campaigns throughout the county, in which there was a loss to Republicans of but one candidate on the county ticket.  On Saturday night immediately before the presidential election of 1884, it was discovered that the Hon. Frank D. Ryan, the Republican nominee for the representative to the state legislature from the eighteenth district, was ineligible by reason of the fact that he had not lived in that particular district for a year, although he had been born and reared in an adjoining district in the city.  Mr. Ryan, therefore, resigned his position on the ticket and the nomination was tendered to Mr. Davis.  The campaign, while brief, was a hotly contested one, but our subject won the election by a vote of one thousand four hundred and ninety-eight against a vote of eight hundred and twenty-two for Hon. H. M. La Rue, the Democratic candidate who was a popular man and at that time was the speaker of the assembly. During the ensuing session of the legislature Mr. Davis was the chairman of the house committee on public buildings and grounds and a member of the committees on ways and means, claims and water rights and drainage.  During that session large appropriations were secured for the improvement of public buildings and grounds in Sacramento county.  It was in that legislature also that the exciting measures concerning irrigation were brought forward, to settle which two extra sessions were called.

     Mr. Davis is also prominent in connection with the journalistic interests and literary work of the state.  His contributions on historical and political subjects have been frequently seen in the leading  magazines and newspapers and have awakened very favorable comment.  In the winter of 1888-9 he compiled the historical portion of a large volume, entitled The Governmental Roster of the State of California, of which  five thousand copies  were issued by the legislature.  In 1892 he published his "History of Political Conventions in California," a work that is standard authority on the history of politics in the Golden State.  In his library he has the largest collection of books and documents relating to the history of California that can be found in the state outside of the state library and a few in San Francisco.

      On December 7, 1891, Mr. Davis was elected a member of the board of education of the city of Sacramento, and was re-elected to the office at the first election under the new charter on November 7, 1893.  He was then chosen president of the board, and filled that office for four years.  During the presidential terms he wrote an elaborate history of the public schools that was published by the city government and received warm commendation from the federal and state educational  departments.  Mr. Davis is a historian of the Sacramento Society of California Pioneers; also an honorary member of the Sacramento Biographical Union.  He was commissioned major and engineer officer of the National Guard of California December 3, 1881, and served on the staffs of Brigadier Generals John F. Sheehan, Llewellyn Tozer and John T Carey.  Mr. Davis has long been accounted one of the leading factors of public life in Sacramento, and his name is so inseparably connected with the judicial, political and journalistic history of central California that this work would be incomplete without the record of his life.

 

 

 

Source: “A Volume Of Memoirs And Genealogy of Representative Citizens Of Northern California” Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. Chicago. 1901. Pages 168-170.

 

 

Submitted by: Betty Tartas.