Allen Davis: The Soldier, Husband, The Father of Two Families -- Part I — Roots in Beaver Dam (1835–1859)
If you’ve followed my earlier stories about the Joplin and Choplin families, you already know how tangled and fascinating these North Carolina roots can be. But few ancestors lived a life as dramatic, heartbreaking, and unbelievably resilient as Allen Davis, the man whose choices ultimately shaped the Choplin name as we know it today.
This is Allen’s story, told chronologically from the beginning. It weaves together historical records, family lore, and the many gaps I’ve had to bridge with context and careful research. It is the kind of story that reminds you how fragile our family lines truly are—and how close we came to never having a Choplin Homeplace at all.
Born in Old Beaver Dam
Allen Davis was born on July 8, 1835, in what was then known as the Beaver Dam District of Granville County, North Carolina. He was the third child born to John C. Davis, who was 50 years old, and Matilda Bailey, who was 29. Allen was their first son, a position that carried weight in a rural, agrarian household where survival depended on labor and cooperation.
John and Matilda would eventually raise nine children, and Allen grew up in a home where responsibility came early. In mid-19th-century North Carolina, childhood was short. Boys were expected to work alongside their fathers, learning how to farm, tend animals, clear land, and provide. Formal schooling was limited; life skills mattered far more than book learning.
While formal schooling was limited during Allen's childhood, a note in my grandfathers genealogy records caught my attention.In his notes about Allen, he wrote that Allen
"well schooled in reading, writing, and arithmetic and displayed an excellent ability in penmanship." Clearly, Allen received some form of education, so I began searching for where he might have attened school.
I located an 1840 Beaver Dam School Census record taken when Allen was about 5 years old, too young to be enrolled himself, but some of his siblings were attending this school. His father, John C. Davis is listed as having five children attending this school: Sugar, Mary, Jonathan, Sary, and Priscilla. If Allen did attend school later, it was almost certainly this same Beaver Dam school alongside his siblings. His first cousins also appear in the record: Eliza, Narcissa, and Cornelia Dillard (spelled "Dilliard" in the census) children of Israel Dillard and Mahala Bailey, Allen's maternal aunt.
Other names mentioned on this census that can be found in my family tree are:
Parent Children
Samuel Baly (Bailey) Tuller
Wm Y Baly (Bailey) Glaffry, Elliner, Rosa, Wesly
Nancy Allen Joseph, Mary
Israel Dilliard (Dillard) Eliza Narcissa, Cornelia
William Baley (Bailey) Davee, William, Eliza, Israel, Helon
David Fuller William, Henry, Frances, Johnathan
Wm P. Baly (Bailey) Catherine, Mary, Elizabeth, Pelick (Peleg), Samuel, Burten, Emaline
John Emory Wyat, William, Hinton, John, Edney
John Loyd (Lloyd) Eliza, James, William
James Fuller Leonard, Martha, Azariah, Susan
Daniel Fuller William, David, Frances, Ann
Thos Ray Sally, Patsey, Pucella, Martha, Elsey, Athelaus, Sabila, Thomas
Isac Crowder Louisa, Caroline, William, Isac, Elizabeth
Ransom Jackson Lucy, Sandel(?), Mary, Davy, Nancy
Bennet Champion William, Miranda
The list above is just some of the names on the list. It would not shock me to one day find out all names on the list could be found in our tree.
When modern readers hear “Beaver Dam,” many picture the present-day area near Highway 50—and that’s not entirely wrong. But historical maps reveal something important: the old Beaver Dam District was located in what we now know as Brassfield Township, the very area where the Choplin Homeplace still stands.
Now, I know as soon as you saw "Beaver Dam" your mind probably jumped straight to Highway 50 and Falls Lake. But in the mid-1850s, Falls Like didn't exist, and neither did the Beaver Dam you're thinking of. Back them, the area where the Choplin homeplace sits now was known as Beaver Dam. I haven't been able to find any records that describes exactly where the Beaver Dam school stood, but I do know there use to be a two-story schoolhouse located just down the road from the Choplin homeplace. At the intersection of Woodland Baptist Church Road and Graham Sherron Road sits the little blue building that now houses Granville Masonic Lodge #380. The original schoolhouse once stood to the left of the lodge's current location, and that old building is where the lodge first began. Based on everything I've pieced together, this is my best guess for where the Beaver Dam school was located.
(If anyone has information about the location of the Beaver Dam school, or knows the name of the school that once sat beside the lodge please leave a comment below! Bounus points for the person who can share a picture of the former school building!)
Growing Up in a Changing World
Allen came of age in a world already under strain. The 1830s and 1840s were marked by economic uncertainty, westward expansion, and increasing political tension over slavery and states’ rights. While those debates played out in newspapers and legislatures, families like the Davises felt change more subtly through crop prices, land availability, and the pressure placed on young men to provide.
By the time Allen reached his early twenties, he was living the life expected of him: working, contributing, and preparing to start a family of his own.
Marriage to Lucretia “Seny” Joplin
On March 24, 1859, 23-year-old Allen Davis married 28-year-old Lucretia “Seny” Joplin, the aunt of the much-discussed Ticy Ann Joplin. The ceremony was performed by William T. Eddins.
In the marriage announcement, both Seny and her father are listed under the surname “Choplin,” not Joplin. This appears to be the earliest documented instance of the spelling that would later become permanent for part of the family, a small detail that would eventually carry enormous significance.
Age gaps like Allen and Seny’s were not uncommon, particularly when a woman brought stability, land connections, or family support into a marriage. Together, they began building a life rooted in the same soil that had raised them both.
Seny soon became pregnant, and for a brief moment, their future likely looked like countless others: children, land, work, and continuity.
But history rarely allows such simplicity.
On the Brink of War
Within a year of their marriage, tragedy and national upheaval would begin to converge. The couple would lose their first child, and the country itself would fracture into war. Those early years marked by hope, loss, and quiet resilience formed the foundation of everything that followed.
Before Allen ever shouldered a rifle, before Gettysburg and prison camps and survival against impossible odds, he was a son of Beaver Dam, a husband to Seny, and a young man rooted in a place and a family that would depend on him long after the war tried to claim him.
And in the next chapter, the war would come calling.
While Allen would soon answer the call to serve, another member of our family , James Horatio Williams, was in Charleston Harbor when the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Read his remarkable story here.
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