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Genevieve Davis Bennett Clark 1856 ~ 1937
Genevieve Davis Bennett Clark
Genevieve Davis Bennett, wife of Champ Clark, speaker of the
House of Representatives, and daughter of Joel Davis Bennett and
Mary McClung McAlfee, his wife, was born in Callaway County,
Missouri; educated in the public schools and at the Missouri
State University, and is a member in good standing of the
Presbyterian Church and the Congressional Club. On both sides of
the house, Mrs. Clark is descended from colonial ancestors. Her
parents were both from Kentucky, her mother being born in Mercer
County and her father in Madison County. Both sides of her
family took part in the French and Indian War, the American
Revolution and the War of 1812. In the Civil War, which divided
the states, Mrs. Clark had first cousins on both sides. In one
instance, she had two cousins, brothers, who served on different
sides of the great struggle.
On her mother's side, Mrs. Clark comes of Scotch-Irish stock.
Two of her ancestors, father and son, were at the battle of the
Boyne; on her father's side she is descended from the first
Colonial Governor of Virginia; collaterally she is descended
from George Rodgers Clark and Joseph Hamilton Daviess. Her
grand-father, George McAlfee, served in the War of 1812 and was
at the Battle of the Thames, fighting in Colonel Dick Johnson's
regiment Her great grandfather, George McAlfee, Sr., was with
General George Rodgers Clark in his expedition against the
British and Indians, and received for his services a grant of
1400 acres of land from Benjamin Harrison, then Governor of
Virginia.
On her father's side Mrs. Clark's great grandmother, Margaret
Dozier, wife of Captain James Davis, was the heroine of a
dramatic incident during the closing months of the Revolutionary
War, which has been handed down by tradition and told in all the
histories of Kentucky. Captain Davis had placed his family,
consisting of his wife and four children, a Negro slave woman
and her child, an infant, at the fort (which was under the
command of Captain Jesse Davis) while he went with a body of
troops under the command of Colonel Floyd, of Virginia, to find
and punish a band of marauding Indians for their depredations
committed in the neighborhood of Blue Licks. While they were
gone, the Indians surprised the fort, killed all the inmates
with great slaughter and burnt the fort.
Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Clark's great-grandmother, escaped with her
infant son, and the Negro servant also had the good fortune to
escape with her child. Everybody else was killed but the three
little Davis girls, Margaret, Rebecca and Martha or (as they
were then called Peggy, Becky and Patty). These children,
according to tradition were saved on account of their remarkable
beauty, the Indians being actuated by the desire to extort a
great ransom made them captive. In the meantime, the mother and
servant with their children undertook to make their way to the
nearest station to get someone to come and rescue her little
girls, but they lost their way in the darkness and wandered
around and were picked up after three days and taken to the
station.
The Indians in the meantime had gotten such a start with the
children that it was impossible to overtake them. They were
taken to Detroit, and kept there for eighteen months under the
care of Major DePeyster who was then commandant at the fort; the
children were treated with every consideration. Major DePeyster
was a man of considerable taste and accomplishments. His wife
was childless and conceived a great fancy for little Peggy Davis
and her sisters, and was anxious to adopt Peggy who was the
oldest and promised her a life of luxury if she would consent,
but young as she was she was not to be weaned from her home and
country.
The children were finally returned to their parents in Madison
County, Kentucky, grew up to womanhood and married three
brothers, Joseph, Elijah and Moses Bennett, from Maryland, and
from them have descended some of the most notable families in
America. It is from Peggy Davis who married Joseph Bennett that
Mrs. Champ Clark is descended.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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