Davis from Virginia calls 9.12.1802
I think this was probably John Davis 1774-1854 traveller and author. Sadly nothing on him in DNB or Amer Nat Biog. (The only account of his life I have found is by Colin Elliott in the 1985 reprint by Tops'l books of his classic "The Post Captain" a comic naval yarn) I have since found the account by Thelma Louise Kellogg published by the University of Maine in 1824. His work "Travels of four and a half years &c" publ London 1803 gave exact dates for his journey much of which was on foot in Virginia. He landed back in England on 14.9.1802 near Cowes, Isle of Wight, and soon came to London. He wrote poetry, history, novels, travel books, biographies and French translations. According to his memoir in the novel "The First Settlers of Virginia" published New York 1806, he returned to America in 1804. It's unclear when he returned to England again. There are letters from J Davis in Richmond, Virginia sending poems to the Port Folio in Philadelphia in 1812 and 1814. He may have gone to Ontario after that. His "Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas" was published in Philadelphia in 1817 but in the same year his "Travels of four and a half years" was reissued in London printed for J Davis, Military Chronicle Office, 14 Charlotte St, Bloomsbury. The Military Chronicle was a monthly journal "devoted to the British Officer" first published by J Davis, at 33 Essex St Strand on 1.11.1811, who also published a series called Corpus Historicum, translations of ancient historians (which was claimed to involve an outlay of £25,000 financed by the military connections of the Military Chronicle), moved to Bloomsbury by 1814, issued a translation in 1816 of a French work on the battle of Waterloo, and last appeared in newspaper advertisements on 9.12.1816 with D'Anville's Geography of the Greeks and Romans, translated from the French by the editor of the Military Chronicle. Davis's next work was issued in his birthplace Salisbury in 1823, and in Winchester in 1836 he was listed in directories as a bookseller and published works on local history himself. In a letter to Rich, a London bookseller in 1836 he stated that he had not been to London since his return from America. In 1843 he got a place (like Godwin's brother Nathaniel) as a Poor Brother of Charterhouse where he spent his last years. He may possibly have been some of the later Davis entries in Godwin's diary, particularly the 7 "J Davis" entries of late 1810. See my entry for Davis/Davies after 1805