antiquary magistrate collector
He was son of a farmer at Rumburgh, Suffolk, and nephew of Eleazar Davy of Yoxford, locally prominent as sheriff of the county in 1770, and the marriage of his stepdaughter with Sir John Rous. David Elisha Davy was born in 1769, and was educated at Yoxford under Samuel Forster.
He entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he took his Bachelor of Arts degree as sixth senior optime in 1790. He was ordained as deacon in 1792. After 1815 Davy"s estates were taken into possession by Gurney"s Bank as security for advances made by them.
But they were restored to the owner a few years before his death.
Leaving Yoxford, Davy resided at Ufford near Woodbridge, and devoted himself to genealogical and antiquarian studies. Davy died unmarried and intestate at Ufford on 15 August 1851, at the age of eighty-two.
Davy"s Suffolk manuscripts were purchased by the British Museum in 1852. They now form British Library Add.
19077 to 19207, and include genealogical histories of Suffolk families, collections for the lives of Suffolk writers ("Athenæ Suffolcenses"), a number of volumes of "Illustrative Drawings" (19176 to 19181), and a volume of "Arms of Suffolk Families" (19159).
