Background
Edwin Hamilton Davis was born on January 22, 1811 at Hillsboro in southern Ohio, United states. He was a son of Henry Davis and Avis (Slocum) Davis.
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Edwin Hamilton Davis was born on January 22, 1811 at Hillsboro in southern Ohio, United states. He was a son of Henry Davis and Avis (Slocum) Davis.
Hillsboro locality is celebrated for the number of circular, square, and octagonal earthworks of the Mound Builders, and as a youth Davis became attracted to the question of their origin.
Archeology at that time being a science offering little sustenance to its followers, the young man was bent toward medicine, yet he kept up the exploration of the mounds while studying at Kenyon College where he graduated in 1833.
His address on the subject at the college commencement interested Daniel Webster, then traveling in the West, and the latter’s encouragement stimulated Davis in his determination to continue the researches at the first opportunity.
He graduated from Cincinnati Medical College in 1837 or 1838.
Davis began to practise in Chillicothe, Ohio, where he was to remain until 1850. His profession keeping him occupied, he joined hands with E. G. Squier, an ambitious archeologist, talented but without means, and thus at his own expense prosecuted the survey of one hundred mounds. The results of this collaboration were published as the first work issued by the newly founded Smithsonian Institution: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.
This large memoir, well presented and illustrated, and embodying the surveys and descriptions of the more important works of the Mound Builders, being based on facts, has lost none of its value to archeologists. As a historical record of the ancient works of the Indians, especially since many of the monuments have disappeared under the plow and the encroachment of habitations, it is of summary value. A. Morlot, the Swiss archeologist, declared it to be as “glorious a monument of American science, as Bunker’s Hill is of American bravery”.
During his stay in Ohio, Davis gathered a collection of cultural objects of the Mound Builders which was remarkable in revealing the surprising advance these Indians had made in art. The larger collection was acquired by the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury, England, where it has been for many decades an object of pilgrimage of American archeologists. A smaller collection by Davis is in the American Museum of Natural History of New York City. Called to the chair of materia medica and therapeutics in the New York Medical College in 1850, Davis taught there till 1860. As might be suspected, he managed to interest some members of his classes in his hobby, for he refers to specimens “sent by my former students from Central and South America”. Addressing Prof. Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian, in 1866, he broached a project for correlating specimens with tribes on which he had been engaged, using the ethnological map of Waitz and taking in the results of Gallatin, Ludwig, Gibbs, and Morgan. In making this map, which did not become a reality for many years, he suggested the use of physical measurements on the skeleton and sent Prof. Henry the scheme of Scherzer and Schwarz for use of the Institution.
In 1854 he delivered a course of lectures on archeology before the Lowell Institute of Boston and later repeated these lectures to societies in New York City and Brooklyn.
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Davis was tall, and distinguished by a highly refined, intellectual countenance. Kindly, a gentleman in temperament, he was learned in medical science, but easily imposed upon with regard to fees.
On November 9, 1841 Davis married Lucy Woodbridge who bore him nine children, among them John Woodbridge Davis, a well-known civil engineer.
