Sarah Woodruff Walker Davis (September 4, 1814 – November 9, 1879) was born in
Lenox, Massachusetts
Lenox is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The town is based in Western Massachusetts and part of the Pittsfield Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,095 at the 2020 census. Lenox is the site of Shakespeare & Company and T ...
to William Perrin Walker and Lucy Adam Walker. She was a fairly educated woman for her time, attending
Hartford Female Seminary in
Connecticut, where she studied under the tutelage of
Catharine Beecher and
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which depicts the harsh ...
. While she dropped out of school and returned to her hometown, Sarah remained an intellectual woman for her entire life. Back in Lenox, Sarah met
David Davis, a young lawyer who was practicing in
Bloomington, Illinois
Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...
. They married in 1838 and had a long and loving marriage, evidenced by the many letters they sent each other while Judge Davis was working in
Washington, DC and Sarah was at home in Bloomington. They built their dream home, Clover Lawn, now known as the
David Davis Mansion, in Bloomington from 1870–1872. Two of their children, George and Sallie, lived to adulthood.
Sarah was renowned in her community for her generosity and willingness to help those in need. She employed a domestic staff of mostly young Irish immigrants and thought of them as a sort of family when her children were grown and her husband was away. She was politically informed, seeing that
Abraham Lincoln was a close friend of the Davis family and her husband served as his campaign manager and a
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
justice. Still, despite her knowledge, Sarah preferred not to get involved in what she saw as the affairs of men. She was fairly independent, since the judge was often away in Washington, and raised hogs as her own means of income and also traveled extensively. It was on one of these trips, to visit her sister's home in
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,018 at the 2020 census. A year-round resort area, Stockbridge is h ...
, that Sarah died at the age of 65. A funeral took place in Stockbridge before Sarah's body was returned to Bloomington, where a second funeral took place at the mansion. There were estimated to be 1,500 mourners in attendance, including such figures as
Adlai Stevenson I and
Robert Todd Lincoln.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, Sarah Woodruff
1814 births
1879 deaths
American Presbyterians