Section: | 22 |
Space: | 8 |
Lot: | 1 |
Parents: | Andrew & Nancy Cobb D |
Spouse: | Elizabeth Daw (2nd) |
Place of Birth: | Evergreen, AL |
Occupation: | Government |
Comments: | Policeman |
Owner: | Andrew Keith Daw |
James A. Daw (1859 - 1911) At the age of four, Jim Daw's father, Andrew James Daw, left the family in Owassa, Conecuh County, Alabama to fight in the War Between the States; he was killed at Chickamauga in 1863. Andrew's widow, Nancy Jane Cobb Daw (born in what is now Santa Rosa County, Florida), was left with three young children. She fed and clothed and sheltered herself and her children, Frances, Mollie and Jim, through another year and a half of war. On January 9, 1866, months after the war ended, she married a returned veteran, William J. Ray. She was widowed again ten years later. Her son Jim helped his mother farm the land. Around the age of 21, he married Mary Elizabeth Russell. In the winter of 1887, at age 28, he came to Pensacola. At least for the time being, Mary stayed behind in Conecuh with their three children who had been born by that year--Hattie Estelle, on October 12, 1881; Charles Andrew, on Dec. 11, 1882; and James Arthur, on May 25, 1885. They also had two more children, who died as infants. By 1895, Jim Daw had joined the Pensacola police force as a mounted officer. The following year he also owned and operated a grocery store. The store was well situated in what was then the northwestern fringe of the town at a location that had become a sort of farmers market where the farmers from the surrounding countryside brought their produce and bought their supplies. Although it was within the city limits, the area was largely undeveloped. Houses were spaced well apart and many were surrounded by gardens or open fields in which livestock grazed. It must have been far more rural than urban in appearance. Mary Elizabeth did not think so, however. When Daw moved her and the children to Pensacola in 1892, she objected that she did not want to live in town. Several years later she left, so she could live farther out in the countryside. Daw, who protested that he had to remain in the city because of his employment, stayed behind. The couple was never reconciled. Ten years later, on March 15, 1905, Daw asked a divorce from Mary on grounds of desertion. She did not contest the action, and the divorce was granted on May 8, 1905. Less than three weeks later, on May 25, 1905, Daw and a Pensacola neighbor, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Pickens, were married at her brother's home in Montgomery, Alabama. They had two children, Pearl Elizabeth, born April 23, 1906, and Carl Pickens, born July 12, 1908. As a police officer in Pensacola, he was a highly controversial figure. The 1907 and 1908 minutes of the Board of Public Safety indicate that complaints were filed against him. On Sept. 10, 1907, for example, the board heard charges that he had visited a saloon while on duty and in uniform without being there on business, accosted a physician when the doctor was about to enter his office to make a professional call, accosted a woman and asked her questions about her business and how she earned a living, threatened to break in the door to another physician's office if the doctor did not disclose the name of a woman who was inside, and forced his way into the home or business of another woman and questioned her. Notwithstanding those charges, he was named Captain of Night Police in 1908. Around that same time he formed a drayage business. In September 1910, he was awarded the city's garbage collection contract, worth $600 a month, a sum equivalent to several times that amount in today's dollars. On Feb. 15, 1911, one of his drivers failed to report to work. Daw climbed aboard the wagon to drive it downtown. En route, the oxen pulling the wagon were spooked by a runaway horse and buggy clattering down an intersecting street. The oxen reared, and Daw was thrown from the seat of the high wagon and struck his head on a curbstone. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and, although the newspaper reported a possible recovery at one point, died of his injuries 12 days later on Feb. 27, 1911. He had just turned 52 the month before. Captain Daw is buried at St. John's Cemetery next to Lizzie. |