Thomas Whitfield Davidson Old Time Judge. (original) (raw)

Thomas Whitfield Davidson served in many political and judicial offices, but he never wandered from the religious inculcations of his mother, Sara Josephine Daniels Whitfield, and near the end of his life the judge memorialized her with a shrine. More about that later.

The story begins in September 1876, when Whitfield was born in the pineywoods of northwest Harrison County. His father, John Ransom Whitfield, had moved the family to East Texas from Georgia in 1867; they were refugees from Radical Reconstruction there.

Davidson attended country schools before enrolling in East Texas State Normal College in Commerce, Texas, then in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. Davidson returned to Marshall and a teaching job, which left time to �read for the law,� and he passed the bar exam in 1903.

Davidson opened a legal practice in Marshall and served as city attorney. He won election as a state senator, 1907 to 1914, and was twice elected lieutenant governor before losing in the race for governor in 1924 in the Democratic primary to Miriam Amanda Ferguson. Earlier, Davidson�s party credentials had been cinched at the Democratic National Convention in 1912 when he had been one of the �Immortal Forty� who followed Edward M. House in stalwart support of Woodrow Wilson through that many ballots before Wilson became the party�s nominee for president.

Davidson was appointed United States district judge, Northern District of Texas, in 1936, and served until 1965. Davidson married Asenath Burkhart in 1902, Constance Key Wandel in 1936, and Beulah Rose in 1949, but had no children, so he left a large estate in northwest Harrison County for public use.

Davidson erected a chapel on the estate, and endowed its maintenance and two annual public forums with a featured speaker. The May gathering features �The Faith of our Fathers� and one in September emphasis the United States Constitution and the �American Way of Life.� Both are concluded with �dinner on the grounds.�

Davidson is remembered by friends and neighbors in Harrison County as a devoted preserver of county, state, and American history�and �old time religion.�