Walter Burke Davis, Jr., was the person who brought James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart to life for me in his 1957 book J. E. B. Stuart, “The Last Cavalier,” but he was more than simply the author of the book. In 1990, Judge Peter Hairston took me with him to Chapel Hill to the meeting of the North Carolinian Society, which was presenting Burke Davis an award. I explained to Burke Davis our plans to preserve Stuart’s Birthplace in Ararat, and he heartily endorsed our efforts.
Over the next few years, Burke and his lovely wife Judy attended events in support of the preservation of Stuart’s Birthplace, including our kick-off reception in Stuart, Virginia. At the first encampment, I discovered Burke Davis with a grandchild along the Ararat River, explaining who Stuart was to his offspring without ever telling us he was there. During the first two years of fundraising for the Birthplace, a royalty check from his publisher for his part of the proceeds from his book on Stuart would arrive signed over to the Birthplace. Finally, one of the proudest documents I possess is a letter from Burke Davis to the Stuart Family expressing confidence in me and the effort to preserve Laurel Hill, stating, “If anyone can bring off this undertaking, it is certainly Tom. It is obvious that he has spent years in planning and learning. He’s thought of every angle.”
Walter Burke Davis, Jr., was born in Durham, North Carolina, as the son of W. B. and Harriet Jackson Davis. The family moved to Greensboro in 1919, and he was educated in the city’s public schools. He later attended Duke University and Guilford College. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1937 with a degree in journalism. Burke Davis was that rarest of men, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate who pulled for the athletic teams of the Duke University Blue Devils.
I never met anyone with so many reasons not to be humble. Once I asked him to come speak for the Birthplace, and he declined, saying with a wink and a big smile that he had “lost his marbles.” He commented that no one would be interested in hearing him speak. He could not have been more incorrect about anything in his life. When Ken Burns was looking around for a Southerner to be a “talking head” for his monumental PBS series called “The Civil War,” Burke Davis was going to do it if Shelby Foote declined. The mere fact that his books are still in print all these years later speaks to his talents as a writer and a historian. His book on Stuart holds up nearly seventy years after publication as the most readable, and one of the best researched, of the biographies.
Burke Davis chose “The Free State of Patrick” as his retirement home, with his house overlooking Rock Castle Gorge. The last time I saw Burke Davis and his wife Judy was at a performance of Frank Levering’s play “The Last Cavalier,” based on Burke’s book, now nearly seventy years old. Almost 1,000 people saw the work in 2005 at the Cherry Orchard Theater, the Star Theater in Stuart, Virginia, and the Arts Place in Danbury, North Carolina. The theatrical work brought J. E. B. Stuart to life in a way that my many speeches and writings could never accomplish. It was appropriate that the last time I saw him was at this excellent production based on his writings about Patrick County’s most famous son. Because without him, many of us would not know “Jeb” Stuart. One line from Frank’s play came to mind as I thought about our friend and wrote this appreciation. When Stuart describes his tall Prussian Heros Von Borcke being wounded, “a giant has fallen.”
Burke Davis rests today in Greensboro’s Forest Lawn Cemetery next door to the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield, which he wrote about, and where the British captured J. E. B. Stuart’s great-grandfather, Major Alexander Stuart, during the 1781 battle. I will miss him, but we still have him in nearly fifty readable books. If you could look up what a “Southern” Gentleman and a scholar should be, you would find Burke Davis.
Burke Davis started his career in journalism. After graduation, he worked for several newspapers in the Charlotte and Baltimore areas before returning to Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1960, he moved to Virginia, where he spent the next twenty years working for Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. as a special projects writer. Davis wrote over fifty books, including fiction, non-fiction, biographies, children’s books, and historical works. Much of his focus in writing was on the American Civil War. Books such as “They Called Him Stonewall,” “Gray Fox,” “Jeb Stuart: The Last Cavalier,” and “To Appomattox: Nine Days In April, 1865” are still being sold today. In 1973, Davis was awarded the North Carolina Award for Literature. He was also honored in 1990 by the North Carolina Society for his contribution to the cultural life of the state.
Davis received numerous lifetime achievement awards, among them election to the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame (1984), induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame (2000), and an honorary doctorate from Greensboro College (2000). During the 1980s, he served as a juror for the biography category of the Pulitzer Prize. He married Evangeline McLennan in 1940, and the couple had two children, Angela and Burke III. They divorced in 1980. In 1982, Davis married Juliet Halliburton Burnett. Davis split his time between homes in North Carolina and Patrick County, Virginia, until his death on August 18, 2006.
Next week James I. Robertson, Jr., and Laurel Hill.
