Davenport, Jesse A.

Submitted by Mike Miller

Jesse A. Davenport since early manhood has been identified with educational work, and has taught in several states. For the past five years he has been a Louisiana school man, being principal of the White Castle High School in Iberville Parish.

He was born at Norris City, Illinois August 22, 1886. The Davenports came from England in Colonial times and settled in Virginia. His grandfather, Andrew A. Davenport, born in Virginia in 1837, moved to Kentucky when a young man and established the Davenport Plantation in Crittenden County, where he was an extensive tobacco planter and before the Civil war a slave owner. He died near Marion in Crittenden County in 1906. His wife was a Miss Harris, a native of Virginia. William A. Davenport, father of the Louisiana educator, was born in Crittenden County, March 10, 1861, and as a young man moved out of his native state across the Ohio River into Illinois, becoming a farmer at Norris City, where he married and where he lived until 1900. He then moved to southeastern Missouri, and at Sikeston was engaged in agricultural operations until 1922, since which year he has lived retired at San Diego, California. He is a republican and a Baptist. William A. Davenport married Francis Isabelle Cook, who was born at Norris City, Illinois, July 17, 1860. The Cooks were among the pioneer families of Southern Illinois. This branch of the Cook family came from Germany, arriving in this country shortly after the Revolutionary war. Her grandfather Cook founded the old Cook homestead now at Norris City, Illinois. Her lather, John Cook, spent all his life on that farm, where he was born in 1826 and died in 1899. His wife, Carolina Bagby, was born in 1822, while her parents were enroute from North Carolina to Illinois. She died in 1916. William A. Davenport and wife were the parents of seven children: William Elmer, a locomotive ngineer with the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, living at Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Fred Lee, in the confectionery business at Yuma, Arizona; Jesse A.; Ivah, wife of W. E. Harleson, a dentist at New Madrid, Missouri; Laura Pearl, at home ; John R., who is a partner in business with his brother Fred Lee at Yuma, Arizona, and is a veteran of the World war, having been in service in the navy for two and one-half years with the Pacific Squadron; and Alva, cashier for the Western Union Express Company at Yuma, Arizona.

Jessie A. Davenport received his first advantages in public schools at an Illinois village called Cave-in-Rock. He was about fourteen when the family moved to Missouri, and he graduated from the Sikeston High School, and also graduated from the academic department of the Normal School at Cape Girardeau. For two years he was a teacher in rural districts in that section of Missouri, and then continued his higher education in the Missouri State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, from which he received two degrees, the first in 1910 and the second in 1914, Bachelor of Pedagogy and Bachelor of Science of Education. In 1919 he was a special student in education at Louisiana State University. Mr. Davenport was superintendent of schools the first time in Missouri from 1914 to the fall of 1916. During the school year 1916-17 he was superintendent of schools at Talala, Oklahoma. Soon after America entered the World war he volunteered and was called to the colors in the first draft of Oklahoma, but because of physical defects was not permitted to serve. During 1918-19 he was principal of the high school at Logansport, Louisiana, and since 1919 has been principal of the White Castle High School. He has fourteen teachers and a scholarship enrolment of five hundred under his direction. He has become active in the Louisiana State Teachers Association and is a member of the National Education Association.

Mr. Davenport is a republican in politics, is a steward in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at White Castle, is secretary of White Castle Lodge No. 257, Free and Accepted Masons, and a member of Ascension Chapter No. 49, Royal Arch Masons, at Donaldsonville. He married, July 11, 1910, at East Prairie, Missouri, Miss Ivy Russell, daughter of Harrison and Julia Russell, the latter deceased. Her father still lives at East Prairie. Mrs. Davenport is also a graduate of the Missouri State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, and before her marriage taught in that state for eight years. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport have two daughters: Margaret Russell, born November 12, 1912; and Julia Frances, born October 22, 1919.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 321, by Henry E. Chambers. Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.