Davis Austin

Davis Washington Austin (born May 1827 in Butler County; died May 13, 1903 in Birmingham) was a jailor for Jefferson County, and also accused of being one of the leaders of a mob which stormed the jail in December 1883 in order to lynch Wesley Posey.

Austin was the son of Davis and Eleanor Hill Austin of Butler County. He married the former Amanda Seale there on February 3, 1847.

By 1850 he was residing in Escambia County, Florida with his wife and two sons, John Thomas and Francis. He served as a shipbuilder at the U.S. Naval Yard there. In 1860 he was employed privately as a carpenter and had three more sons, William, Henry, and Charles. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised a company of volunteers, but his skill as a shipbuilder was deemed more important to the Confederate forces than his command of an infantry company. Through he appeared on muster rolls for Company G of the 17th Alabama Infantry, he apparently worked under contract and by bounty, and thus did not earn a military pension. He was still working as a house carpenter there in 1870. The census reported that neither he nor his wife could read or write.

Austin moved to the newly-founded city of Birmingham in 1871 and worked as a carpenter and builder. By 1880 he had taken a job as jailor at the Jefferson County Courthouse. He and his family resided at the jail property, at the corner of 4th Avenue North and 21st Street. The children living with them then were Mary, Conrad, and Anna. By then William had found work as a railroad engineer and had married. He shared the jailhouse residence with his wife and son.

In the 1900 census, Amanda had died and Davis, then 73, had remarried, to a 61-year-old widow named Emily who had three children of her own, one living in Georgia. He owned a farm in Beat 41. It was reported that year that Austin could read and write.

References

• "Descendants of Amanda Seale" (September 5, 2005)

External links

• Davis Washington Austin at Findagrave.com