Sam Davis
Nevada Appeal to celebrate 160th birthday with Meet Your Merchant
The Nevada Appeal is hosting “Meet Your Merchant: Connecting Community with Business” on Saturday, May 17.
The event will offer community members a chance to discover new businesses they may not know in Carson City.
The event will be free to the community. It will run from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday, May 17 at the Carson City Multi-Purpose Athletic Center Facility, 1860 Russell Way.
Booth space for business is available at nevadaappeal.com/meetyourmerchant.
The event corresponds with the Appeal’s 160th year in publishing. During the event there will be a recognition for the Appeal’s achievement. The Appeal’s first edition was published on the morning of May 16, 1865.
For information, or to sponsor, check out the web page or contact Annemarie Dickert at adickert@nevadanewsgroup.com.
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CHAPTER 9
On May 16, 1990, the Nevada Appeal turned 125 years old. To celebrate the occasion the paper published a book on the Appeal’s 125 years in history. For the next eight weeks the Appeal will reprint parts of the book leading into the Appeal’s 160th birthday. The book was produced by then-editor Don Ham with help from John S. Miller, Daun Bohall, Guy Rocha, Jon Christensen and Noreen Humphreys.
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Poet, politician, punster and promoter Samuel Post Davis was a qualified and appropriate successor for the dynamic Harry Mighels at the Appeal and in the capital city community. In a surprising number of ways he did replace Mighels. He took over as the head of Mighels’ young family and filled the editor’s slot of the Appeal.
His actions were considered selfless sacrifice by some but the fact is Nellie Verrill Mighels was by no means a helpless person. She ran the Appeal single-handedly in the final months preceding Harry’s death and continued to do so for some time after. Davis also didn’t hesitate to use the Appeal as a launching pad for political ambitions and career involvement.
But the fact remains he was a longtime friend of the family even before his and Mighels’ arrival in Nevada. Nellie and Sam were thrown together often by circumstances. They were both reporters in the Nevada Legislature in 1879 — she the Senate and he the Assembly. Developments in Carson City following Mighels’ death probably flowed along a natural course. Sam’s proposal to Nellie was said to have gone something like this: “I’m around this place all the time anyway … we might as well get married.” And they did — on the Fourth of July 1880.
Sam Davis was born April 4, 1850, in Bradford, Conn. His father, the Rev. George R. Davis was an Episcopal clergyman who came to Nevada in 1875 and served in the church in Carson City.
Since Sam was the eldest of four children, his deeply religious parents expected him to follow his father’s profession. He was sent to an Episcopal college in Racine, Wis. But he quickly gravitated to journalism and some of his first efforts to see print were humorous squibs in his hometown papers.
Out of school, he followed his parents to Vallejo, Calif., and found work with a series of San Francisco newspapers including the Examiner, Chronicle and Argonaut. He also worked a stint at the Marysville Appeal which probably gave him his first contact with Harry Mighels.
Sam arrived on the Comstock in 1875 and was employed at the Virginia City Chronicle. In 1879 he became a reporter at the Appeal as Harry Mighels was spending his last days bedridden at home.
Davis continued Mighels’ policy of fearless, outspoken editorials and staunch Unionist support. He also continued Mighels’ penchant for placing occasional puns after news stories. Item:
“Miss Devel died on the 47th day of a self-imposed fast. Up to the last moment her mind was clear.”
Added Davis: “The same might be said for her stomach.”
Sam is a legend in Carson City for his humorous abuse of a mythical newspaper he called the “Wabuska Mangler.” Sam would quote from it and then ridicule it and its editor without fear of retribution. He was said to have done it on a regular basis, but this writer was able to find only one instance of the “Mangler” being quoted by Davis.
He also brought to the Appeal important journalism innovations. For the first time “feature” articles began appearing. His first one was a lengthy item describing the beermaking procedure at Klein’s brewery. He later visited and reported on an ostrich farm in Winnemucca where the large birds were raised for their feathers, important to the fashions of the day.
In April of 1880, Davis rose to the defense of the late Harry Mighels who was being maligned in the Appeal ‘s competition, the “Carson Tribune.”
The Tribune some years earlier had claimed that the Appeal was being subsidized by the Virginia & Truckee Railway. Mighels denied the charge in print at the time. The charge was apparently resurrected after Mighels’ death.
Davis blasted R.R. Parkinson, the Tribune editor, calling him “a rattlesnake of Nevada whose fangs were pulled but from whom is still heard a feeble rattle.” Davis demanded retractions from the Tribune and other newspapers which reprinted the offending article.
“Carson Valley News” apologized in print for quoting the miscreant Tribune. However, Parkinson responded to the demand by reprinting a letter from a deacon charging Davis’ preacher-father with being a “private drunkard and a clerical fraud.”
Davis reacted by calling Parkinson a convicted felon, blackmailer, slanderer and a disgrace to journalism. He also accused the Tribune editor of changing dates on dispatches cribbed from the Virginia City papers without credit — an act that ranked down somewhere between wife-beating and horse-stealing in the eyes of journalism’s true gentlemen.
Davis never was able to extract an apology from the recalcitrant Parkinson. Competition was brutal among the two newspapers vying for the Carson City readership. It was not difficult for the repartee to turn bitter.
Bitterness was apparently the case here. Editor Parkinson carried his unapologized-for vitriol to his grave a couple of years later.
Although Davis eventually helped himself to the title of “publisher” on the Appeal masthead, turn-of-the-century historians and family members make it evident that Nellie V. never relinquished her personal ownership of the Appeal.
The Appeal’s front-page masthead shows the metamorphosis of publishers. Following the death of Harry Mighels, he remained on the masthead for several months. On Jan. 17, 1880, it was changed to read “Founded by Henry R. Mighels; published by Mrs. V.N. Mighels.” On July 9, a few days after the Davis-Mighels wedding, her name disappeared from the masthead. On Oct. 5, 1880, Davis appeared as editor underneath Mighels’ name as founder.
On Sept. 13, 1881, the Appeal announced that Sam Davis was going to work at the Salt Lake Tribune. J.C. Harlow went on the masthead as editor and Harry Mighels and his title of “founder” were dropped.
A year later, on Oct. 3, 1882, Davis was back in town and his name went back on the masthead — this time as publisher. Mighels and his widow stayed off this time.
Davis had gone to Salt Lake City to run the Tribune as a favor to his old Virginia City friend, Charles C. Goodwin. Goodwin was leaving on the “grand tour” and wanted someone who was trustworthy and who shared his editorial predilections.
The Sept. 27, 1881, Tribune lists Davis as a new arrival at the Walker House. There was no mention of his family, so he apparently arrived alone in Salt Lake City.
The unsuspecting Saints got their first dose of Davis’ humbug humor on New Year’s Day, 1882, when he announced the arrival of the national “Quill-Drivers Convention” in Salt Lake City. He reported in the Tribune that journalists were arriving from all over the country, and they were renting the Mormon Tabernacle for their convention center. He added the Nevada delegation arrived aboard a special train. He commented they were dressed for the wilderness and armed each with a 16-inch Bowie knife. He concluded by noting they were mostly drunk and their parade through downtown Salt Lake was mistaken for a gang of Danites.
While at the Tribune, Davis well illustrated his famous lack of discretion. He had a routinely blasphemous column he called “Leaves from the Book of Mormon.” One item stated:
And Amelia reached forth with her right hand and took the rolling pin and her left hand unto the sweeping broom and she smote Brigham upon the temple, and he was sore afraid.
Shut up thou bald head, the way of the jaw wearieth me.
His not-so-humorous disdain for Mormons was made clear in an editorial which stated:
The Mormons protest too much. They constantly insist that they are honest, law abiding, Constitution-loving loyal citizens of the Republic. We have known them to go back after the dam after having stolen the mill; ever since their existence they have defied the laws of our country; in their endowment house they compel an oath against the Constitution; during the rebellion they prayed God to smite both armies.
Sam Davis was fascinated by scientific gadgetry and was always the first to embrace any new mechanical development.
It was probably to the composing room staff’s greatest benefit that he was quick to adopt the new-fangled typewriting machine. His handwriting was well known for its utter illegibility. His large, open-ended scrawl was apparently some type of homemade shorthand. Words, names and phrases trail off into undulating lines which seem to say, “as long as I know what this is, it doesn’t matter that nobody else does.” And thereby hung the problem. Often, he couldn’t read it either.
In the Nevada Historical Society archives is a scrapbook belonging to Phillip Verrill Mighels which contains press notices, some of his published articles and strange, unrelated printed items that piqued his interest for some reason and compelled him to preserve them.
In the back of his book is pasted a letter from his stepfather, Sam Davis. Next to the unintelligible scrawl is what Mighels calls a “translation.” How Phillip arrived at that translation escapes logic because the scratchings defy comprehension even with the “key” showing next to it.
Pondering the condition of Sam’s news copy before the invention of the typewriter is enough to make printers lie awake at night.
Sam Davis also enjoyed sharing the wonders of science with anyone who would listen. He imported a genuine Edison phonograph for a merchant’s fair in Carson City. “Territorial Enterprise” reporter Alf Doten reports on it in his column “Capitol Notes” of Oct. 16, 1890:
“The Wonderful Phonograph.” Sam Davis was enterprising or curious enough to import a genuine Edison phonograph for the benefit of visitors to the Pavilion and operated it himself quite successfully in the presence of admiring crowds. Yesterday I visited him at his office and was treated to a private seance with the instrument. It looks some like a sewing machine and is similarly operated with a treadle. Sam has about a dozen cylinders belonging to it, about the size of a rolling pin, and made of a waxy composition, each representing a different subject, including stump speeches, instrumental airs, popular ballads, etc. With the ear quite close to the outlet of sound, words of music could be faintly but plainly heard, but with the sound of conductors from it placed in each ear, the sound vibrated loudly on the ear drum, just as though the instrument playing or the persons singing or speaking were immediately present.
The first cylinder he worked was a piano solo and could not be mistaken, notwithstanding sundry discordant whirrings and sputterings, like fresh butter on a frying pan. Some new beginners on the piano or violin give more nefarious results. Another cylinder represents a puff for the machine itself, given in Sam’s own vigorous style, his voice and bad spelling being unmistakenly recognizable even by his worst enemies. But the best cylinder, a grand concert by Patrick Gilmore’s famous brass band, was unfortunately broken in removal from the Pavilion. Sam tied the pieces together as well as he knew how and turned her loose. but owing to having got some of the pieces in wrong end first the effect was intensely ludicrous.
The cornet got crossed with the tuba, and the trombone and clarinet jumped several bars at a lick, leaving the bass drum and cymbals way behind in chaotic confusion. Some of the finest passages were split diagonally, and agonizingly, while others got in wrong end first, and Gilmore cursed fearfully.
Anyhow, the phonograph is really a most wonderful instrument. It throws spiritualism entirely in the shade, giving communications in a neutral, easily recognized voice years after a person is dead — as though speaking from another world beyond the grave. Davis brought this phonograph from San Francisco, and it is the first introduced and exhibited in this state.
The amazing phonograph was also apparently a recorder. In an Appeal article about the same time, Sam reports in the paper that three high school age girls came by the office to speak into the talking machine.
Apparently, the deed was done by pressing the open end of a tube up against the mouth and then reading, reciting or speaking extemporaneously while the voice impression was made upon a rapidly rotating foil cylinder turned under a vibrating needle.
A disgruntled Sam Davis complained in his news column that the trio filled up an entire cylinder with giggles, heavy breathing and protests from each of the three that they “couldn’t think of anything to say.”
Sam was, in addition to all other things, a promoter. On Dec. 4, 1912, he was awarded a franchise for a “’49er Boom Camp” at the Panama-California Exposition — 40 years before the debut of “Disneyland.” The “boom camp” featured stagecoach rides, gold panning, placer digging, dance halls, saloons and wild west shootouts.
Journalism may have been his profession, but politics was his avocation, and he was probably not as successful as he would have liked to have been. He did serve as state controller for two terms, 1899 to 1907 but never made it to Congress, the state senate or the governorship.
He never grew past being more than a prominent and highly visible member of the Republican; then Silver; then Democratic parties. His never-ending pursuit of office (not to mention his constant party-hopping) damaged his chances for success.
In 1898 Davis was nominated for state controller by acclamation from the Silver Party and eventually elected. Immediately upon taking office, he and Gov. Reinhold Sadler made a tour of the state in the interests of a reorganization of the revenue system and opened an aggressive war upon various interests Davis felt were escaping their just proportion of the tax load. The tour and subsequent legislative efforts led to laws being passed which redistributed the tax burden.
Davis is saluted in history texts as an authority on taxation and revenue and an interested student of tax affairs in other states as well as Nevada.
With politics, as in journalism, Sam’s impetuous nature appears to have been his chief handicap. He was hot tempered, rash and not above indulging in fisticuffs.
He once knocked the mayor of Virginia City to the ground in an altercation in that community and on another occasion was assaulted by Nevada’s U.S. Attorney Charley Jones on the steps of the post office in Carson City.
Davis was a writer of unparalleled merit in his time. He was a columnist, essayist and short story writer with some of his offerings attaining nationwide and even worldwide recognition. He produced a two-volume Nevada history that still appears today on state, county and high school library shelves.
Victor Goodwin, recently deceased historian and Carson City resident, said of Davis’ Nevada history volumes, “He was not above gilding the lily and never hesitated to choose the more exciting of two versions of the same event. However, it is an important major work and is more authoritative than the legendary Thompson & West “History of Nevada.”
Sam Davis was an accomplished and frequently published poet. The following poem, typed out and signed by Davis, is in the Nevada Historical Society files. This appeared in Davis’ book “Short Stories.”
The Lure of the Sagebrush
Have you ever scented the sagebrush
That mantles Nevada’s plains?
If not, you have lived but half your life,
And that half lived in vain.
No matter where the place of clime,
That your wandering footsteps stray,
You will sigh as you think of her velvet fields
And fragrance of leveled hay.
You may loiter in other lands,
When something seems to call,
And the lure of the sagebrush brings you back,
To hold you within its trail.
You may tread the halls of pleasure,
Where the lamps of Folly shine,
Mid the sobbing of sensuous music
And flow of forbidden wine.
But when the revel is over
And the dancers turn to go,
You will long for a draught of her crystal springs
That leap from her peaks of snow.
You will sigh for a sight of her beetling crags,
Where the storm king holds his sway,
And the sinking sun with its brush of gold
Tells the tale of the dying day.
And when you die you will want a grave
Where the Washoe Zephyr grows,
With the green of the sagebrush above your head.
What need to plant the rose?
Sam Davis was also in considerable demand as a keynote speaker called upon to address banquets, club meetings and lodge functions.
One particular occasion was a banquet honoring the advent of electricity in Virginia City. Sam’s “toast” so moved people with its eloquence it was printed in area newspapers and later reproduced on cards for distribution.
“The Universal Agent”
Born from nothing, it leaps into existence with the full-fledged strength of a giant, dies, is born again; lives a thousand lives and dies a thousand deaths in a single pulsating second of time.
It soars to every height, plunges to every depth and stretches its vast arms throughout illimitable space.
It plants the first blush upon the cheek of dawn; with brush of gold upon the glowing canvas of the west, it tells the story of the dying day.
And its mere whim and caprice, a thousand pillars of light leap from the dark and sullen seas which surge about the poles, while from its shimmering loom it weaves the opalescent tapestry of the aurora to hang against the black background of the Arctic night.
It rouses nature from her winter sleep, breaks the icy fetters of the frost that binds the streams, lifts the shrouds of snow from off the landscape, woos the tender mold and bids the birth of blood and blossom; powers the flower with perfume and clothes the earth with vendure of the spring.
It rides the swift courses of the storms that circle round the bald crest of old Mount Davidson; cleaves the black curtain of the night with scimitar of flame, rouses the lightnings from their couch of clouds and wakes the earthquake.
Beneath its touch, the beetling crag, which took omnipotence a thousand years to rear, crumbles into dust, the mere plaything of the idle wind; it lays its hand upon the populous city with its teeming, restless multitude.
And yesterday, where stood the glittering spire, the shining tower, the frowning battlement, today the cold gray ocean rolls in undisputed might.
It gathers the doings of the day from the four corners of the world, the tales of love and death, of fire and flood, or strife and pestilence, and under eight thousand miles of shivering sea whispers the babble of two hemispheres.
It turns the wheels of peace where poor men toil and helps the husbandman to plow and plant and reap his whispering grain.
It rides the wings of war where brave men die; and when it stalks between contending hosts, exalts the kingly crest and helps an empire plant its flag of conquest.
It glows in lonely attics where weary workers toil to earn their crust. It shines o’er scenes where feet of feasters tread the halls of revelry. It lights the mourners on their pathway to the tomb, It glares in haunts where jeweled fingers lift the cup of pleasure to the mouth of sin, ’mid the sobbing of sensuous music and flow of forbidden wine; and speeding on its way, illumes the dim cathedral aisle, where surpliced priest proclaims the teachings of the master, and golden-throated choirs lift their hosannas to the king of kings.
It was the Maker’s ally at the dawn of time, and when God from the depths of infinite space said, “Let there be light,” it sent the pulse of life along creation’s veins, baptized Earth’s cold brow with floods of fire and stood the sponsor of a cradled world.
Sam Davis occasionally exhibited those little eccentricities that sometimes accompany brilliance. He was one of those individuals who sometimes go around with their minds off on a “higher plane.”
Davis bought a section of land north of Carson City where the Cottonwood Trailer Park is now on Arrowhead Drive. He imported Holstein cattle — the first in Nevada, the family claims, and began dairy operations. The cattle, a bull and three cows, were imported from Holland.
The ranch’s alfalfa fields were irrigated with surplus water that ran down from the Virginia City Water Company. According to Henry R. Mighels, stepgrandson, Davis “picked a fight with the water company over how they were operating in Virginia City and they just cut him off. The ranch dried up.”
Harry Mighels added another anecdote that pointed up Davis’ legendary impatience.
He used to drive out to the ranch from town in a two-wheel cart kept at a livery stable. Anxious to be gone, he would leap into the cart and sit there fidgeting while the livery man tried to hitch it up to the horse.
One day, the man at the livery stable decided to teach him a lesson. Sam came in and jumped into the cart as the men was trying to hitch it up. He just let go of the bar and let the cart tip backward, dumping Sam into a manure pile.
Sam Davis was an immense talent who sought and deserved national attention. Why he never quite caught the fancy of the nation is hard to figure. He was wise, witty and controversial — key ingredients to immortality. But when Sam Davis was at his zenith, the world was busy canonizing Mark Twain. Maybe it didn’t have room for both.
Samuel Post Davis died of a heart attack at his ranch home north of Carson City on March 17, 1918. He had been battling an undefined circulatory disease (probably phlebitis) for some time and had already lost a leg to surgery for the ailment.
The death of Davis was reported to the Appeal by telephone. Being a lover of new-fangled gimcrackery, he would have appreciated that.