Field Notes

Researching Family History One Record at a Time

Ancestors / Davis

Alice Josephine Davis

Also known as: Alice Josephine Jackson, Jo Jackson, Josie

b. 13 Mar 1904 · Alma, Park County, Colorado – d. 7 Jul 1980 · Penrose Hospital, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado

Active
Black-and-white studio portrait of a young Alice Josephine Davis, hair swept up and pinned, wearing a light-colored blouse with a soft collar, smiling gently against a patterned studio backdrop.
Alice Josephine Davis. Original photograph in Shannon's possession, scanned personally.

Vital Facts

Event Date Place Status Source
Birth 13 Mar 1904 Alma, Park County, Colorado Working Hypothesis 1a,1b,1c,1d,1e,1f Year: the 1910 census (age 7) and 1920 census (age 16) are each consistent with a birth year of 1903, while the 1930 census (age 26), 1950 census (age 46), the Social Security Death Index, and her 1980 death certificate (13 Mar 1904, age 76) all agree on 1904. Childhood ages reported to census enumerators by a parent are among the more error-prone fields of this era, so the later, adult-era sources are given more weight here. Day: the death certificate gives 13 March, against the SSDI's 2 March. The certificate's birth information is secondary, supplied by her son John as informant 76 years after the event, so it favors the 13th without settling it. Birthplace: the death certificate gives Colorado only; Alma, Park County, rests on family entries. No birth record has yet been checked.
Death 7 Jul 1980 Penrose Hospital, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado Proven 1f Died as an inpatient, age 76, widowed. Cause of death: septicemia and general sepsis (4 days), due to colon and small bowel obstructions (10 weeks), due to metastatic carcinoma from the left ureter (about 2½ years). Physician G. M. Lindeman, M.D., certified the death the same day; no autopsy. Usual residence given as Box 44, Creede, Mineral County, confirming Colorado Springs was the place of her final hospitalization and not a relocation. Informant: her son John Jackson, of Creede. The certificate names her father as "Robert Lynn Davis"; see his page for the "Lynn" alias.
Cremation 8 Jul 1980 Shrine of Rest Crematory, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado Proven 1f Funeral director Charles R. Nolan Jr., Shrine of Rest. Her 1974 will asked her children to "comply with my wishes regarding the cremation of my body as soon as practicable after my death," and added: "I do not want any type of funeral service and request no flowers." She was cremated the day after she died.
Interment of ashes Creede Cemetery, Creede, Mineral County, Colorado Working Hypothesis 2 Her will does not name a resting place for her ashes. Per family account, she made her wish known to the family many times: her ashes were to go in the grave of her brother Robert Lincoln "Bob" Davis (d. 1918). Shannon heard her say so herself, and the family's first act bears it out. Her ashes were first placed in Bob's grave, Creede Cemetery, at the graveside service following her July 1980 funeral; Shannon witnessed the placement (firsthand account). Many years later they were moved by her surviving children beneath a headstone they erected for her and her husband, Billy. Billy is not buried at Creede; he is interred at Prescott National Cemetery, Arizona (see his page), so the Creede stone is a memorial for him, not his grave. The move itself rests on family account, and its date is not yet documented. (The Find a Grave memorial text, which Shannon maintains, draws on the same family knowledge, so it is not independent support.)

Family

Parents

  • Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis — b. 22 Feb 1865, Davis Corner(s), Sanilac County, Michigan; d. 27 Aug 1943, rural McDonald County, Missouri. 3
  • Anna Maud Woodruff — b. 2 Jul 1879, Maryville, Nodaway County, Missouri; d. 23 Nov 1954, Monte Vista, Colorado. Daughter of John Farney Woodruff and Annie E. Chaney. 4

Spouse

  • William Thomas Jackson — m. 5 Jul 1921 , Creede, Mineral County, Colorado (Proven) 5 — b. 23 Mar 1895, Bachelor Town, Mineral County, CO; d. 10 May 1957, Whipple/Prescott, Yavapai County, AZ. Alice Josephine was 17 at the time of marriage. Known to family as 'Billy.' Witnessed by Mrs. C. L. Lane (Alice Josephine's own mother, Anna Maud) and Mrs. A. M. Davis, per the marriage license and certificate of marriage.

Children

  • Joel Thomas Jackson (b. 27 Aug 1922) — b. Creede, Mineral County, CO; d. 11 Dec 1987, Fort Collins, Larimer County, CO.
  • William Charles (Scoot) Jackson (b. 27 May 1924) — b. Creede, Mineral County, CO; d. 7 Mar 1969, Creede, Mineral County, CO. 'Scoot' is a nickname.
  • John Richard Jackson (b. 10 Aug 1927) — b. Creede, Mineral County, CO; d. 9 Jan 2005, Crawford, Delta County, CO.
  • Pauline Roberta (Bubbles) Jackson (b. Living) — Living; birth and other identifying details withheld to protect a living family member's privacy.

Research Narrative

Alice Josephine Davis — known to her family and friends throughout her life as Jo, was born in 1904 in the small mountain town of Alma, Park County, Colorado, the daughter of Robert Davis and Anna Maud Woodruff, and so a granddaughter, on her mother's side, of John Farney Woodruff and Annie E. Chaney. Her childhood moved through several of Colorado's mining towns: the 1910 census places the family in Florissant, Teller County, and a postcard her mother sent home in December 1913 puts them near St. Elmo, in the Chalk Creek country outside Buena Vista. By 1918, when Alice Josephine was fourteen, the family had moved on again, this time to Mineral County, settling in Creede — the same year her teenage brother, Robert Lincoln Davis, died in the influenza pandemic. Two years later, when Alice Josephine was sixteen, her parents' marriage ended in divorce, filed in that same county; her father left Colorado for Missouri not long after, and her mother remarried within weeks.

Alice Josephine herself married in 1921, at seventeen, a quiet wedding on Tuesday, July 5th, at her mother's home, performed by County Judge Clarence Y. Butler and witnessed by her own mother, Anna Maud, and by Mrs. A. M. Davis. Her husband, William Thomas Jackson, was a Creede-raised boy known to everyone as Billy; the local paper, reporting the marriage under the headline "Billy and Joe," noted that the bride was known to her own friends as "Joe." The couple remained in Creede, raising four children through the 1920s and 1930s - Joel, William Charles ("Scoot"), John Richard, and a daughter still living today. It was a marriage that knit together the family's two Mineral County threads: her own parents had divorced in that same county the year before, and Billy's family had mined and raised children in its camps for a generation before him.

Billy died in 1957, after thirty-six years of marriage. Alice Josephine wrote a poem afterward, "The Empty Room," which their son John later published under his own column heading, "Marriages Weather Storms with Love."

She stayed on in Creede as a widow for more than twenty years. In July 1974 she signed a will there, leaving her father's Roosevelt-signed postmaster appointment and the family Bible to her brother Arthur, her gemstones and Indian artifacts to Joel, her typewriter and papers to John. It asked that she be cremated as soon as practicable and said plainly, "I do not want any type of funeral service and request no flowers." She died on 7 July 1980 at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, at seventy-six, of complications from a cancer that had begun about two and a half years earlier, and was cremated the next day. Her ashes, by the family's account, now rest in Creede Cemetery beneath a stone her children raised for both of their parents.

Timeline

  1. 13 Mar 1904 Born, Alma, Park County, Colorado, daughter of Robert Davis and Anna Maud Woodruff. Family entries
  2. 1910 Enumerated with her family in Florissant precinct, Teller County, Colorado, age 7 (per this record). 1a
  3. 30 Dec 1913 Family living near St. Elmo, Chaffee County, Colorado, per a postcard her mother Maud sent to her own mother, Annie Fry, in Trinidad — the first primary-source corroboration of a residence Alice Josephine herself recalled later in life. 6
  4. 1918 Moves with her family (mother Anna Maud, father Robert, and siblings) to Mineral County/Creede, Colorado, at age 14 — a family-recalled date independently corroborated by the 1921 wedding announcement's statement that she "came to Creede from Buena Vista three years ago." 7
  5. 1918 Brother Robert Lincoln Davis dies in the influenza pandemic, the same year the family relocates to Creede. See Robert Davis's page
  6. 2 Jan 1920 Enumerated as "Josie," age 16, in her mother's household, Creede — separately from her father's household in the same town. 1b
  7. 26 Jul 1920 Parents Robert Davis and Anna Maud Woodruff divorce, Mineral County, Colorado, when Alice Josephine is 16. See Robert Davis's page
  8. 5 Jul 1921 Marries William Thomas Jackson at the bride's home, Creede, officiated by County Judge Clarence Y. Butler, witnessed by the bride's mother (Mrs. C. L. Lane) and Mrs. A. M. Davis. The Creede Candle's wedding announcement notes she was known to friends as "Joe," having come to Creede from Buena Vista three years earlier and attended the local schools. 5,7
  9. 1922–1939 Raises four children in Creede: Joel, William Charles, John Richard, and Pauline. Family entries
  10. 1930 Enumerated with husband William and sons Joel, William Charles, and John Richard, Creede. 1c
  11. 1940 Enumerated with husband William (County Treasurer), sons Joel, William Charles, John Richard, and infant daughter Pauline, Creede. 8
  12. Aug 1947 Camps with the family for several days at Brewster Park, at the headwaters of the Rio Grande, on a trip son John later recalled his father arranged so she "could have a real vacation for once and fish to her heart's content."9 Read full account →
  13. 1950 Enumerated with husband William (County Treasurer), son John Richard, and daughter Pauline, Creede. 1d
  14. 29 Jul 1974 Signs her will at Creede, naming her son John R. Jackson executor. It leaves the family Bible, and a "Notice of Appointment as Post Master" belonging to her father and signed by Theodore Roosevelt, to her brother Arthur M. Davis (who died in October 1978, before her, so this bequest could not pass as written); her gemstones, rocks, and Indian artifacts to son Joel; her typewriter, radio, files, papers, and "the old money that came to me from the Edwin L. Bennett estate" to son John; jewelry, linens, and furniture to her daughter; and smaller personal bequests to two daughters-in-law, including a chest of silverware that had belonged to Edwin L. Bennett (husband of her aunt Florence Woodruff). The residue is divided among her four children, with the share of her late son, named in the will as "William T. Jackson, deceased" (evidently William Charles "Scoot" Jackson, d. 1969), passing to his two children. The will closes its first page: "I trust that my children will comply with my wishes regarding the cremation of my body as soon as practicable after my death. I do not want any type of funeral service and request no flowers." 10
  15. 7 Jul 1980 Dies at Penrose Hospital, Colorado Springs, age 76, of sepsis following bowel obstructions caused by cancer that had begun in the left ureter about two and a half years earlier. 1f
  16. 8 Jul 1980 Cremated at Shrine of Rest Crematory, Colorado Springs. 1f
  17. After Jul 1980 A large funeral is held for her in Creede, with a graveside service at Creede Cemetery, although her will had asked for no funeral service of any kind (firsthand account: Shannon attended). At that graveside service her ashes are placed, as she had asked, in her brother Bob's grave in Creede Cemetery (Shannon witnessed this); many years later her surviving children move them beneath a headstone they erected there for her and her husband Billy, who is buried in Arizona. 2

Open Research Questions

  1. Can Alice Josephine's birth be confirmed against a primary record, such as a birth certificate or a delayed birth registration? medium

    The 1980 death certificate gives 13 Mar 1904, but its birth details are secondary information from her son. The SSDI's 2 March and the 1910/1920 censuses' implied 1903 remain unresolved; see note on Birth vital.

  2. Can the July 1980 funeral in Creede, and the first placement of her ashes in her brother Bob's grave, be documented in a contemporary record? low

    Both currently rest on Shannon's firsthand account as an attendee. Colorado Historic Newspapers adds titles only after 50 years, so the Creede Candle for 1980 should become searchable there around 2030. Sooner options: printed or microfilm Candle runs in the Creede area, a Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph death notice (she died there), the Del Norte and Monte Vista papers, funeral home records, and clippings in John Jackson's papers. The Gunnison paper carried no obituary (per Shannon, who lived there at the time).

  3. When were her ashes moved from Bob's grave to the shared headstone, and can the move be documented? low

    The first placement, in Bob's grave at the July 1980 graveside service, is Shannon's firsthand account. The later move rests on family account, and its date is unknown. Places to look: Creede Cemetery or Town of Creede interment records, the headstone itself (its style or a monument-company mark may help date it), family correspondence in John Jackson's papers, and the recollection of surviving family members.

Repository Targets

  • Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment / Park County records — Birth record, Alice Josephine Davis, 1904 [Not yet searched]
  • Shannon's personal collection (John Jackson's papers) — Death certificate, 1980 (uncertified photocopy of the certified copy), and will, 1974 (photocopy) [Scanned, 2026]
  • Mineral County District Court, Creede — Probate file, estate of Alice Josephine Jackson, 1980 (filed will, inventory, distribution) [Not yet searched]

References

  • 1a. ↩ 1910 U.S. census, Teller County, Colorado, population schedule, Florissant precinct, Supervisor's District 3, Enumeration District 182, sheet 12A, dwelling 200, family 200, Robert L. Davis household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 July 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication T624.
  • 1b. ↩ 1920 U.S. census, Mineral County, Colorado, population schedule, Creede, Enumeration District 153, sheet 1B, dwelling 27, family 27, Maud Davis household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 July 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication T625.
  • 1c. ↩ 1930 U.S. census, Mineral County, Colorado, population schedule, Creede, Enumeration District 40-3, sheet 2A, dwelling 43, family 44, William T. Jackson household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 July 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication T626.
  • 1d. ↩ 1950 U.S. census, Mineral County, Colorado, population schedule, Creede Town, Enumeration District 40-1, sheet 2, serial number 12, William T. Jackson household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 July 2026); citing NARA Record Group 29, Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950.
  • 1e. ↩ Social Security Administration, Social Security Death Index, Master File, database, Ancestry.com (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2010), entry for Alice Jackson, SSN 521-52-9291, b. 2 Mar 1904, d. Jul 1980, last benefit Creede, Mineral County, Colorado.
  • 1f. ↩ State of Colorado, Certificate of Death, Local No. 910, Dist. 69 [state file number blank on this copy], Alice Josephine Jackson, d. 7 Jul 1980, Penrose Hospital (inpatient), Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado; age 76; b. 13 Mar 1904, Colorado; widowed; homemaker; usual residence Box 44, Creede, Mineral County, Colorado; father Robert Lynn Davis; mother Maude Woodruff; informant John Jackson, son, Box 207, Creede; cause of death (a) septicemia and general sepsis, 4 days, due to (b) colon and small bowel obstructions, 10 weeks, due to (c) metastatic carcinoma from left ureter, 2½ years; no autopsy; disposition cremation, 8 Jul 1980, Shrine of Rest Crematory, Colorado Springs; funeral director Charles R. Nolan Jr., Shrine of Rest, 1730 Fountain, Colorado Springs; certified by G. M. Lindeman, M.D., 7 Jul 1980; certified copy issued at Colorado Springs, 8 Jul 1980, by the El Paso County deputy local registrar. Uncertified photocopy of that certified copy, annotated by hand “not a certified copy, xeroxed for personal records” and “for Pauline R. Bates,” initialed “JRJ”; stapled behind a photocopy of her 1974 will among the papers of John Richard Jackson; scanned by Shannon Field, 2026.
  • 2. ↩ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/59524521/alice-josephine-jackson : accessed 27 Sep 2026), memorial page for Alice Josephine “Jo” Davis Jackson (13 Mar 1904–07 Jul 1980), Find a Grave Memorial ID 59524521, Creede Cemetery, Creede, Mineral County, Colorado; originally created by Calmly Searching, maintained by Shannon Field.
  • 3. ↩ “Missouri, Death Certificates, 1910–1962,” database with images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 July 2026), Robert L. Davis, 1943, State File No. 28708; citing Missouri Office of the Secretary of State, Jefferson City, Missouri.
  • 4. ↩ Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, standard certificate of death, Registrar's No. 87, District 197, Anna Maude Lane, died 23 November 1954, 7:47 p.m., Rio Grande County (Monte Vista), Colorado; attending physician William N. McKinley, M.D., Monte Vista.
  • 5. ↩ Mineral County, Colorado, Marriage License and Certificate of Marriage, W. T. Jackson (Creede, Mineral Co., CO; not previously married) and Miss Alice Josephine Davis (Creede, Mineral Co., CO; not previously married), license issued under seal at Creede 5 July 1921 by A. J. Weaver, County Clerk, by Doris Weaver, Deputy; ceremony performed the same day at Creede by Clarence Y. Butler, County Judge, witnessed by Mrs. C. L. Lane (the bride's mother, Anna Maud Woodruff Davis Lane) and Mrs. A. M. Davis; Marriage Certificate No. 16015, filed for record 7 July 1921 at 11:45 a.m., recorded in Book 64 of Marriages, p. 131, stamped “Examined”; original license, certificate, and filing envelope with ribbon, privately held by Field; transcribed by Shannon Field, 26 Aug 2026.
  • 6. ↩ Postcard, Maud [Davis] to Mrs. Annie Fry, 518 E. First St., Trinidad, Colorado, postmarked Buena Vista, Colorado, 30 Dec 1913; illustration captioned "Chalk Creek Cañon near St. Elmo, Colo."; original in Shannon's possession.
  • 7. ↩ "Billy and Joe," The Creede Candle (Creede, Colorado), 9 July 1921, p. 4, col. 3, paras. 8–11; Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=TCC19210709.2.45 : accessed 15 July 2026).
  • 8. ↩ 1940 U.S. census, Mineral County, Colorado, population schedule, Creede, Enumeration District 40-1, sheet 4B, household 93, William Jackson household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 July 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication T627.
  • 9. ↩ John Richard Jackson and Pauline Roberta "Bubbles" Jackson Bates, "Please Go to Hell" (unpublished manuscript, Creede, Colorado, n.d.), typescript found among John's papers after his death; transcribed by Shannon Field, 2026.
  • 10. ↩ “Last Will and Testament of Alice Josephine Jackson,” Creede, Mineral County, Colorado, two typewritten pages, signed 29 Jul 1974; witnessed by Billy Wills and Loraine D. Wills [reading of given name uncertain], both of Creede; acknowledged the same day before a notary public at Creede (commission expiring 6 Jun 1978; signature only partly legible). Names son John R. Jackson as executor; page 1 closes: “I trust that my children will comply with my wishes regarding the cremation of my body as soon as practicable after my death. I do not want any type of funeral service and request no flowers.” Uncertified photocopy annotated by hand “not a certified copy, xeroxed for personal records” and “for Pauline R. Bates,” initialed “JRJ”. Among the papers of John Richard Jackson; scanned by Shannon Field, 2026 (page 1 rescanned to capture its final lines). Probate filing not yet located.