{"id":98445,"date":"2015-12-18T09:35:36","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T14:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=98445"},"modified":"2023-01-24T13:45:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T18:45:25","slug":"whats-in-a-bates-name-david","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/12\/18\/whats-in-a-bates-name-david\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Bates name: Mount David"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mount<\/a>

Mount David\u2019s namesake, David Davis, is buried near campus in the Davis family cemetery, on the corner of Sabattus and Franklin streets. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Mount David rises 381 feet above sea level. Chided as a \u201cmountain by courtesy\u201d by a newspaper writer a century ago, the peak is also known as \u201cMount Davis,\u201d \u201cDavis Mountain,\u201d and \u201cDavid\u2019s Mountain,\u201d tautonymic variations due to its namesake, a man named David Davis, born Sept. 1, 1775, and died Jan. 5, 1851.<\/p>\n

David Davis\u2019 Dad<\/h5>\n

David\u2019s father, Amos Davis, was Lewiston\u2019s third settler. A Quaker, Amos was a farmer, shoemaker, and surveyor who drew one of the earliest maps of the area, dated 1776. His son David was the second male born in Lewiston.<\/p>\n

Early Teachings<\/h5>\n

In 1798, when public education was still a haphazard affair, David Davis and four other citizens teamed up to hire one of the first Lewiston schoolteachers.<\/p>\n

$5 and a Mountain<\/h5>\n

In 1803, David Davis paid $5 for 100 acres of land that included the mountain. He then named it for himself, according to some accounts.<\/p>\n

Bates\u2019 Mountain<\/h5>\n

David Davis farmed the land until his death in 1851. His heirs bequeathed the mountain to Bates, which hoped to build an observatory on its summit.<\/p>\n

House of David<\/h5>\n

The original David Davis home on Main Street in Lewiston was the oldest building in the city, and one of the most run-down, when it was torn down in 1989.<\/p>\n

All in the Family<\/h5>\n

Davis, Frye, and White streets near campus are all named for the same family.<\/p>\n

Firm as Granite<\/h5>\n

At the opening of the new Maine State Seminary, on Sept. 1, 1857, a local pastor said that if David Davis were present, he would tell the new students to \u201cgo up that mountain, where you will obtain a view of our united villages. Make your principles as firm as the granite base on which the mountain rests.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mount David “Brand”<\/h5>\n

The mountain lends its name to the college\u2019s leadership giving group, the Mount David Society, and the college’s annual academic showcase, the Mount David Summit.<\/p>\n

David\u2019s Legacy<\/h5>\n

Many of David Davis\u2019 direct descendants are Bates alumni, the youngest being his great-great-great-great-great-grandson, Toby White \u201994, an associate professor at, of all places, the University of California at Davis <\/span>School of Education.<\/p>\n

Toby\u2019s great-grandmother was Marion Wellman White, who, according to family history, attended Bates for a year but was expelled for the sin of skating on the campus bog (named Lake Andrews years later) on a Sunday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the campus hill, Mount David, rises just 381 feet, the family name looms tall in Bates history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":98492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[10830,6081,11507],"class_list":["post-98445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lewiston-auburn","tag-lewiston-auburn","tag-mount-david","tag-whats-in-a-lewiston-name"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98445"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98503,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98445\/revisions\/98503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}