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Charles Davis House/ Porter House: Repped MLK, Jr. in '68 Memphis Sanitation Strike

Jay Brothers

1291 Winchester Rd. Collierville, TN

Circa unk/ purchased 1841. Remodeled in 1867 Vernacular Greek Revival style


From Memphis Heritage


A lawyer, Willam Campbell, acted as trustee in order for the 3 minor Freeman children of Anne and John W. Freeman to purchase the home.


In 1855, Andrew Taylor purchased the home with 221 acres and remodeled the home as a wedding gift for daughter Laura Thressa Taylor Davis (1837-1872) and Charles Robert Davis (1826-1891). They wed in 1856. Taylor’s home was just west of the Davis newlywed’s home and is gone now. Laura was raised in nearby Bolivar. Davis was a local planter from South Carolina who came to Memphis about 1850. He began with R. A. Laurens Cotton Factors and became a partner in Parker, Elder & Davis, grocers. After marriage, he retired from the grocery business and devoted his full time to breeding cattle and crop farming. Davis is honored in the area with the Charles W. Davis Park and Community Center with 8 acres.


Their son, Charles Davis, Jr. (1866-1928) and Edith Davis built a new house for his family on Poplar Ave. in 1908. In 1941, the widowed Edith sold the Davis house to L.D. and Ethel Baggett.


Four years later, in 1945, John Sherman Porter (1910-1990) & Mary Locke Porter (1913-2004) bought it. Porter was a partner in the firm Burch, Porter & Johnson which represented Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1968 sanitation worker strikes in Memphis. In 1988, Porter became the first winner of the local bar association's Lawyer's Lawyer award, and his firm created a scholarship in his name at Rhodes College. They rented out the fields for farming for years. At some point, the Porter family began selling hundreds of acres for residential development  - one of which is Shea Downs at Porter Farms.


In 2019, their daughter, Jane Porter Feild, is the owner. She is the widow of Roscoe A. Feild and resides on Valleybrook Dr. NR 2017


Sources:

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