Text Box: Excerpt:  Esther Davidson was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1827, a daughter of Robert and Helen (Kelly) Davidson, the former a native of Kelso, Scotland, and the latter of Saratoga, New York. Robert Davidson was a machinist and builder of cotton mills, and built spinning jennys in South Carolina. He came to America in 1812, and on the voyage was robbed by the crew of an American privateer of all his good clothes and tools and all his money except what was sewed in his clothes. He married in Saratoga, New York, and they reared three of their five children:
Jane, the wife of John Stuart, of Scotland, died in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, the mother of four children, three surviving her; 
Esther Davidson is the second; and 
Peter Davidson, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, is a retired farmer, and has six children living and has lost two.


A Biographical and genealogical history of southeastern Nebraska, Volume 1   1904

By Lewis Publishing Company          Page 315

 

ROBERT V. MUIR.

 

Robert V. Muir is one of the oldest living settlers, both in point of his own age and in length of residence, of which southeastern Nebraska can boast. If he survives a very few years longer so as to be an octogenarian, he will at the same time have completed a half century cycle of sojourn in this state. He has been identified with the growth and progress of this section of the state almost from the days when Nebraska territory was organized under the famous "squatter sovereignty" of Senator Douglas, and he is honored and respected by all for the worthy part he has taken in affairs of citizenship and private life. He and his estimable wife, the long-time companion of his world journey, also claim distinctive recognition in this work because of their long and famous family relationships and ancestral pedigrees, which are cursorily mentioned in the followed paragraphs, but are of such interest to the genealogist that material for a volume might be compiled concerning the personal and family history.

 

Mr. Muir was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, October 22, 1826. His father, William Muir, was born in the same place, about 1769, and died in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in 1853. He was one of three sons of a Scottish farmer, and one of these sons, Robert, was a prominent jeweler in Edinburg. The family possessed a coat of arms, handed down from an antique generation. The device, an engraving of a Moor's head and the inscription Duris Non Frangor, is to be seen on the heavy, hand-beaten silver spoons in the possession of Robert V. Muir, although the engraving is dim with the passage of years and constant use.

 

Mr. Muir came to the United States with his parents in 1835, settling with them in Greene County, New York, whence fifteen years later he went to Carbondale, Pennsylvania. In 1856 he was elected treasurer of the Nebraska Settlement Company, and in that capacity came to Table Rock, Nebraska, where, in company with Luther Hoadley, he built a sawmill. In 1857 the company built a sawmill at North Star, Missouri, opposite Brownville, Nebraska, and on the dissolution of the firm in the following year this mill became the property of Mr. Muir.

 

He managed this mill and at the same time did an extensive real estate business. From 1867 until 1874 he engaged in mercantile business in North Star, and from the latter date until his practical retirement in 1881 he devoted his time and attention to the flour business in High Creek Mills, Missouri, which he had already begun in 1863.

 

He built his large and substantial residence in Brownville in 1870, and this is still accounted one of the best homes in the town. Its interior furnishings are of butternut, birdseye maple and black walnut, all of which were cut in his mill, and it is a home of taste and refined appearance as well as comfort. Mr. Muir began this successful career humbly enough. He was educated in the Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania, and taught his way through school, and in this way got his start.

 

He also got his wife in this same school, for Esther Davidson was his fellow student, and for several years before they were married he taught in a district adjoining her home. Mr. Muir is a member of the Presbyterian Church, an interested worker for religious principles and the cause of prohibition. In politics he was originally a Whig, later a Republican, and now a Prohibitionist. In 1898 he was candidate for governor of Nebraska on the prohibition ticket and in 1903 was a candidate for regent of the State University.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Muir have three children:

Downie Davidson, born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, November 12, 1853, is engaged in mining enterprises in New York City, and by his marriage to Armista Wilson, of Mineral Point, has one son, Downie Davidson;

Frank Davidson Muir, born in Carbondale, August 2, 1856, has been a bank inspector, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he married Miss Mary Barber; and

Robert Davidson Muir, born in North Star, Missouri, September 19, 1866, is cashier of the national bank in Port Jervis, New York, and by his wife, Lillie Estella Hathaway, of Lincoln, Nebraska, has two daughters.

 

Mrs. Robert V. Muir is of one of the oldest Scottish families, going back to the time when clan fought clan in terrible struggle.

It is said that the descendants of the great Robert Bruce and the Davidsons intermarried. The Davison (or Davidson or Davisson, as variously spelled) coat of arms bore this motto: Viget et Cinere Virtus, – Virtue lives even in death. This was selected after the battle of the Inches or North Inch of Perth, fought by thirty picked men of the Davisons against a like number of the McPhersons with broadswords only, with King Robert III as umpire, A. D., 1396, in which battle nearly all on both sides were killed, one man of the Davisons surviving, and he was saved by swimming the river Tay and remaining under water. Since those dark medieval days many a Davison has been prominent, on both sides of the Atlantic, and one branch of the family has been established in this country almost since the beginnings of American civilization.

 

Esther Davidson was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1827, a daughter of Robert and Helen (Kelly) Davidson, the former a native of Kelso, Scotland, and the latter of Saratoga, New York. Robert Davidson was a machinist and builder of cotton mills, and built spinning jennys in South Carolina. He came to America in 1812, and on the voyage was robbed by the crew of an American privateer of all his good clothes and tools and all his money except what was sewed in his clothes. He married in Saratoga, New York, and they reared three of their five children:

Jane, the wife of John Stuart, of Scotland, died in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, the mother of four children, three surviving her;

Esther Davidson is the second; and

Peter Davidson, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, is a retired farmer, and has six children living and has lost two.

 

In 1902 Mr. and Mrs. Muir spent several months in New York and Pennsylvania. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary at the Cafe Martin in New York City, and the public press had this to say of them: "Back in Scranton after fifty years' absence, the prominent Nebraskan and his wife. Mr. and Mrs. R. V. Muir returned to the home of their youth. They were guests of Peter Davidson and family, of Green Ridge, Scranton, Pennsylvania. They have spent three months visiting friends and relatives in Warren, Pennsylvania, Port Jervis, New York. New York City, and Prattsville, New York, and will soon return to their western home. They celebrated their golden anniversary with a sumptuous dinner at Cafe Martin September 22, 1902. Seated at the tables were the bride and groom of fifty years ago, D. D. Muir and his wife, Amasta Wilson and their son, F. D. Muir and his wife, Mary Barber, of New York city, R. D. Muir and his wife, Lillie Hathaway, and Anna, Mary and Esther Davidson.

 

They were married by the Rev. Reuben Nelson, the principal of Wyoming Seminary at Kingston, Pennsylvania, who met the bridal party at the Wyoming Hotel in Scranton. The party were Esther Davidson and Robert V. Muir, the bride and groom, Peter Davidson, best man, and Mary Shannon, bridesmaid; also Jane Davidson and John Stuart, of Carbondale, and Rev. and Mrs. Reuben Nelson. Death in all these years has not invaded the family circle, but Peter Davidson is the only surviving wedding guest. Mr. Muir was conversant with Scranton when it was Slocum's Hollow. He assisted in building the engine houses on the Washington gravity railroad, and was in the employ of the Hudson and Delaware Canal Company until he moved to Brownville, Nebraska."

 

The following obituary notice gives additional facts relating to the subject matter of this history: "Died at Table Rock. Nebraska, August 22, 1873, relict of the late William Muir, and daughter of Daniel Brown, of Lanark, Scotland, in the eighty-ninth year of her age. She was born in Lanark, Scotland, a descendant of the Browns, a name known to church history. She was acquainted with her grandfather, who was born in 1694. She distinctly remembered the close of the French revolution, the rise and fall of the first and second Napoleon dynasties, the second war with Great Britain, and other events down to the late Civil war in the United States. At an early age she united with the Scotch Presbyterian church. She was not demonstrative, but witnessed her faith by her works, at the bedside of the sick and dying and in comforting the sorrowing: she had her own troubles and sorrows, and knew how to sympathize. At the age of fifteen she was bereft of her parents within a few days of each other. She lost three of her lovely children within six weeks, aged two, four and six years; later was sorely bereft by the death of her youngest daughter at the age of nineteen; and five years later she was a widow. She was the last of her generation, and the dust of her kindred is in Scotland, Italy, West Indies, New York, and Pennsylvania. A sojourner of nearly four score and ten years, she died in a strange land, but comforted by the presence of her eldest daughter. She sleeps that last long and dreamless sleep in Walnut Grove cemetery in Brownville."