James Davis

Little is known about James Davis outside of his employment at the White House under President John Quincy Adams. In February 1829, President Adams listed the members of his White House domestic staff in his diary, including Davis, whom Adams identified as a hostler, or someone hired to look after horses.¹ In this role, Davis worked in the White House stable with Levi Pomphrey and John Kirk, both of whom drove the White House coaches and carriages during Adams’s presidency. It is unknown when Davis began or ended his work at the White House. 

Little else definitive is known about Davis, but there is evidence he remained in Washington, D.C. after President Adams left the White House in 1829.² A newspaper in 1842 shows that a man named James Davis owned an “ordinary” in Washington, D.C., or a tavern that offered lodging to guests. It is unknown whether this is the same James Davis who worked at the White House, but given the fact that “hostler” was a term often used to describe the worker at the stables of an inn, it is plausible that Davis opened his own ordinary business after Adams left the White House.³ Lending further evidence to this theory is the fact that Davis does not appear on a list of Adams’s household staff compiled in 1830 after his presidential term ended, indicating he did not follow Adams to Massachusetts to stay in his employ as some of the other White House staff did.⁴