University of Virginia Library

NOAH KNOWLES DAVIS

Davis Hall is named in memory of Noah
Knowles Davis, known familiarly as "Professor
Noah K." He was the last of the
University's trio of Professors of Moral
Philosophy, his tenure of that chair extending
from 1873 to 1906, following George
Tucker, 1825–1845, and William Holmes
McGuffey, 1845–1873. In 1906 the title
"Moral Philosophy" was dropped and the
Department was reorganized as the Corcoran
School of Philosophy.

Davis was in his forty-third year when he
came to the University of Virginia, having
been born in Philadelphia 13 May 1830.
His father, Noah D. Davis, was the founder
of the American Baptist Publishing Society.
The son was but two months old
when the father died. Subsequently his
mother remarried and moved to Georgia,
where the step-father, John L. Dagg, became
President of Mercer University.
There the youth, only nineteen, graduated
with the B.A. degree. Later he received

from Mercer honorary degrees of M.A. and
Ph.D., and from both Baylor and Furman
Universities the honorary degree of LL.D.
But after graduating from Mercer University
he spent a busy three years in Philadelphia,
studying Chemistry while supporting
himself by teaching and by work in an
architect's office. In this period he compiled
two popular texts, The Carpenter's New
Guide and The Model Architect. He found
some leisure for the study of music as well,
and of all these acquired skills he made use
in his varied career.

But teaching was his life work. Returning
to the South, he was successively Professor
of Natural Science at Howard College
in Alabama, Principal of the Judson
Female Institute, also in Alabama, and
President of Bethel College in Kentucky.
It was from the presidency of Bethel College
that he came to Charlottesville to succeed
Professor McGuffey.

He looked the part of a Professor of
Moral Philosophy. He was of massive
build, with a domelike head, and a flowing

beard—a figure suggestive of the Greek
philosophers. His mien was serious, his
speech precise, and his lectures and books
were based on unremitting study and preparation.
He supplemented his class work
by an "Elements" series of books on Inductive
and Deductive Logic, on Psychology,
and on Ethics. For a number of years he
gave Sunday lectures on Biblical subjects,
which also found printed form. He was a
prime mover in the development of a
Young Men's Christian Association at the
University of Virginia, and he was instrumental
in engineering in 1892 the purchase
of the acres for a playing field for the students.
on the southern portion of which
Madison Hall was later to be erected. He
was in demand also as a lecturer outside of
the University. For several years he served
on the popular Chautauqua platform; and
during two summers he acted as head of the
Department of Philosophy at the University
of Chicago.

In 1857, while he was at Howard College,
he married Ella Cordelia Hunt of

Columbus, Georgia. There were four children:
two sons, Noah Wilson and Archibald
Hunt, both of whom became alumni
of the University of Virginia, and two
daughters, Marella and Clara Bell. At the
University the family lived in the pavilion
which is now the Colonnade Club. Of a
retiring disposition himself, his wife was
one of the gracious hostesses of "the
Lawn." He became Emeritus Professor in
1906, and died 3 May 1910. He is buried
in the University Cemetery.