Retired Culpeper official ‘Pete’ Davies dies

With the election of John Andrew Bowersett "Pete" Davies as Culpeper County's commissioner of the revenue in 1950, Culpeper got a 32-year extension on a family tradition of community service.

His mother, Mary Elizabeth Bowersett Davies, and his maternal grandfather, John Andrew Bowersett, had occupied the same post in an unbroken line for a combined 74 years.

Mr. Davies worked as a deputy commissioner under his mother from 1947 until 1950, when he ran for commissioner the first time.

A graveside service for Mr. Davies, who retired at the end of 1982, will be held today, Saturday, at 11 a.m. in Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper.

He died of heart failure Wednesday in a Culpeper hospital at age 91.

"He stayed on the road. He would visit every little post office and knew all the postmasters and the general stores. He did a lot of the tax assessments himself," said his eldest son, John A.B. "Andy" Davies Jr. of Virginia Beach.

"He would meet his constituents at general stores and stay the whole day sitting around a pot-bellied stove. He had an extraordinary relationship with the postmasters. They were his eyes and ears throughout the county."

Pearl Griffin, a former member of the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors, recalled: "He went out of his way to help people, I don't care who it was, with taxes or anything. He took everybody as an individual and treated everybody the same."

He loved Culpeper, his son said. "We took a family trip through Europe the summer of 1972. My father put brochures about Culpeper in every hotel," his son said, "and in every hotel we stayed in in western Europe from Rome to London."

A former president of the Culpeper Jaycees, Mr. Davies received the group's first Distinguished Service Award. He never missed a meeting of the Culpeper Host Lions Club from 1954 until his death and was active at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church.

Born at home in Culpeper to a mother who had influenza during the worldwide pandemic, he left the University of Virginia to join the Army during World War II. He served with the 776th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company, 76th Infantry Division, of Gen. George Patton's Third Army from England into Germany.

He was the widower of mathematics teacher Mary Lillian Purdum "Spilly" Davies, whom he married while he attended law school for a time in Richmond after the war. She died in 2003.

Besides his son, survivors include another son, Lea Purdum Davies of Sharon, Conn.; and two granddaughters.

Contact Ellen Robertson at (804) 649-6115 or .