McDavit History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms 

To escape the religious and political discrimination they experienced primarily at the hands of the English, thousands of Irish left their homeland in the 19th century. These migrants typically settled in communities throughout the East Coast of North America, but also joined the wagon trains moving out to the Midwest. Ironically, when the American War of Independence began, many Irish settlers took the side of England, and at the war's conclusion moved north to Canada. These United Empire Loyalists, were granted land along the St. Lawrence River and the Niagara Peninsula. Other Irish immigrants settled in Newfoundland, the Ottawa Valley, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The greatest influx of Irish immigrants, however, came to North America during the Great Potato Famine of the late 1840s. Thousands left Ireland at this time for North America and Australia. Many of those numbers, however, did not live through the long sea passage. These Irish settlers to North America were immediately put to work building railroads, coal mines, bridges, and canals. Irish settlers made an inestimable contribution to the building of the New World. Early North American immigration records have revealed a number of people bearing the Irish name McDavit or a variant listed above, including:

McDavit Settlers in United States in the 19th Century

• Francis McDavit, who landed in Allegany (Allegheny) County, Pennsylvania in 1838 1

Lady of the Lake

• Mr. Robert McDavit (b. 1803), traveller who sailed aboard the "Lady of the Lake" from Greenock, Scotland on 8th April 1833 to Quebec, Canada when the ship hit ice and sunk of the coast of Newfoundland on the 11th May 1833 and he died in the sinking

• Family Crests: the Heraldic Artist
• Family Crests: Timeline
• Family Crests: Elements
• Family Crests and Genealogy: how they relate
• Patronymic
• Spelling variations
• War of Independence
• Great Potato Famine
• Newfoundland
• Australia
• England
• Ireland
• Scotland