FRANK GOODMAN DAVIS, merchant and manufacturer of Tippecanoe City, Ohio, was the youngest son, as well as the youngest child of Enoch and Barbara Davis, nee Goodman, and was born in Elizabeth Township, Miami County, Ohio, May 5, 1855.

He moved with his family to the then small village of Tippecanoe in the year 1862, where he entered the union or public schools, in which he continued until he had obtained a very fair common school education, through the use of which, together with his congeniality and his untiring application to his duties, he has gained the enviable and honorable position he now occupies. He is not only well known and popular in and about his immediate home town but throughout the entire county.

Mr. Davis' first employment after leaving school was at telegraphy, working at the key until the death of his father in 1872, which compelled a thorough alteration of all his plans. From the key he went to a clerkship in the general store of Bowman & Lindsley, and from a clerkship with Bowman & Lindsley, later J. W. Bowman, he rose to be a partner, the firm being Bowman & Davis, which was for many years one of the best known concerns in Miami County in the mercantile business as well as one of the largest distributors of general merchandise in south Miami County. The present firm is Davis & Smith, which firm continues to handle a large part of the general merchandising business of this most prosperous little city and country surrounding.

Mr. Davis was one of the very first promoters of the whip manufacturing industry in Tippecanoe City, and was one of the first incorporators of The Tipp Whip Company and the president of the company for nearly twenty years. He was also the promoter of The Davis Whip Company, which was incorporated eleven years ago, and his official relationship to the company is that of president and general manager. Both of these concerns are prosperous and representative of the most modern ideas in whip manufacturing. Their output is marketed all over the United States.

In 1882 Mr. Davis was married to Mary E. Harshbarger, daughter of Isaac D. and Hannah R. Harshbarger, nee Kable. They have three children, Margaret E., Loa L. and Robert G.

Mr. Davis, as well as an active citizen, in nearly everything of good in the town, enjoys distinction in Democratic political circles also, and his strength has been recognized by his party, it having nominated him, unsolicited and against his earnest protest, twice for important offices, his defeat in both instances being accomplished through the most untiring endeavor of his opponents and by a reduction of a big Republican majority to almost no majority at all. His party honored him by sending him as a delegate to the National Democratic Convention that convened in Chicago in 1892 and which nominated Hon Grover Cleveland for the presidency.

He belongs to F.& A.M. Lodge No. 174, I. O. O. F. Lodge No. 247 and the Royal Arcanum Lodge, all of Tippecanoe City, Ohio.