Kezia Davis was my fourth great grandmother, and when I decided to do this challenge I just knew that I had to write about her for the letter’K’.

Kezia is such a unique name, and I had never heard of it before until I discovered my Kezia Davis. It’s so unique, that she is the only one in my extensive family tree to have that name. And I have to say that is extremely uncommon in my experience. Every other person seems to have at least one other person with the same or similar name. So, because the name fascinated me so much I had to do some research on what the name means.

Kezia, also spelled Keziah, is a Hebrew name originally and is found in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The name appears in Job 42:14, and is the name of the second daughter of Job. The actual meaning of the name is unclear, but it has been suggested that name is the same as the Hebrew term for the spice tree Cassia. The name was apparently quite popular in England during the Victorian times, which is slightly later than my Kezia’s birth in 1831 but a quick search of Ancestry records reveals that the name Kezia(h) was more popular than I had initially thought, even around 1830-1831. By 1890, there were 137 registered births with the name of Kezia(h). However, the name declined over the years so that by 1990 only 40 births were registered with the name.

The name also took off in the United States in the nineteenth century; with the name being most popular in the 1850s, 60s and 70s. I haven’t come across the name in more modern times, but it lives on with the popular name Keisha being a modern derivation of the name.