Mrs. Lucy Davis Crowell is the daughter of Nevada historian Samuel Post Davis. She was selected for interviewing because of local interest in her father and his activities. Davis was the editor of the Carson City Appeal in the 1880s and 1890s, active in community affairs of Carson City, an occasional state official, and important in the organization of the Silver Party in Nevada.

Lucy Davis Crowell's oral history begins with the establishment of the Carson City Appeal in 1865 by her mother's first husband, Henry Rust Mighels. After Mighels died in 1879, Mrs. Mighels married Sam Davis. Together the couple conducted the affairs of the Appeal and raised a growing family, which included several Mighels children and two daughters, Lucy, who was born in 1881, and Ethel Davis. Sam Davis busied himself with work on the newspaper and his political interests, while his wife, a pioneer newspaperwoman, helped with writing chores and kept the home.

After the Davis daughters were grown, Lucy was forced to enter the business world. As an employee of the Nevada State Supreme Court for nearly forty years, she was a witness to a number of interesting events. One of the most vivid in her memory is the divorce granted in Carson City to Mary Pickford. Mrs. Crowell became involved in the case as a secretary in the court. She later was interested in state retirement programs, and began the agitation that resulted in the passage of the first Nevada state employee's retirement act. Mrs. Crowell retired under the provisions of the present state retirement act.