Researching Nathaniel Davis

He was born on 17 July 1903 and educated at Harrow and Merton College, Oxford. After a period of study at Ripon College Cuddesdon he was ordained in 1927 and began his career as a curate of Church of Holy Spirit, Beeston Hill. From 1931 he was Rector of St Anne, Sandy Point in St Kitts and then the island's Archdeacon. He was elevated to the episcopate as Bishop of Antigua in 1944 and resigned in 1952. He was an Assistant Bishop of Coventry from then until 1959 and then Warden of the United Westminster Almshouses until his death on 28 July 1966.

Davis received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1916, and joined the Foreign Service in 1919. He served as Consul in Recife (then Pernambuco), Brazil from 1926–29, then as Vice Consul in London. He was appointed Consul in London in 1929. He returned to State Department assignments in Washington, DC, an inspection tour of US diplomatic missions in South America, and a subsequent inspection tour of United States diplomatic missions in the Far East. He was interned in Manila, Philippines from 1942–43.

Davis returned to the Philippines in 1946 as the State Department representative on the staff of the U.S. High Commissioner in the Philippines during the U.S. military occupation. He remained after the independence of the Philippines as Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Manila from 1946–47.

He was American ambassador to Costa Rica from 1947–49, including during the Costa Rican Civil War. He was United States Minister to Hungary from 1949–51.

Diplomatic relations between the US and Hungary were downgraded during the Cold War, and there was no US Ambassador to Hungary during that time. The Minister was the chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission.

During his time as Minister to Hungary, he handled negotiations with the government of Hungary which led to the release of Robert A. Vogeler, an American citizen and Vice President and representative for Eastern Europe of the International Telephone and Telegraph Co. (ITT) who was arrested in Hungary and tried and convicted as a spy.

Davis was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1946, and the Distinguished Service Award on his retirement from the State Department in 1951.

In 1952, after his retirement, he returned to Washington for a month to conduct a confidential review, at the request of Secretary of State Dean Acheson, of the record of O. Edmund Clubb, a U.S. diplomat who had been accused of being a Communist sympathizer by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. On the basis of Davis' report that Clubb was not a security risk, Acheson overturned the decision against Clubb by the State Department's loyalty board, and restored Clubb's pension.