Davis political family

to be the first person to refer to the Plymouth colonists as pilgrims in his ode to an anniversary celebration in 1794.

He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the treasurer (1810) and member of the board of overseers (1827–1836).

Elizabeth Davis Bliss was John Davis's sister who married George Bancroft (1800–1891), who was an American historian, statesman, and who as the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was a U.S. Minister to Britain.

These two brothers' uncle was Augustus Peabody Gardner (1865–1918), who was a United States Representative from Massachusetts, captain and assistant adjutant general on the staff of General James Wilson during the Spanish–American War, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions in Congress, and he was colonel in the Adjutant General's Department, and a United States Infantryman, with rank of major.

Henry Cabot Lodge's wife was Anna Cabot Mills Davis, whose maternal aunt was married to Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880), an American mathematician who taught at Harvard University for forty years, instrumental in the development of Harvard's science curriculum, director of the U.S. Coast Survey, and made contributions to celestial mechanics, number theory, algebra, and the philosophy of mathematics.

Benjamin's son was Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), chemist, logician, mathematician, physicist, and acknowledged[by whom?]