Davis and his younger brother were one-quarter Hawaiian from their maternal grandmother Mahi Kalanihooulumokuikekai, a high chiefess from the Koʻolau district of Oʻahu.

[3][4] After his father's death on November 26, 1822, Hannah Holmes remarried to another American merchant John Coffin Jones, who took the five-year-old Davis back to Boston in 1825.

In the United States, he was given "a classical education" and raised in the household of an uncle who was a wealthy merchant in Boston, remaining there until he completed his schooling.

[7][8][9][4][10] In 1850, Davis was appointed Peruvian Consul General to Hawaii by President Ramón Castilla succeeding James F. B. Marshall, who had resigned.

He also was appointed to succeed John Papa ʻĪʻī as the Second Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii from February 16, 1864, until his resignation on July 8, 1868.

In 1873, a writer in the Hawaiian newspaper The Advertiser stated: The years during which the Bench was occupied by the present Chief Justice with Judges Robertson and Davis as Associates, may justly be regarded as comprising me most satisfactory period in the history of our jurisprudence.