Davis sailed for San Francisco, California, around Cape Horn in 1852, and upon arriving, engaged for a brief time as a gold miner, a lumber supercargo surveyor for a coastal steamer, and a purser for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. In addition he helped found the Mercantile Library Association of California (its oldest public library). Under his administrative tutelage interest in the library was restored with his creation of a library catalog (an act which later led to his poor eyesight). He resigned in 1855 and relocated to San Francisco in 1860 at which time he established the highly successful Golden Gate Flouring Mills and the Sperry Flour Company. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1862.American Antiquarian Society Members Directory When the American Civil War broke out, he served in the secretive San Francisco-based Home Guard acting to secure both the loyalty of California to then Union President Abraham Lincoln and the election of Leland Stanford as governor of California (by patrolling the polls on election day). He presided over the Produce Exchange of San Francisco from 1867 to 1877 until he was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives of the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1877 - March 3, 1881), where on June 8, 1878 he spoke in support of a bill to restrict Chinese immigration. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1880 to the Forty-seventh Congress.
