Nathaniel Penistone Davis

For the former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, Guatemala, Chile, and Switzerland, see Nathaniel Davis.

Nathaniel Penistone Davis (1895-1973) was an American career diplomat.

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 to 1929, then as Vice Consul in London, UK. 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 US diplomatic missions in the Far East. He was interned in Manila, Philippines, from 1942 to 1943.

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 to 1947.[1] He was American ambassador to Costa Rica from 1947 to 1949, including during the Costa Rican Civil War.[2]

He was United States Minister to Hungary from 1949 to 1951.[3] 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.[4]

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 Telgraph Co. (ITT) who was arrested in Hungary and tried and convicted as a spy.[5][6][7][8]

Davis received the Medal of Freedom in 1946, and the Distinguished Service Award on his retirement from the State Department in 1951.[3]

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.[9] 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.[10]

Davis was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on May 1, 1895,.[11] He was the son of John D. Davis (Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Davis' Bible Dictionary) and Marguerite (Scobie) Davis, grandson of Robert and Anne Williams (Shaw) Davis, and great-grandson of John and Anna Maria (Johnston) Davis.[12]

He was married in 1919 to Sarah Louise Collins. After his retirement, he lived in Glens Falls and Silver Bay, New York, and later in Winter Park. Florida.[13] He died on September 12, 1973.

His autobiography, Few Dull Moments: A Foreign Service Career, was self-published in 1967.[14]

His papers are in the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Foreign Relations of the United States 1946 Volume VIII, The Far East [Document 669]". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  2. ↑ "Papers of Nathaniel P. Davis". Universidad de Costa Rica. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 "Nathaniel P. Davis Papers". Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  4. ↑ "Chiefs of Mission for Hungary". US Department of State, Office of the Historian. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  5. ↑ Vogeler, Robert A. (1952). I Was Stalin's Prisoner. Harcourt.
  6. ↑ "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949 Volume V, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Document 290". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  7. ↑ "HUNGARY: Just Claims" (April 30, 1951). Time.
  8. ↑ "Memorandum of Conversation with Mr. Robert A. Vogeler, June 5, 1951. Acheson Papers - Secretary of State File.". Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  9. ↑ "O. Edmund Clubb Is Dead at 88; China Hand and McCarthy Target". New York Times. May 11, 1989. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  10. ↑ Beisner, Robert (2009). Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War. Oxford University Press.
  11. ↑ The Nassau Herald - Page 81
  12. ↑ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time, Volume 58. J. T. White. 1979. p. 260.
  13. ↑ Davis, Nathaniel P. (1967). Few Dull Moments.
  14. ↑ "Few Dull Moments: A Foreign Service Career". Hathi Trust Digital Library Catalog. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
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