Edmund Davis was born in Limestone Township, Pennsylvania, on November 28, 1848, and attended Edge Hill School in Princeton, New Jersey, in the mid-1860s. He entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in the fall of 1866, where he played baseball. After graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1870, Davis studied law under John McCleery in Milton, Pennsylvania. In 1873, he briefly practiced in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before returning to Milton, where he lived for the remainder of his life. In Milton, he served as a justice of the peace and later worked in the hardware business and as treasurer of the Milton Trust and Safe Deposit Company. He married Amanda A. Stewart of New Castle, Pennsylvania, on November 29, 1876, and they had one son, Robert Stewart (b. 1877). Davis married his second wife, Susan Barnitz, on May 15, 1895; they had two sons: Merlin and Hubert.
From the guide to the Edmund Davis diary, Davis, Edmund diary, 1865, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)
