Herbert Davies was born in New Zealand in 1876. He was ordained as a minister for mission in 1909 and served in the Canton Villages Mission in Fong Chuen, Canton until 1941.
He married Margaret Anderson, a deaconess and fellow missionary, in Canton in 1911, and they had a son, Jock.
He has an impressive CV. He was Secretary for the South China Mission Council, General Secretary and Treasurer of the Canton Sub-Headquarters of the Kwantung Synod of the Church of Christ in China, Pastor of Yan Tsai Church, Pastor of Fong Tsuen Church (Canton), Paymaster and Advisor to the Bible Society of Canton, Secretary and Treasurer of the Canton Medical Missionary Society, “Committee” for Union Church services at Shameen (Canton), Member of Language School Committee, and Examiner for the Language School.
In 1941 he was due to retire but was asked to serve another year. Then war broke out and he was interned in Shanghai. Margaret Davies was interned in Stanley Camp, but later transferred to Shanghai. They found they were together with a large number of elderly foreign nationals and provided much-needed pastoral care for them.
They were released at the end of the war, and had planned to retire to their house on Cheung Chau, but like other CVM houses #9 and #10, it had been stripped of all wood by the locals and bombed by the Japanese as being western owned.
They finally retired in 1947.
Source: presbyterian.org.nz archives