Born in Bavaria, David Mayer trained as dentist before immigrating to the United States in 1839. He settled first in Tennessee and then in Atlanta, in 1850, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was dry goods merchant, slave owner, freemason, founder of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and was instrumental in the creation of the public school system of Atlanta, serving for a time as president of the board of education.

He was a Confederate, and during the Civil War served as Governor Joseph E. Brown’s commissary officer. A story that was often told about him—repeated in his obituary in the Atlanta Constitution—had a group of Confederate soldiers beseech him to hand over a large cache of confiscated cotton. Even on the threat of death he refused, supposedly declaring: “Are you soldiers or robbers? The people who own this cotton are Christians; I am a Jew. If you take this cotton, you will take it over my dead body. You may assassinate me but in no other way can you keep me from preventing your doing this great wrong.”

Mayer married Elisa Weilmann Steinhamer, and they had nine children.