Phelan and Atkin Family History

In my last post I wrote about my 2x great-grandfather John Davenport who sailed out to Australia from England in 1849. He wasn't the only member of his family to make the trip: brother Richard Davenport, 12 years his junior, also make the journey sometime in the mid to late 1850s. While I don't know the exact circumstances of his arrival, I do know that Richard ended up in the town of Learmonth, approximately 22 km northwest of Ballarat, on today's Sunraysia Highway. He resided at 'South Park Cottage' at Saddle Back Hill on the south shore of Lake Learmonth, where today you will find Davenport Road and Davenport Park, no doubt named for him! However another lake features prominently in Richard's story. For many years he was the curator/caretaker of parks for the Ballarat Shire Council, with a particular focus being Burrumbeet Park on the shores of the lake of the same name, which lies a few kilometres to the south on the Western Highway.   In 1894, a visitor to ...

John Davenport This week I turn my attention to the Davenport branch of the family tree. Dad's maternal grandmother was Florence Cowan, nee Davenport. Florence was the 8th of 10 children born to John and Elizabeth Davenport. John Davenport was born in 1824, the son of 'carver and gilder' William Davenport and his wife Charlotte, and grew up in the Bethnal Green/Shoreditch area, part of London's East End. In 1849, at age 24, John sailed out from London to Adelaide on board the Calcutta . He married fellow immigrant Elizabeth Froggatt in Adelaide in 1851 (she had arrived just three days before John on the Florentia ) but once the gold rush hit they came to Victoria to try their luck at Fryers Creek - this is where Florence was born in 1865. By 1872, John had brought his family to Ascot Vale where he set up business as a painter. It was here that Florence met and married local architect Joseph Charles Martin Cowan (whom I previously wrote about in my three part post 'A...