Edward Alfred DAVIS

Edward was baptised on the 1st of November, 1846 at Saint Mary Magdalene in Woolwich in Kent, England. His proud parents, John and Mary Ann (nee SPILLING) were sure that their fourth son was destined for a great life but they couldn't have known at that time how life for Edward, and indeed for the whole family, was going to be so very different to what it had been up to this time.

When Edward was 19 years old, he along with his oldest brother John Edwin DAVIS and his second oldest brother George Spelling DAVIS boarded the ship 'Southern Ocean' and sailed to the new colony of Moreton Bay in Australia, arriving there on the 2nd of June, 1866.

His future wife, Emily CHAPPEL, arrived in the colony four years earlier as a five year old and the youngest of six siblings on the 'Chatsworth'. It seems likely that Edward and Emily met in Brisbane and given Emily`s age, they probably 'eloped' because at the age of sixteen, Emily is getting married to Edward in Charters Towers in North Queensland.

Their first son Alfred Joseph Spelling DAVIS, was born in Charters Towers and their second boy, George Edward DAVIS was born in Townsville. The young family may have been following the fortunes of gold, because their third and last child, John Edwin William DAVIS, was born in Kingsborough, which like Charters Towers, was in a gold mining area and approximately 400 kilometers north of Townsville.

A year after John was born in 1879, Edward`s wife Emily died at the age of twenty-three years on the Hodgkinson goldfield and is buried in the small gold mining town of Thornborough. In 1881 Edward marries a second time to Minnie STEDMAN but they do not have any children. Family story has it that Minnie liked to drink a little but there is very little known about her. The entry for her death, 19th July, 1930 is a guess.

On the 30th of November 1894, Edward Alfred DAVIS dies in the District Hospital in Cairns and is buried in the Pioneers Cemetery.