Message text written by INTERNET:[email protected] >Just can't go on not knowing where in England we find Davenport/Devenport. Not in my world atlas. Not in my encyclopedia. Some one. Oh please come to my rescue. Which shire is it in?<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Cliff, 8Davenport* is a small village near Congleton In the county of **Cheshire**. Look at your atlas - if you can't find Congleton, it is just south of Macclesfield.- This is the area where most of the Davenport originate from; iow, it was the land in Cheshire which was given to his knight by William the Conqueror. Over the years many of the lines spread over into Derbyshire and other nearby counties.- This is not to be confused with the Plymouth/Devonport in Devonshire. I believe that the part of Plymouth called Devonport gets its name from the fact that it IS a port in the county of Devon. Hence the name "Devonport"! There are very few Davenport in Devonshire - I know, because I lived there for 8 years. My father Charles Harold Davenport was born in Exeter, Devon but HIS father came from Derbyshire.- Below is a part of a piece I found in the UK Yahoo, mentioning the village of Davenport:- <<<<<There are preserved in the strong room in Congleton Town Hall some 121 charters and assorted documents. Eighty-one were written before 1500. Ten or so relate to various places in North Wales (Hawarden), Staffordshire (Kings Bromley, Longsdon, Lichfield), and Cheshire (Chester, Hough, Macclesfield, Old Rode, Rope, Stapley, Upton, Wickmalban, Wightreston, Willaston), but most are concerned with properties in Congleton itself. Although for convenience I have characterized the collection as charters, in reality there are a number of different types of document. The oldest firmly dated item of c.1272 is a charter of Henry de Lacy granting the men of Congleton burgage tenure (the holding of their land by a money rent rather than by personal service) and the right to elect a mayor. There are several other documents outlining the privileges of the lord and his burgesses of various dates as well as a return to Quo Warranto proceedings touching the liberties of the lord of Halton in the early fourteenth century. There are simple charters granting land, numerous chirographs and indentures (both, broadly, agreements of one kind or another), two wills, and Letters Patent granting the right to build a mill after the floods of 1451. Finally, there are miscellaneous items like plans for the construction of a gallery in the upper chapel of the early eighteenth century and a mortgage of the nineteenth. The collection is what is left of the borough of Congletons muniments. A fire destroyed many of its records, but what survived were mounted and restored by the Bodley Library in Oxford and, interleaved with a translation by the Rev. Jonathan Wilson, the school master of Congleton, bound in three volumes. A fourth volume containing four Congleton charters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was given to the town by James Bradwell in the late nineteenth century. By 1272 Congleton was probably already an urban community of long standing. Its origins as a trading centre are to be found in the now **depopulated village of Davenport ** .............................<<<< Wynne