A HEADS UP:              Research findings at Handley Memorial Library in Winchester, Virginia, last week and Tuesday, related to earlier findings in Gloucester, King & Queen, Caroline, and Halifax counties, plus some search engine work on the Internet this morning appears to have generated a new Colonial Virginia Davenport identification, one which affects Elaine Kidd O'Leary, one of our DAVENPORT-L subscribers--who's been trying to get in touch with me for the past week--because she's a direct descendant.  When I get on a trail, Elaine, I'm not amenable to interruptions, may appear rude because I'm focused elsewhere--but I'm sure you'll like this outcome,  We've been chewing this rag for almost two years.        It turns out to have been essentially a York River Basin story that is more England than Virginia, but is not PAMUNKEY, being of Gloucester and King & Queen with subsequent evidences found in Caroline (Upper Pamunkey Neck) and confounded by a John Davenport of the line who lived next door to two prominent Pamunkey Davenports in Halifax, rented the same Slave as they did, and left muddy water and orphans who got confused with children of Pamunkeys, namely grandchildren and great grandchildren of Thomas Davenport, Sr., of Cumberland, son of Davis Davenport, of Lower Pamunkey Neck (King William County).          Because these Davenports too had their Virginia beginnings in the Burned Counties (where most or all of the public records before 1890 have been destroyed), the identification is still circumstantial insofar as genealogical proofs are concerned, but there exists considerably more meat on the bones of this family skeleton than is the PAMUNKEY case--solid facts as to the beginning, with the circumstantial part being in the identification of widow (Elizabeth) and children (John, Rebecca, and two yet to be identified, but may have been older sons who went to London to claim inheritances).   However, because most, if not all of the other Davenports in Colonial and Post-Revolution Virginia have been otherwise identified or claimed, these Davenports have a quality and uniqueness that suggests its own "proof."  More substantially, I suspect that there exist in English Probate records identifications of said widow and all four children of the immigrant ancestor Joseph Davenport, who loaned money to George Washington, among other aristocrats, and was a flourishing tobacco agent in Virginia, 1754-1779.  In 1781 Joseph claimed that he had to flee for his life to Curacao (it took him two years to make his way back to London), he allegedly having refused to accept a military commission from the Rebels, having abandoned his wife and four children in Virginia. He died in London in 1783, having petitioned the King for redress for his American losses because he was a Loyalist, including two plantations in Gloucester and at least one in King & Queen. His death surely occurred before a reunion with his wife and children could be affected.  (The British did not leave Charleston until December 1782, and were even later in leaving New York.)           I'm going to have to breadboard parts of the story upcoming, for I am away from my Pamunkey Chronicle files, which have included these Davenports.  Heretofore I could not explain their presence in or adjoining Pamunkey country and the concurrent relationships with other families related to or associated with PAMUNKEY DAVENPORTS.  Now, I aver, they can been extracted from our Chronicles and have a file of their own.  (There goes the carriage trade.)  For delineation from other Colonial Virginia Davenports, these Davenports may be identified as the SOUTHWARK TORY DAVENPORTS, which cites that part of London from whence they originated and possibly returned in part.   (Southwark, southside London, remains a stronghold of Davenports of renown and multiple professions today--try "Southwark, Davenport, Tobacco" in a Google search and be impressed.)  To the origin we add the Loyalist posture that the patriarch affected during the Revolution--which apparently did not include all of his family.  (His widow was remarried by 1785 in Caroline, likely was a Colonial herself without a close England attachment.)   All of which should become evident and largely explicit when the British records are researched.  This could be a fun search, for it's a fascinating story with records galore available for digging.           Enough with the wind-up.  I'll try to put a narrative together from all the pieces later today and transmit.  John Scott Davenport Martinsburg, WV for the nonce