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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. Born, where, when, and of whomFamily Characteristics Monitions and PrevisionChildhoodStartling ManifestationsBoyish Occupation. IiuEsASTus Davenport and William Henry Davenport, who are known as the Brothers Davenport, were born in Buffalo, State of New York, United States of America; the former September 17, 1839, the latter February 1, 1841. Their only sister, Elizabeth Louisa Davenport, was born December 23, 1844. Ira Davenport, the father, was born at Skeneatales, New York, in 1816. He is descended from early English settlers in America. His wife, Virtue Honeysett, was born in the county of Kent, England, in1819, and was taken to America in her childhood. Buffalo, the residence of the Davenports, situated at the outlet of Lake Erie by the Niagara River, and twenty miles south of the famous cataract, was, at the period of the birth of the Brothers Davenport, an enterprising city of some twenty thousand inhabitants, and has since increased to a population of more than a hundred thousand. Mr. Davenport, senior, had a place under the city government, in the department of police ; and though in moderate circumstances, was widely known, and appears to have deserved and enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-citizens. His wife's father and other relations resided at May- ville, in Chautauque County, about sixty miles south-west of Buffalo. I mention this circumstance for a reason that will appear in the course of the narrative. I find nothing in the characters of the progenitors of the Davenports which. would account for the extraordinary phenomena which have occurred for eleven years past in the presence of the subjects of this biography, by the laws of hereditary descent. It is related, indeed, that in the families of both fathe...
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