Dovaston, John Freeman Milward, 1782-1854

The amateur astronomer and scientific instrument maker John Dovaston was born into a long-established Shropshire family on April 25, 1740, the son of John Dovaston and Margaret (Rogers). While still in his twenties, Dovaston used the proceeds from his sugar plantations in Jamaica to build "The Nursery," an estate near West Felton, near Shrewsbury, where he lived until his death on April 4, 1808. He left a son John Freeman Millward Dovaston. His wife Ann (Hoper) had died in the previous year.

A polymath and man of varied scientific interests, John Dovaston developed a large arboretum at the Nursery, introducing a cultivar of yew in 1777 that now bears his name, and he was an ardent amateur astronomer and instrument maker. Both in England and during his voyages to Jamaica, he recorded careful observations of heavenly phenomena including comets and the transits of Venus and Mercury, and he was apparently a keen astrologer as well.

A friend of the engraver Thomas Bewick, John Freeman Millward Dovaston was a respected naturalist and a romantic poet known for his sonnets. His best known publication was Poems, Legendary, Incidental, and Humourous (Shrewsbury: W. Morris, 1825).

From the guide to the Astronomical Notebook, 1764-1799, (American Philosophical Society)