Philip Lamothe Snell Chauncy

Design & Art Australia:
Sketcher, amateur photographer, modeller and surveyor, [he] was born in Datchet, Buckinghamshire, on 21 June 1816, third and youngest surviving child of William Snell Chauncy and Theresa, the English-born daughter of a French surgeon, Dr Dominique Pierre Lamothe. ... Chauncy’s sisters had migrated to South Australia in 1836. Prompted by Theresa’s glowing accounts of the colony, Philip joined them in 1839, landing at Holdfast Bay from the Dumfries on 23 October. Other members of the Chauncy family were in Adelaide by 1841, the year Philip married Charlotte Kemmis and was appointed an assistant government surveyor at the Swan River Colony (Western Australia). He noted 'making a reduced sketch of Fremantle in my field book’, on 19 October 1845.
Charlotte died on 11 February 1847 at their home 'The Retreat’ at West Guildford, when Philip was away surveying the York Road. On 30 June 1848 Philip married Susan Augusta Mitchell, the daughter of Rev. William Mitchell, at Middle Swan Church (WA), in a twin ceremony with Susan’s sister Anne (who married Edward Courthope, brother of Elizabeth Irwin). Rev Mitchell conducted the ceremony and the two sister were given away by Major Irwin. Philip’s diary (DL) records that he 'Took a pencil portrait of my Susie’ on 2 September 1848 and that two days later he was making a model of his wife, the only known reference to any sculptural aspirations.
In 1853 Philip, Susan and the children moved to Heathfield, Melbourne, Victoria ...

Wikipedia:
Philip Lamothe Snell Chauncy (1816-1880) was a colonial surveyor and amateur ethnographer.
Born 21 June 1816 at Datchet in Buckinghamshire, England, he travelled to the colonies in Australia, residing in Victoria after 1839 and at the Swan River Colony (Perth, WA) between 1841 and 1853. He was appointed to the position of assistant government surveyor at Swan River. Chauncy interviewed the Indigenous inhabitants on his journeys, recording the names of places he was documenting and incidental remarks. His reports became a source of ethnographic material for contemporary works such as Robert Brough Smyth's The Aborigines of Victoria (Melbourne 1878), supplying an appendix, 'Notes and Anecdotes of the Aborigines of Australia', along with his other remarks, and to later authors of texts regarding Indigenous Australians.
The site of Chauncy Spring in the Shire of Mundaring, which he surveyed in 1847 and recorded by the existing local name 'Jardemin', was gazetted in 1848 at Perth with his name.
References
Bush, Fiona. "Philip Lamothe Snell Chauncy". Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO). Retrieved 7 October 2018.
Izett, EK 2014, 'Breaking new ground: early Australian ethnography in colonial women's writing', Doctor of Philosophy.
"Chauncy Spring". inHerit - State Heritage Office. wa.gov.au. Retrieved 7 October 2018.

References and Links

as above

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 5 April, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/chauncy.html (it was last updated on 25 January, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.