Period 1:

Dan’s Formative Years(1836-1863)

Family Background

Little is known in detail about Dan’s early years. He was born to Susanna (nee Evans, 1816-1893) and Daniel (1809-1885) on 3 July 1836.1 His baptism took place on the seventh of October of that year in the Parish of St Mary, Islington. At that time the family lived in Bride Street, Islington West.2 However, by the date of the 1851 Census for England the family had moved to 9 Gray’s Inn Passage, Holborn, where Dan’s father conducted his watch and clock manufacturing business.

It seems reasonable to regard Dan as the black sheep of his immediate family.

Not only was he the only son to leave England for a life in the colonies, but, most significantly as the eldest child, he turned his back on the family business. This was despite having begun his working life as a watchmaker- finisher by the time he was fourteen years of age,3 in all probability an apprentice to his father. Although Dan was the eldest child, he was not mentioned in his father’s will,* but then neither were the youngest two of his four brothers, Alfred (1843-1907) and Clement (1847-1911)4 (seeAppendix 1–Chart 1). On 16 April 1872 their father had entered into a partnership with Dan’s other two brothers, Albert (1838-1927) and Edwin (1841-1917) to formDaniel Desbois& Sons.

Dan’s third great-grandfather, Lazarus Desbois (1670-1734), was a Huguenot. A book tracing Lazarus’ descendants, written for the family in 1903, suggests that Lazarus, with his mother Lazarin Paulet (Poulett), took refuge in the Convent of St Lazare in Autun, Burgundy, after the death of his father, Emiland (‘Millan’), in 1679.5 However, no evidence to support the existence of this convent has been discovered. It is more likely that the convent was Les Ursulines, this being the name of the convent within a street block of the Cathedral of St Lazare in the late seventeenth century.6

Nevertheless, Lazarus, who was not enamoured with a monastic life, moved to Paris when he was about sixteen years of age; there he became an apprentice to a