She was not baptized at Launceston, S. Mary Magdalen. Harvey was a common name at the time in the place; a Harvey was a builder, another a hatmaker, another a carrier. There were a Joseph Harvey and Catherine Penwarden married 27th January, 1756. These may have been her parents. After leaving Bath, Miss Harvey joined the Exeter company, and there met and married Mr. Davenport, an actor of ordinary talent and low comedy. After she had been married a short while, Mrs. Davenport went to Birmingham, where she remained a considerable time in hopes of obtaining an engagement. But disappointed in this expectation, she accepted an offer from Dublin, where Daly had opened his theatre, and there she made her debut as Rosalind in _As You Like It_, a character exactly suited to her, and in which she aroused great enthusiasm. Her graceful figure, her voice, now full of tenderness, then of arch humour, and her expressive face admirably suited the part. She moreover performed the part of Fulmer in the _West Indian_. The _Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room_ for 1796 says: "Mrs. Davenport a tolerable substitute for Mrs. Webb, though not near so great. The Davenports, tho' not of play'rs the first, Are far from being in old folks the worst." In 1794 she first performed at Covent Garden, as Mrs. Hardcastle, in _She Stoops to Conquer_, and at that theatre she continued without a rival till 1831, and occasionally filled up vacancies at the Haymarket. Mr. Davenport died in 1841; by him she had a son and a daughter. The former died in India, the latter in England. Robson, in _The Old Playgoer_, says: "Brunton being the tall 'walking gentleman,' there is no one else worth mentioning but dear, dear Davenport, most truly not least though last. Lord! what a scream she would give if she knew I was about to show her up! I can just remember Mrs. Mattocks and Miss Pope.... But Mrs. Davenport was the McTab, the Malaprop, the Nurse whose bantling, 'stinted and cried aye,' with a villainous pain in her back, and a man Peter to carry her fan; the 'old mother Brulgruddery'; the Dame Ashfield with a 'damned bunch of keys,' who immortalized 'What will Missus Grundy say to that?' and would persuade a gentleman to put a ham under each arm and a turkey into his pocket; Jeremy Diddler's beautiful maid at the foot of the hill, who 'blushed like a red cabbage'; heigho! all visions--all gone. "It was said of Mrs. Jordan that her laugh would have made the fortune of any actress if she had not had the wit to bring out one word to support it; but Mrs. Davenport's strong point was her scream. I wonder whether she ever indulged her husband with it in the course of a curtain lecture! Mercy on his nerves if she did! The appearance of her jolly red face was the presage of mirth, and her scream the signal for a roar of laughter. Good, cheerful soul! though an _old woman_ forty years, she outlived nearly all her play-fellows, comfortably, happily, I hope."[28]