John Freeman Milward Dovaston

John Freeman Milward Dovaston (30 December 1782 – 8 August 1854) was a British poet and naturalist.

Life and work

Dovaston was born in Twyford, West Felton, Shropshire in an estate called "The Nursery" that was started by his father John Dovaston (1740–1808). Dovaston Sr. became interested in botany after a trip to the West Indies and began to work with plants and planting. John Dovaston Sr. cultivated the Dovaston yew, Taxus baccata Dovastonii, and provided Charles Darwin’s father, Robert Darwin, with a young Dovaston yew, which was planted in the gardens of their home, The Mount. Dovaston junior studied at Oswestry Grammar School and Shrewsbury School before going to Oxford to study law.

At Christ Church, Oxford, he was nicknamed "Crazy Jack of Christ Church". After receiving a Master of Arts degree, he was admitted to the bar in 1807. He however did not like the practice and when his father died the next year, he moved back to his estate. Dovaston wrote letters to gentlemen's magazines, sometimes under the pen name of "Von Osdat" (an anagram of his surname) and his writings even to more learned journals such as the Magazine of Natural History included light-hearted verse. A selection of British melodies, 1817. The Dove, 1822. Lectures on natural history and national melody, 1839.