Marie Antoinette Hélène Léontine (Ellen) Heseltine was born in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire in 1812.
The couple arrived in Australia on 31 July 1854 with the aim of opening a new Model School.
[2] Davitt was a sister-in-law of English writer Anthony Trollope, but appears to have had little contact with him.
[2] Although some of her early work has been lost she is now credited with having written the first Australian murder mystery with her novel Force and Fraud : A Tale of the Bush in 1865.
[2] Davitt began teaching again in 1874 but she died in extreme poverty in Fitzroy, in 1879.