Lavinia Shepstone, the daughter of Henry Shepstone and his wife Eliza Plumby, was working in Wrington, Somerset, England before her marriage to David Adams in Bristol late in 1851. She worked for Emanuel and Eliza Porter on Legg’s Farm, Wrington. It was close by the farm where David Adams her future husband worked. 

Lavinia Adams, her husband David, and their baby son James, immigrated to Australia on the Stebonheath departing Plymouth, England on 7 October 1852. They arrived in Geelong on 18 January 1853.

On arrival David found work as a labourer before the family took up land at Haddon near Ballarat. Lavinia died at Ballarat aged 52 in 1886. 

Dorothy Wickham, Women of the Diggings: Ballarat 1854, BHS Publishing, 2009, p. 118; notes from Florence Chuk.