Percy Harrison Fawcett was an explorer and artillery officer. His efforts to prove that civilisations existed in the Amazon before the arrival of western culture were semi-fictionalised in the 2017 film The Lost City of Z. He was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founders Medal in 1916, but disappeared in 1925 while on an expedition with his son Jack.
Percy was born in Torquay and he his family lived in many parts of Devon, including St Marychurch, Teignmouth, Uplyme, and Stoke Canon.
Stoke Canon is situated on raised ground near the meeting of the waters of the Rivers Exe and Culm. The village is the eastern starting point of the Devonshire Heartland Way which leads to Okehampton. The Exe Valley Way also passes through the village.
Use his memory to spark your own investigations of the rivers and streams where you live. What forgotten mills and farms lie on their banks?
Teignmouth and Shaldon Remembers World War One
Percy Harrison Fawcett was born on the 18th of August 1867 at Torquay, Devon, to parents, Edward Boyd Fawcett, born 1840, India, Myra Elizabeth Fawcett (née MacDougall) born 1841, India.
The parents are buried in the Teignmouth Old Cemetery, plot V124.
In 1871, Percy and his family were living in Dunolly, St Mary Church, Torquay, Devon. The family employed five servants.
In 1881, the family had moved to 3, Barnpark Terrace, Teignmouth East.
Fawcett received his early education at Newton Abbot Proprietary College, alongside the sportsman and journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson. Fawcett's father, who had been born in India, was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), while his elder brother, Edward Douglas Fawcett (1866–1960), was a mountain climber, an Eastern occultist, and the author of philosophical books and popular adventure novels.
Fawcett attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich as a cadet, and was commissioned as a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery on 24 July 1886.
In 1924 Percy and Nina were living at Osmond House, Stoke Canon
https://teignheritageworldwar.org.uk/index.php/lieutenant-colonel-percy-harrison-fawcett
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PercyFawcett.jpg
Scientific American In 1925 British adventurer Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared into the wilds of the Amazon, never to be heard from again after going there in search of a lost city he called Z. But decades later, a city of sorts—actually a series of settlements connected by roads—has been found at the headwaters of the Xingu River where Fawcett went missing in an area previously buried beneath the dense foliage in what is now Xingu National Park.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lost-amazon-cities/
Wikipedia Percy Harrison Fawcett DSO (18 August 1867 – during or after 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer of South America. Fawcett disappeared in 1925 (along with his eldest son, Jack, and one of Jack's friends, Raleigh Rimell) during an expedition to find "Z"—his name for an ancient lost city which he and others believed existed in the jungles of Brazil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Fawcett
The area where Peter and Jack were lost is now the Xingu National Park - an area 4 times the size of Devon. It is home to 16 indigenous ethnic groups with populations varying between 60 and 1200 people. The Kuikuro are thought to be descendants of the peoples who build the Kuhikugu settlements between 400AD and 1600AD. As of 2011 there are 522 Kuikuro people, less than the population of Stoke Canon (660)
