1. Introduction
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Bourton on Dunsmore is a village and parish that lies about 12 kilometres south-east of Coventry and 10 kilometres south-west of Rugby. It is to the south of Stretton on Dunsmore and also adjoins the parishes of Dunchurch, Leamington Hastings, Birdingbury and Frankton. The first reference to the BURBURY or BURBERY family in this parish that I have found is the baptism of a son William to parents William and Mary BURBRAY (BURBERY) in 1744 [1]. William the father is the earliest-confirmed ancestor of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family.
2. Identifying William of Bourton
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William Burbery Senior's age and date of birth are unfortunately not known. The first mention of him that I can be sure of is in 1742, when he married Mary CONSTANT or CONSTANCE (1719--1751), daughter of Thomas CONSTANCE and Mary nee SMITH, on 13 February in Stretton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire [2]. At this time William was described in the Stretton on Dunsmore parish register as being "of Wolston". While this gives us some additional information about William, it does not allow us to draw any firm conclusions about his parentage. The problem is basically that William was such a common name at the time, and "Burbery" (or its spelling variants) was such a common surname in the Wolston area, that there are several candidates for the baptism of this William that can be found. Assuming that William was around 20 at the time he married in 1742, then possible baptisms for him include:
| No. | Name | Baptised | Parents |
| (1) | William | 24 July 1722, Holy Trinity, Coventry | John and Sarah BURBERY [3] |
| (2) | William | 18 April 1714, Hunningham | William and Mary BURBURY [4] |
| (3) | William | 27 December 1704, Wolston | William and Mary BURBURY [5] |
Evidence suggests against the first and third candidates being the William we are looking for. The first William, son of John and Sarah, appears to have died young and been buried in the parish of Holy Trinity, Coventry in 1725 [3]. This fairly conclusively takes him out of the running as a candidate.
The third candidate is less conclusive, but I think a fairly good case can be made for discounting him as the William who married Mary Constance. As will be shown below, the members of the Bourton on Dunsmore family were not particularly wealthy, and many of them were "paupers", or dependent on parish charity for their livelihood. This designation of "pauper" appears to have included William himself in his later years [6]. And yet, the William who was born in 1704 was the son of William and Mary FAWKES, who were people of some wealth. So it would seem highly unlikely that it was William of Bourton being born in 1704. (See the information page for the Brandon Burbery family for more details on William Burbury and Mary née Fawkes.)
Click here to go to the information page for the Brandon Burbery family
If this reasoning is accepted, then the only William that is left is the one who was baptised in Hunningham in 1714. Hunningham is a very small parish bordering on Stretton on Dunsmore, Stoneleigh and Ashow. During a trip to the Warwickshire Country Record Office in October 2001, I checked the microfilmed records for the parish of Hunningham to try and locate the precise baptism entry, but unfortunately the extant records for this parish did not go back that far. This seemed a bit odd, because the entry must have come from *somewhere* for it to have been included in the IGI. So this is an avenue for further research.
In any case, it is not possible to say that the Hunningham baptism is the one we want simply because the other entries have been eliminated. It is possible that other William Burberys were baptised in other nearby parishes at around this time, and so there may be other candidates for the William who married Mary still waiting to be found. At this stage we have to be satisfied with the fact that William's parentage is unknown. And hence he forms the first member of this distinct family grouping, the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family.
3. William of Bourton's two marriages
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William married Mary Constance in 1742, and there were several children born of this marriage. They include William (baptised 21 January 1745), Thomas (baptised 8 March 1746), John (baptised 14 February 1747, died in infancy and buried 28 March 1747) and Mary (baptised 3 June 1750), all in the parish of Bourton on Dunsmore [1]. There is another child attributed to William and Mary that appears in the International Genealogical Index, namely a child Thomas was baptised on the same date (21 January 1745) as their elder son William [4]. However, the Bourton on Dunsmore parish register entry suggests that when their first son William was baptised, his name was incorrectly entered into the register as "Thomas", and this was later crossed out and "William" was written above. I have viewed this particular register entry myself and it seems clear to me that this is what happened. A similar thing appears to have happened with the second child Thomas, who was originally entered into the register under the name John [1].
It is not known what William's occupation was at the time these children were born, or what caused him to move from Wolston to the village of Bourton a few miles to the south. Evidently he did make this move though, because his wife Mary died in 1751 and was buried in the parish of Bourton on Dunsmore, and William was described as being "of Bourton" in the burial register [1].
William appears to have remarried after Mary's death. The evidence for this is an entry in the marriage register for the parish of Saint John, Coventry, which lists the marriage of a William BURBERY and Susannah EDMUNDS on 23 June 1753. Both parties are styled as "of Boreton [sic]" [7]. Unfortunately the marriage register does not explicitly state that William was a widower at the time of this marriage, but it seems reasonable to conclude that it is the same William. Adding support to this is the fact that William and Susannah had six children, and with the exception of their daughter Mary [6], the names used for these children are different from the names of William and Mary's surviving children.
4. The Move to Ryton on Dunsmore
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At the time of William Burbery of Bourton's marriage to his second wife Susannah Edmunds, both the bride and groom were described as being of Bourton as mentioned above [7]. However, after this the family appears to have moved around somewhat. The first move was to Monks Kirby (a parish north-east of Coventry near the Leicestershire border). This move probably took place between 1753 and 1757, because their first child Joseph was baptised in Bourton on Dunsmore in 1753 (only a few months after their marriage!) [1], but the next child James was baptised in 1757 in Monks Kirby, and the parish registers give the father's residence at the time as Newnham Grounds, a location in the Monks Kirby parish. Another child Elizabeth was also baptised in Monks Kirby in 1759 [8].
Between 1759 and 1761 the family was again on the move, leaving Monks Kirby and settling in Ryton on Dunsmore, where they continued to have further children, starting with Benjamin baptised in 1761 through to Mary baptised in 1774, all in the parish of Ryton on Dunsmore [6].
The Ryton on Dunsmore parish registers give us the first indication of the social situation of this Burbery family. Susannah Burbery was buried in Ryton in July 1788, and the parish register describes her as "Wife of William, pauper". William himself was buried a few months later in October, and similarly he is mentioned as "Husband of Susannah, pauper" [6].
William and Susannah's children were also dependent on parish charity at the same time. A few years earlier, in February 1786, Joseph Burbery, eldest son of William and Susannah, died and was also buried in the parish of Ryton on Dunsmore. In the parish register Joseph is also described as "Husband of Mary, pauper". Similarly Joseph's son Joseph was described as the son of Joseph and Mary and also has a note saying "Father pauper" [6].
This family continued to spread out, and descendants are found throughout the 19th century in the area of Bourton on Dunsmore and neighbouring parishes. However, whether as a result of a natural dwindling or whether it is simply my own lack of successful research, there appear to be very few families from this line which have continued to the present day while keeping the surname of BURBERY. See Modern-day Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery Descendants below for some more discussion on this point.
5. Thomas of Stretton on Dunsmore
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Thomas Burbury, son of William and Mary nee Constance of Bourton on Dunsmore, was baptised on 8 March 1746 in the parish of Bourton on Dunsmore, although there seems to be a bit of confusion about his baptism. A fellow researcher Malcolm Burbury viewed this baptism entry and noted that the child's name had been originally written as "John", but that the name "Thomas" had subsequently been written above it and in different script. I have judged from this that the final intended name was Thomas, a judgment which is supported by the fact that William and Mary had another child who was unequivocally baptised as John about a year later (although this John died in infancy) [1].
During a trip to the Warwickshire County Record Office on 14th/15th October 1999, Malcolm collected information that drew him to the conclusion that this Thomas was the one who married Catherine MITCHEL on 10 October 1780 at Stretton on Dunsmore, and I agree with this conclusion. Both parties to the marriage were living in Stretton at the time, and the marriage was by banns. Malcolm noted that the witnesses to the marriage were Thomas BURBERY and Sibbell VEASEY, whereas when I looked at the entry in October 2001, I noted the witnesses as William WIGGINS and Jane WEST [2]. This needs to be checked!
During Malcolm's 1999 research trip to Warwick, he also came across some hand-written documents in the CRO relating to one Thomas Burbury who was trying to settle in Stretton on Dunsmore. The documents were the examination of Thomas under oath relating to his settlement. From this document (of which Malcolm has a copy), we learn that Thomas was "...about 33 years of age and was born at Bourton where his father William BURBURY was a lawful inhabitant...".
During the 1770s Thomas worked as follows:
The document ends with "---- he hath a wife named Catherine" [9].
The reference to Thomas' father being William who lived at Bourton on Dunsmore, and his age of about 33 years in 1781, places this Thomas as the son of William and Mary née Constance [1]. The same document also identifies him as the Thomas who married Catherine Mitchel [2].
The document also relates how 12 days before Michaelmas, William Burbury paid Thomas 8 pounds in place of 8 guineas, because Thomas left his employ early [9]. Malcolm Burbury has assumed that the William mentioned here was Thomas' father, but I do not agree with this. As described above, Thomas' father William was not a wealthy man and died a pauper in Ryton on Dunsmore, as did other members of the second family [6].
I think it is much more likely that Thomas was working for some other William Burbury, possibly a member of the apparently quite wealthy Brandon Burbery family. At various times this family owned or occupied land over a fairly extensive area ranging from the parish of Dunchurch (south-east of Stretton on Dunsmore) right up to Monks Kirby (north-east of Coventry) and possibly over the border in Leicestershire too. This theory might also help to explain what otherwise seems a bit of an anomaly: William of Bourton's children were baptised in Bourton on Dunsmore from 1744 to 1753 [1], and in Ryton on Dunsmore from 1761 to 1774 [6], but two children were baptised in Monks Kirby in 1757 and 1759 respectively, and at the time William was described in the baptism registers as "of Newnham Grounds", a hamlet in Monks Kirby [8]. The Monks Kirby branch of the Wolston Burbery family also lived at Newnham Grounds, so it seems highly likely that William and his son Thomas might both have worked for the Brandon Burbery family.
Click here to go to the information page for the Brandon Burbery family
Another point that might go on to support this is that Thomas made further applications later on to move to the parish of Aston, on the other side of Coventry and now a suburb of Birmingham [9]. We don't know why he might have wanted to move so far away from Stretton on Dunsmore, but again, the Brandon Burbery family appear to have owned land in the parishes of Over Whitacre and Shustoke which are close to or adjoining Aston, so maybe Thomas was again chasing employment with his richer relatives?
Thomas' attempts to move to Aston must have been ultimately unsuccessful, as he and Catherine continued to baptise their children in the parish of Stretton on Dunsmore, and when Thomas died in May 1816 he was living at Princethorpe, a hamlet in the parish. He was buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Stretton on Dunsmore, on 18 May 1816 [2].
6. The Bretford Family
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Thomas and Catherine had five children who were all baptised in the parish of Stretton on Dunsmore. They were Thomas (b. abt. 1781), Mary (b. abt. 1783), William (b. abt. 1785), Elizabeth (b. abt. 1787) and Ann (b. abt. 1790) [2]. The son William has a certain amount of focus on him, because he is one of the possible candidates for William Burbury of Stoneleigh, earliest-confirmed ancestor of the Stoneleigh Burbury family. He is the main candidate that has been put forward by Mrs Irene Makepeace-Lott, a Stoneleigh Burbury descendant. You can read more about the discussion of William of Stoneleigh's parentage on the Stoneleigh Burbury family information page.
Click here to go to the information page for the Stoneleigh Burbury family
There does seem to be a line of descent from their elder son Thomas, although the identification of this line involves some speculation and the explaining-away of a few inconsistencies.
Basically, I believe that this Thomas married Mary TREADLE or TREDELL on 28 December 1812, and they had a son William who lived in the village of Bretford in the parish of Wolston [5]. William married Maria SUTTON on 11 November 1841 in Monks Kirby, and they had a large number of children, some of whom died in infancy, but others who grew up and had families of their own [8] [2].
This identification is supported by the parish registers for Wolston and Monks Kirby and also to a certain extent by the 1841 and 1851 census returns for Warwickshire. However, there is one sticking point in the 1851 census which doesn't quite fit the analysis. It is as follows:
William and Maria appear in the 1851 census living in a cottage near Rugby, in the census district of Brandon and Bretford. Living with them is a Thomas Burbery who is described as William's "father-in-law". This Thomas was aged 69 and was listed as having been born in Warwick [10]. It seems odd that William's father-in-law should have the same surname as him, particularly when we know his wife's maiden name was SUTTON [8]. I wonder if Maria was the one who was giving the information to the census enumerator, and although she gave her husband as the head of the household, she referred to the senior Thomas as her own father-in-law, and that is what got written down. Thomas' age does match the son of Thomas and Catherine of Stretton, although Warwick as his place of birth does seem improbable.
William and Maria had at least 13 children who were all born in Bretford and baptised in the parish of Wolston, but seven of these children died before they were very old -- and most of these died in infancy [5]. The parents and most of the remaining children turn up fairly regularly in the censuses of the time, living variously at Bretford or Brandon, both in the parish of Wolston [11].
Oone son, though, seems to have moved away entirely from the "Burbury Triangle" region. This was the son Edwin. He appears in the 1891 and 1901 censuses living in the "Castle gardens" at Arundel, Sussex, and in 1901 his occupation was given as "Head Gardener". His own place of birth is given as "Bulford" in Warwickshire (a corruption of "Bretford", perhaps?). His wife Elizabeth was born in Nawton, Yorkshire, and their single daughter Mary Agnes was born in Costessey, Norfolk [12]. This Edwin was clearly in the service of the Duke of Norfolk, and perhaps he had spent time working on the Duke's widespread estates in different parts of the country, eventually ending up at the main seat of the Dukes of Norfolk in Arundel.
However, this Edwin would appear to be a dramatic exception to the rule, which was basically that the Bourton on Dunsmore family did not stray much more than 10 miles in any direction from the central Brandon/Wolston area. In 1851 and 1861 William and Maria's family were found living in the hamlet of Bretford, almost as neighbours with another Burbery family, that of Thomas Burbery and Mary nee TREEN [10][13]. The two heads of both families, William and Thomas, were in fact first cousins once removed, as William's grandfather Thomas (who married Catherine MITCHEL) and Thomas' father James (who married Mary WRIGHT) [5] were half brothers, the former the son of the original William Burbery of Bourton by his first wife Mary CONSTANCE [1], and the latter the son of William by his second wife Susannah EDMUNDS [8]. It sounds confusing when said like that, so have a look at Figure 5 below for the same thing in graphic form.
This maze of family relationships is typical for the Burbery families in the area of Warwickshire centring on Wolston and surrounding parishes, and it is often extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to untangle them all and work out exactly who was who and how they were related. The long discussion above on the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family is as accurate as I can make it, and hopefully it describes the relationships between the people of this family as they really were. But who knows? Maybe later on further information will come to light which will either confirm what I have written above, or which will force me to scrap the whole lot and rethink everything from the ground up.
The elder branch of the Bourton on Dunsmore family (from William's first marriage to Mary CONSTANCE) suffers from a similar problem to that of the younger branch (descended from William's second marriage to Susannah EDMUNDS). This problem is that although the family flourished during the 19th century and appears frequently and regularly in various records such as parish registers and censuses, the male lines tend to dwindle, so that once we enter the 20th century, the family surname all but disappears.
A closer examination of this matter is given in the next section, Modern-day Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery Descendants.
7. Modern-day Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery Descendants
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For a family that flourished to the extent it did in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is quite surprising to find that not many of the male lines of descent continued past the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century. In other words, the later censuses for England such as the 1881 and 1891 censuses show a lot of Burberys living in places such as Bretford and Foleshill who are members of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family, but after that, my information on the families dwindles and disappears. And so now, if one looks at a list of Burbery families (or Burbury or whatever) from the modern day (such as from an electoral roll or telephone white pages), none of the names in the list appear to be connected to the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family. So where did they all disappear to?
A simple answer to this is that perhaps they *didn't* disappear. Perhaps my information is simply incomplete. Througout the generations from the original William Burbery, there are many sons for whom nothing is known apart from a baptism date. It's possible that one or more of these young lads might have grown to adulthood, married and had children of their own who carried on the name.
Part of the problem in working any of this out is the plethora of children who were given relatively common names such as "William", "Thomas", "John", etc. This makes it difficult to link up the birth of a William, say, at a particular time, with the marriage of a William 20 or 30 years later. Maybe it's the same William, maybe it isn't, and often there is no real way to tell. (A classic example of this problem is shown in the [fairly lengthy] discussion of the attempts to identify William Burbury of Stoneleigh's parents.)
The following two charts show abridged descents from William Burbery of Bourton on Dunsmore. The first chart shows the line of descent from his first marriage to Mary Constance, and the second is the family that descends from his second marriage to Susannah Edmunds. The trees have been pruned considerably to show basically just the male lines of descent. Names in brown are those who might have had further descendants who I don't know about
Another good example of the problem with common names can be seen in Figure 7. William and Susannah had *three* grandchildren who were all given the name William, and they were all born within a relatively short time of each other (1775, 1789 and 1791) [5] [6] [14]. Luckily the gap between the birth (baptism) of the first William and the other two was just large enough for me to conclude that it was the first William who married Sarah STANFIELD in 1802 [5].
And for a classic example of a son who is likely to be the ancestor of many more Burberys, you need only look at William of Bourton's first child, the William who was born in about 1744 (See Figure 6). It is highly likely that this William was the ancestor of many BURBURY / BURBERY families who are still around today. See Possible Links to Other Burbury Families below for more discussion on this.
In any case, thre is only one confirmed line of descent to the modern day out of all the lines shown in the above chart. This is the Michael A. W. BURBERY who appears at the bottom of Figure 7. This is the only continued line that exists with certainty for the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family.
8. Possible Links to Other Burbury Families
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With such a relatively uncommon surname as BURBURY / BURBERY concentrated in such a relatively small geographical location as north-eastern Warwickshire, it is likely that different families with this surname were related to each other somehow, even if direct evidence cannot be found to specify exactly what the relationship was.
The problem lies in locating *conclusive evidence*. Often evidence can be found but it isn't conclusive enough to allow us to say for certain who was who. And so when we want to draw conenctions betwen various families, we are often forced to make guesswork and speculation.
The Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family throws up a number of very good examples of this. Its confirmed origins predate the origins of some other families in the area by at least one generation. And although only one of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family has been confirmed to exist in the present day, it is possible that other Burbury families link into the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery tree in some places, but the difficulty is in proving it.
There are two significant points in the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery tree where the known information peters out. These points are found when we look at the children of William Burbery of Bourton's first marriage to Mary CONSTANCE.
William and Mary's first child was the William who was baptised on 21 January 1745 in Bourton on Dunsmore [1]. Nothing more is known of this William. There is no clear indication of whether he died at a young or old age or whether he married and had descendants of his own. And in the absence of any information on a death and burial at a young age, it is possible that this William is the same person as one of the several Williams who appear in the records a generation later, getting married and having children of his own.
For instance, he might be one of the following:
The first William, of Gosford Street, Coventry, is the earliest-known ancestor of the Coventry Burbury family. I tend to think that it is unlikely that he was in fact the son of William and Mary Burbery of Bourton on Dunsmore. The Coventry Burbury family were heavily involved in the local weaving industry in Coventry, and indeed some of the earliest references to the "Burbury" surname in Coventry are in connection with weaving [16]. So it seems unlikely to me that an intervening generation should decide to be a pauper living in Bourton and Ryton. Nevertheless, I list it here as a possibility.
Click here to go to the information page for the Coventry Burbury family
A more likely identification of this William is with the William Burbury who married Elizabeth Russell in Kenilworth on 26 November 1770. This marriage took place in the bride's home parish of Saint Nicholas [15], but after their marriage the couple moved to Stretton on Dunsmore, where they had four children baptised between the years 1771 and 1777 [2]. Two of their children -- Mary and William -- have been proposed as ancestors of two other Burbury families in the district. Mary looks like a good candidate for the Mary Burbury who was the ancestor of the Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury family. Similarly, the son William is one of a shortlist of three candidates to be "William of Stoneleigh", the ancestor of the Stoneleigh Burbury family.
Click here to go to the article on the unplaced William Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore
Another candidate for William of Stoneleigh is the William who was baptised in Stretton on Dunsmore in 1785, the son of Thomas BURBURY and Catherine née MITCHEL [2]. This Thomas Burbury was the second son of William and Mary Burbury of Bourton on Dunsmore shown in Figure 8.
The question of who were the parents of William of Stoneleigh has been dealt with more extensively in a separate article. After researching and writing that article, I have tended towards the opinion that William of Stoneleigh was descended from the Brandon Burbery family mentioned earlier, and if this were correct, then it would exclude the possibility that the Stoneleigh Burbury family was descended from the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family under discussion here.
Click here to read a discussion of the attempts to identify William of Stoneleigh's parents
Click here to go to the information page for the Stoneleigh Burbury family
So, after starting this section of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery article by stating that the Bourton family might be the ancestors of other families in the district, I've more or less excluded two of the more likely families from consideration -- namely the Coventry Burbury family and the Stoneleigh Burbury family. However, I am almost convinced that the Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury family can claim close kinship to the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family, through William and Mary's son William -- who I am guessing was the father of Mary Burbury, the ancestor of the Stretton on Dnsmore family.
Click here to go to the information page for the Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury family
9. Future Areas for Research
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Other related links: