1. Introduction
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The Brandon Burbery family appears to have its earliest-known roots around the hamlet of Brandon in the parish of Wolston, although they spread out from Wolston and lived in many different parishes in the area of northern Warwickshire. In fact, they spread out so much that it is sometimes difficult to be sure that we are dealing with the same family.
Many of the events in the lives of the Brandon Burberys take place in parishes that are close to Brandon, such as Wolston and Stretton on Dunsmore. The following map shows the relative locations of some of the places that are mentioned in this article.
The family that is covered in this article is called the Brandon Burbery family because the earliest-confirmed ancestor was a William Burbury who lived in Brandon. There is another family grouping that I call the Wolston Burbery family, and this family is almost certainly related very closely to the Brandon Burbery family (and a discussion of this possible relationship appears below). However, at the moment the link between the two families cannot be confirmed, so for the purposes of reference, "Brandon Burbery" family refers to the family whose earliest-confirmed ancestor is William Burbury of Brandon, whereas the "Wolston Burbery family is the family from Wolston whose earliest-confirmed ancestor is currently Thomas Burbery of Wolston.
2. Early Burberys in Wolston
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The BURBURY/BURBERY surname appears in Wolston from quite early times, well before the time of William Burbury of Brandon. The first mention that I have found in the parish records is a Henry BURBERIE who married Elizabeth TAYLOR on 18 December 1584, and this is followed by baptisms of three children: William (1585), John (1587) and Moses (1590). The next parish register entries are burials, for a John BURBURH [sic] in 1618 and Elizabeth BURBERIE (probably wife of the Henry above) in 1627) [1].
After this there is a seeming gap of a few generations, until the appearance of a William who has three children baptised: Elizabeth (1662), Mary (1663) and William (1668). The mother's name is not mentioned, but a Phillidelfia [sic] BURBERY, wife of William, was buried in Wolston in 1668 [1], so it might have been her.
 Figure 2 - Early Burburys in Wolston |
The trail become a bit more difficult to follow around this point. For example, the Wolston burial registers have an entry for a "Widow Burbury" of Brandon in 1681. The register doesn't say who her late husband was, so it is impossible to say who she was. Similarly, there is a burial for William Burbury in 1696 [1]. William has always been a commonly-used name in the family, and so in the absence of other information, he is also an unknown at this stage. These early references may or may not be connected to William Burbury of Brandon, but it is highly likely that they are. The following tree shows some hypothetical links that might represent an earlier generation for the Brandon Burbery family. Hypothetical links are indicated in red. |
3. William Burbury of Brandon
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William Burbury of Brandon's date of birth and date of death are unknown; however, he can be placed in a certain timeframe by his marriages. The first marriage was to Katherine LYNS in 1698. This marriage appears in the parish registers for Radford Semele (a parish a few kilometres east of Warwick) in 1698 [2], and it is followed by the burial of a Catherine BURBERY, wife of William, in 1700 in Wolston [1]. A single child Elizabeth was baptised in 1698 to this couple [2].
William then married a second time to Mary FAWKES. The marriage took place in the parish of Dunchurch a few kilometres south of Rugby, and the register states that William was of Brandon and Mary was of Toft, a hamlet in the Dunchurch parish. The register also styles William as "Mister", implying that he was probably of yeoman class and hence possessed of some wealth [3].
I have no further information on Elizabeth, William's daughter by his first wife Katherine. From his second marriage to Mary Fawkes, he had several children, all baptised in Wolston, namely: William (1704), John (1707), Arthur (1709), Ann (1715) and Mary (1719). The baptism register entries for Arthur and Ann explicitly state that William was "of Brandon" [1].
This tree shows the known children of William Burbury of Brandon, together with indications of where they subsequently lived. Further details on each fanmily are given below, but one thing that can be noted is that the three locations mentioned -- Brandon, Over Whitacre and Nuneaton, are a little bit removed from each other, although they are still in the general area of northern Warwickshire. Nuneaton is about 8 kilometres to the north of Coventry, and Over Whitacre is between Coventry and Birmingham. I don't know any details of William's livelihood at this point, but possibly he was the owner or tenant of land that was situated in a belt running from Bourton/Wolston up to Nuneaton and across to Over Whitacre. I would dearly love to locate a will for William (something which I haven't managed yet) to see what sort of estate he had and how he divided it up between his children.
See 4. The Link to the Wolston Burbery Family below for an explanation of the Thomas Burbery who appears in this tree in red.
4. The Link to the Wolston Burbery Family
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As mentioned in the introduction to this article, there are two main family groupings that spring up in the parish of Wolston. These are the Brandon Burbury family, headed by William Burbury of Brandon, and the Wolston Burbery family, headed by Thomas Burbery of Wolston. It is highly likely that these two families are closely related. They both appear to have been wealthy (as evidenced by the use of words such as "yeoman" and "Mister" to describe them), and they were living in the same parish at around the same time. Thomas was a generation younger than William, raising the possibility that he might have been William's son, or perhaps a nephew [1].
Figure 3 above shows the children of William Burbury of Brandon, and it includes a Thomas Barbery (sic, as this is how the source reads) of Wolston in red. He appears in red because I'm not sure that he is actually a son of William and Mary. The IGI entry for the baptism of Thomas in Exhall in 1711 gives the father's name as William, but does not give a mother's name [4]. Furthermore, I have not checked the original parish register entry, so I cannot confirm the accuracy of the IGI entry. Exhall is a little more than 5 kilometres north of Coventry, and probably about 12 kilometres north-west of Brandon. But it is close to Nuneaton, where William's son Arthur lived [5], meaning it was in an area where William probably had farming or other business interests. Moreover, there is a gap of six years betwen the baptisms of William's children Arthur (1709) and Ann (1715) [1], so that another child could easily have been born during the intervening period, say in 1711.
This Thomas is of further interest because he is a possible candidate -- and indeed at the moment, the *only* candidate I have -- for Thomas Burbery of Wolston, the earliest-known ancestor of the Wolston Burbery family. Thomas of Wolston's date of birth is also unknown, but his first child Robert was baptised in 1737 [1], which suggests that Thomas was probably born sometime around 1715 or earlier -- maybe even in 1711.
One research task that I haven't accomplished yet is locating the will for William Burbury of Brandon. It does not appear in the wills that were proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, so I am hoping that it was proved locally in the diocese of Lichfield, and that a copy exists in the Lichfield Record Office. Such a will wuld hopefully let me confirm whether William of Brandon did in fact have a son Thomas, and if he did, this would go a long way to confirming the identification of the Thomas baptised in Exhall in 1711 as Thomas Burbery of Wolston.
5. The Next Generation: William Junior of Brandon
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Details on the marriages and subsequent children of William and Mary are sketchy and somewhat speculative. The clearest and shortest story is that of the younger daughter Mary. She died in infancy and was buried on 29 October 1719, three days after she was baptised [1]. Ann might have married Joseph MILES on 17 October 1743 in the parish of St Michael, Coventry [5], but that is a guess.
Their eldest son William (1704--1764) continued to live in Brandon, giving it as his residence at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth LAMBERT in 1740 which was celebrated in the parish of Wolston. This marriage was apparently childless and short-lived, as Elizabeth died in 1744. Her burial entry in the Wolston parish register gives her husband as "Mr William Burbury of Brandon", an indication that the younger William appears to have inherited his father's status and probably his estates also [1].
William Junior married a second time, to another Elizabeth, nee GEORGE [6]. This second marriage was recorded in the parish registers for Sheldon, north of Solihull and east of present-day Birmingham. This seems a long way away from Brandon, which is on the other side of Coventry, but again it is consistent with earlier suggestions that William Senior of Brandon had estates or business interests in this area.
William and Elizabeth had six children, but again details on them are scarce. Their daughter Jane (b. 1746) married Daniel WAGSTAFF in Nuneaton in 1768 [4]. A son Edward (b. 1747) married Lidia JEE at Coventry in 1777 [7] and had a daughter Betsey who was baptised in 1778 at Nuneaton [4]. And another daughter Elizabeth (b. 1749) possibly married Thomas SMITH on 3 June 1790 at Wolston [1], but this is not confirmed. And their youngest son John is a likely candidate for the John Burbury who married firstly Ann WOLFE in 1771 and secondly Sarah CLARKE in 1776, with both marriages taking place in the parish of Stretton on Dunsmore [8].
Click here to go to the entry for John Burbury in the Miscellaneous Family Groups index
William and Elizabeth's eldest son was Thomas who was baptised in 1745 in the parish of Barston (another parish roughly in between Coventry and Birmingham, a few kilometres north-west of Kenilworth) [4]. This Thomas is currently nothing more than a name and a baptism date. Did he grow to adulthood, marry and have children of his own? I don't know. He is about the only hope left for a continued male line from William Junior of Brandon, otherwise William Junior's male line appears to have died out.
6. The Next Generation: John of Over Whitacre
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Information seems slightly firmer -- and the number of known descendants much more plentiful -- for John (1707--1776), the second son of William of Brandon and his wife Mary [1]. John married Mary MEIGH on 11 May 1731 at Coventry [4], and after that he appears to have moved to the area around Over Whitacre and Shustoke, for his and Mary's children were baptised in parishes in that area, including Mary (1733) at Allesley [4], and John (1735), William (1736), Thomas (1738) and Joseph (1739) at Over Whitacre. This is followed by the burial of John Burbery, Yeoman in Over Whitacre on 22 February 1776 [9]. Unfortunately the burial register entry does not give John's age at the time of his death.
The subsequent story of most of John and Mary's children is largely unknown. William moved to the neighbouring parish of Shustoke and had a family whose descendants continue today. (See "The Shustoke Branch" below for the continuing story of this branch.) Other than that, a burial entry has been identified for Thomas (30 August 1763) in the parish of Over Whitacre [9], but that is really all. Thomas would have died at the fairly young age of 25. Certainly I need to check this family further, both by looking for possible wills, and also for corresponding entries in the parish registers for marriages and baptisms. There also needs to be some work done in tracing where exactly this family lived and how they came to be there.
7. The Next Generation: Arthur of Nuneaton
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The story of Arthur, the third confirmed son of William and Mary Burbury of Brandon, can be dealt with fairly quickly, because not a lot is known about him at all. He married Hannah DORWOOD on 9 September 1729 in the parish of Saint Michael's, Coventry, at which time he was "of Nuneaton", a few kilometres to the north of Coventry [5].
No children have been found for this couple, and their subsequent movements are also unclear. Possibly the following burial entries in the Coventry Holy Trinity parish registers are for them, but I'm not sure.
The wills at the Lichfield Record Office do not appear to include the will of an Arthur Burbury from around 1780, but that needs to be re-checked. Other than that, the file on Arthur and Hannah is pretty blank.
8. The Shustoke Branch
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A recent research coup for me was to link up what I used to call the "Shustoke Burbery" family with the Brandon Burbery family. The weay that this happened is a story that I'm sure will appeal to other researchers or indeed anyone who is interested in their family history.
Shustoke is a village and parish to the north of Solihull and to the west of Birmingham. The earliest-known ancestor of this Shustoke Burbery family was a John Burbery (1777-1821) who was a farmer at Shustoke. His parentage was unknown, but I had speculated that he was somehow linked to the Burbery family of nearby Over Whitacre. (See "6. The Next Generation: John of Over Whitacre" above.) Specifically, John Burbery of Over Whitacre had a son William who was buried in the parish of Saint Cuthbert, Shustoke in 1816 [10], and that seemed to me to be an important link between the two families. However, the problem was in finding a birth or baptism for John Burbery of Shustoke.
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I started with the assumption that John had been born in around 1777, because he was 44 years old when he died and was buried at Shustoke in 1821 [10]. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) contained the baptisms of two Burberys in Shustoke around this time -- a Frances in 1776 and a Thomas in 1779, both to parents William and Mary [4]. However the expected (or hoped-for) entry for a John in 1777 was not there. I had other things I wanted to check in the Shustoke parish registers, so I ordered the microfilms of the registers from my local Family History Centre. And on the page of baptisms for March 1778, there was the baptism of a John BURB.... to parents William and Mary [10]. The surname was incomplete as the entry had run into the middle of the book's binding and was illegible on the microfilm, but the first four letters were correct, and there were no other couples named William and Mary who were having children baptised in Shustoke for at least 30 years either side of this entry ..... so I'd found my John!! |
 Figure 6 - The Shustoke Burbery Branch |
I assume William Burbery (1736--1816) continued the occupation of farming in Shustoke. His marriage to Mary Taylor in 1775 is the first reference to the surname to be seen in this parish, and from that point onwards, William and his family continue to be the only Burberys in Shustoke. William spent a term in 1793 as warden of the parish, as did his son John later on too, in 1805 and 1806 [10].
William's son John and his wife Elizabeth had 11 children baptised in Shustoke between 1804 and 1820, according to entries appearing in the Shustoke parish registers [10]. I have not confirmed the details of their marriage and Elizabeth's surname is unknown, but it is possible that they were the John BARBERRY and Elizabeth BLUNT who were married on 17 January 1804 in Biford, Staffordshire [4]. (Biford is a village in Staffordshire about 15 kilometres to the north of Shustoke and 5 kilometres north of Tamworth.)
John and Elizabeth's family was quite large [10]. Of the 11 children, one son Joseph died in infancy [4] , and three of their children, Thomas (b. 1813), Edward (b. 1814) and Mary (b. 1820) were listed as unmarried in the 1881 census (and also in the 1891 census for the latter two) [11]. However, three sons -- William, Robert (b. 1811) and Joseph (b. 1818) -- are known to have married and had families of their own.
John died in about September 1821, and was buried in the parish of Saint Cuthbert, Shustoke on 10 September 1821 [10]. He apparently died without making a will, as administration of his estate was granted to his widow Elizabeth on 14 December 1821. (The bondsmen were Elizabeth herself, Solomon Smith, auctioneer of Sutton Coldfield, and Thomas Smith, writing clerk of Lichfield, and the estate was value at under 600 pounds.) [12] Elizabeth continued to live in Shustoke, and passed away in 1872 at the resepctable age of 91 [10].
9. William Burbery of Dudley, Worcestershire
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Firstly I would like to express my gratitude to Don and Margaret Cochrane of Dudley in Worcestershire who did a lot of the actual research that enabled me to link up much of the information about the family of this William.
William Burbery (b. 1804) was the eldest child that I have recorded for John and Elizabeth Burbery of Shustoke. He was baptised on 28 December 1804 in Shustoke [10].
The next reference I have for him is a series of baptisms that took place in the parish of Saint Thomas in Dudley, Worcestershire. William and his wife Ann had a total of seven children baptised at Dudley from 1830 through to 1846 [13], although their eldest child Amelia was born in Heywood Forest, Warwickshire according to the 1851 census [14].
In the 1851 census, William's occupation is given as a chandler (candle maker) [14]. This is also his occupation in the parish register entry for the marriage of his daughter Amelia to James Davis, a marriage which took place on 27 August 1862, also in the parish of Saint Dudley. However, although William is listed as Amelia's father, the register also states that he was deceased [13]. No death record has yet been located, so we can assume that William died sometime between 1851 and 1862.
Apart from Amelia's marriage, there is only one other child of William and Ann that I have further information on at this stage, and that is their son William (b. 1835) [13]. He appears in the 1861 census for Dudley, with his wife Sarah and two sons Herbert William (aged 4) and George Harry (aged three months) [15].
From Dudley the family moved up to the area around Chadderton in Lancashire (which is nowadays part of Greater Manchester), because William and Sarah's children appear there in the 1881 census. Herbert William was living in Chadderton with his wife Elizabeth and son Frank, and he was employed as an iron roller. George Harry (giving his name as just Harry) was also in Chadderton, single, and employed as an iron puddler [16]. Unfortunately William and Sarah themselves do not appear in the 1881 census for Dudley or Chadderton or for anywhere else either. However, it is possible that William died in 1885, as a death for a William Burbery was registered in the district of Oldham (near Chadderton) in the September quarter of that year [17].
By 1901 the family had dispersed a bit more. George Harry was still living in Chadderton, but by this time he had married a lady by the name of Mary and they had a son Frank who was aged 10 [18]; Herbert William and his second wife Annie and family had moved down to Aston near Birmingham [19]; and there was also an Ernest Burbery living in Oldham in the 1901 census with his family; this Ernest gave his age as 37 and his place of birth as Dudley, Worcestershire, so it is possible that he was another son of William and Sarah who was born after the 1861 census [20]. The baptisms for William and Sarah's children have not been found in the IGI or in the Saint Thomas parish registers, so I have not been able to prove that Ernest was the son of William and Sarah, but it does seem likely.
The modern-day descendants of George Harry and Ernest have not been traced further than the 1901 census. The descendants of Herbert William, on the other hand, are quite plentiful.
10. The Three Burbery Brothers of Birmingham
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The three brothers who are referred to here are George Harry, Alexander John and William, who were the sons of Herbert William and Annie Burbery of Aston and formerly of Chadderton, Lancashire.
Early on in my researches I corresponded with a Dr William Clarence ("Bill") Burbury of New Brunswick, Canada, whose family was one of several living in the area around New Brunswick, and also Maine and Massachusetts in the United States. Bill told me a bit of his family history, and mentioned that his family and some other families living elsewhere in Canada were descended from two brothers who had come to Canada from Birmingham in England when they were still quite young. Apparently they had been sponsored to come over by the Church of England. The two brothers who came over were Harry and Alex, and a third brother William stayed behind in Birmingham. The subsequent descendants of Harry kept the "Burbery" spelling of their name, but Alex changed his spelling to "Burbury", and this is the spelling used by his subsequent descendants [21].
Later on I corresponded with several other members of these families, but none of them knew exactly why the children had been sponsored to come out, nor could they shed any light on the names and origins of the boys' parents. I managed to contact a son of the brother William who had stayed behind, but even this contact was unable to shed any light on the matter. And so these families stayed as one of the many unplaced family groupings of Burburys and Burberys in Warwickshire. I even wrote up what I knew of the families and included it on this website under the title of the "Birmingham Burbery" family.
The breakthrough came when the 1901 census was released and made available for browsing over the Internet. In the searchable index for the census, I found the household of a Herbert W. Burbury living at Aston Manor in Warwickshire with his wife Annie and children Elizabeth, George H. and Alexander J. My correspondents had told me that the brother Harry's full name had in fact been George Harry, so this meant that the parents of the brothers had finally been located. William must have been the youngest of the brothers and was hence born after the 1901 census [19] [21].
And as a result of the kind assistance provided by Don and Margaret Cochrane of Worcestershire, I was able to link Herbert W. Burbery to the Burbery family of Dudley, Worcestershire, and thence back to John and Elizabeth Burbery of Shustoke. (See 9. William Burbery of Dudley, Worcestershire above.)
11. Other Descendants of the Over Whitacre Branch
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The other two sons of John and Elizabeth Burbery of Shustoke who are known to have had families of their own are Robert (b. 1811) and Joseph (b. 1818).
| Robert Burbery married Ann BIRCH in 15 January 1845 at Aston Juxta, Birmingham [4], and the 1851 census has this family living at Curdworth, a village close to Shustoke. Between 1851 and 1881 we lose sight of Robert and his two children Mary (b. 1845) and Edward (b. 1848) [22]. Robert died before 1881, as his wife Ann is found in the 1881 census living in Curdworth and described as a widow [23]. However, Mary and Edward do not appear to be in the 1881 census. Possibly Mary married and the marriage hasn't been identified. The third son William (b. 1846) was unmarried in 1881 and living in Coventry Road, Solihull and working as a labourer [23]. |
 Figure 10 - Robert and Ann Burbery of Curdworth, Warwickshire |
Joseph Burbery married Sarah Ann REDDING on 22 July 1861 in the parish of Saint George, Birmingham, and they had at least six children who were all born in Birmingham [4]. The family appears in the 1881 census as living at 5 Brougham Street, Aston, and Joseph's occupation is given as "gardener" [24]. I have found two of the sons -- Samuel aged 33 and Ferederick aged 28 -- in the 1901 census, both living at the same address as in their childhood, but both are unmarried [25]. I have no information on any possible descendants of Joseph and Mary Ann Burbery down to the present day.
12. Future Areas for Research
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Other related links: