1. Introduction
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(Note: I am indebted to many people for the information that I have been able to collect on the Stoneleigh Burbury family. To list them all would take half a page or more of what is already looking to be a very long article. However, I would like to express my particular thanks to Irene Makepeace-Lott, the late William Burbury of Kenilworth, Malcolm Burbury and Liz Lane for working together with me, providing me with copies of their notes, and also for personally showing me great hospitality during my research trips to the United Kingdom. And a few parts of the following text are taken from notes which Malcolm has compiled and which I have written into the overall narrative. Thanks must also go to Jack Studer for his extensive notes on the family of Joseph Burbury of Elgin, Illinois.)
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The parish of Stoneleigh is quite large in area. In early times the parish land belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Stoneleigh, but after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII the lands changed hands and eventually came into the ownership of the Leigh family in 1561 [1]. The Stoneleigh Burbury family begins with a William Burbury (1778--1832). William was born in the neighbouring parish of Stretton on Dunsmore [2]. However, he and his subsequent family lived in the parish and village of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, and as a result I have called this family the "Stoneleigh" Burbury family rather than the "Stretton on Dunsmore" Burbury family. |
 Figure 1 - Stoneleigh village centre |
The BURBURY or BURBERY surname appears in Stoneleigh from quite early times. One of the earliest references I have to the name in Warwickshire is that of a William Burbury of Stoneleigh whose will was proved in 1535. Irene Makepeace-Lott's earliest-recorded Burbury in Stoneleigh was Thomas Burbury, a prosperous yeoman who had a middle-sized farm of 70 acres and lived in a stone house, now demolished, in 1578. He was followed by Humphrey Burbury, Thomas Burbury (1646) and Edward Burbury (1661) [1]. Details of what is known about some of these earlier Burburys are given on the Origins of the Burbury Family page (very much in unfinished draft form at the moment so bear wth me), but although the Stoneleigh Burbury family also lived in Stoneleigh from the 19th century onwards, any link that exists between William of Stoneleigh and these earlier Burburys is unknown.
Click here to read a discussion of the origins of the Burbury family
The first (known) reference to Stoneleigh for the Stoneleigh Burbury family is in the marriage of William and Catherine COX (abt. 1784--1853). This marriage took place on 15 October 1805 [3]. The Stoneleigh parish register does not record much information on the marriage apart from the names of both parties and the date.
2. Identifying William of Stoneleigh's Parents
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Although William of Stoneleigh is the earliest-confirmed member of the Stoneleigh Burbury family, a lot of time and effort has been devoted in trying to trace his line further back, starting with the identification of his parents. One of the driving forces behind all of this speculation -- apart from the usual task of taking the known generations of a family further back in history -- has been a particular tradition that has grown up in the Stoneleigh Burbury family.
This tradition centres around the story of how the members of the Stoneleigh Burbury family were somehow closely related to a Burbury who went to Australia and had some success in his business activities, so much so that he invited his Stoneleigh cousins to come out and join him [1]. Although a few Burburys from the general Warwickshire area did go out to Australia at various times, it seems likely that the emigrant Burbury being referred to in this tradition was Thomas Burbury (1809--1870), a member of the Coventry Burbury family. As a result, several researchers -- including myself -- have been working to try and establish what the link between the Coventry Burbury family and the Stoneleigh Burbury family might have been, but so far our efforts have not met with definitive success.
One theory that I have developed is that both the Stoneleigh Burbury family and the Coventry Burbury family were related through a mutual link to another family grouping from the same general area of north-eastern Warwickshire. This other family is the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family. The following chart shows the first marriage and children of a William Burbery, the earliest-confirmed ancestor of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family, along with hypothetical links showing how I think the various families might be connected.
Note that the proposed links shown above between the three families --- Bourton on Dunsmore, Coventry and Stoneleigh -- are speculative and unproven. You can read more details about the proposed link on a separate page on this website. And because the discussion of William of Stoneleigh's parentage is fairly detailed and involved, it has also been given its own separate page. You can follow the links below to read these separate discussions.
Click here to read a discussion of the attempts to identify William of Stoneleigh's parents
Click here to read a discussion of the link between the Coventry and Stoneleigh families
Click here to go to the information page for the Coventry Burbury family
Click here to go to the information page for the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family
3. The Early Years in Stoneleigh
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William and Catherine Burbury had the following eight children:
James, bapt. 8 March 1807, Stoneleigh Except for Ann, whose baptism record hasn't been found, William and Catherine baptised all of their children in Stoneleigh [3]. Moreover, William was living in Stoneleigh at the time of the 1851 census, at which time his occupation was recorded as "agricultural labourer" [2], and his burial is recorded in the Stoneleigh parish register on 18 February 1852 [3]. |
 Figure 3 - Saint Mary's Church, Stoneleigh |
Ann's identification as a child of William and Catherine is on the basis of her marriage to James JEFFS in 1830 and on the 1851 census for Cubbington, Warwickshire. The marriage took place in Stoneleigh, and Ann was "of this parish" at the time, or in other words, she actually lived in the parish of Stoneleigh [3]. Moreover, the witnesses were James Burbury and Sarah Burbery [sic], both of whom are known children of William and Catherine. In the 1851 census, Ann's place of birth was given as Stoneleigh and her age was 40, which indicates a year of birth of around 1811 [4]. This fits nicely into a gap of several years between the baptism of William and Catherine's son John in 1808 and their daughter Sarah in 1813.
Another child who has caused something of a mild research headache is the first son William who was baptised on 14 May 1815 [3]. William and Catherine had two children named William who appear in the Stoneleigh baptism registers, but this is not unusual in cases where the first child dies at a young age and the name is re-used for a subsequent child. This tradition suggests, therefore, that the first child William died sometime before 1822 when the second child William was baptised, but the Stoneleigh parish registers have no such record of the burial of a William Burbury.
There is, however, a burial entry for a James Burbury aged 2 1/2 (two and a half) on 8 April 1817. The burial register includes a note that the child was "son of William and Katherine BURBURY who fell off the bridge & was drowned" [3]. There was only one William and Catherine Burbury in Stoneleigh at the time, and of their eight children, the one who would have been 2 1/2 years old in April 1817 was their third son William who was baptised in May 1815. Their eldest son James was born in 1807 and would have been 10 years old in 1817, and besides this James grew to adulthood. So it seems reasonable that the child who drowned tragically in the River Sowe was the first William and that the name "James" appearing in the burial register is an error.
Catherine Burbury nee Cox was also born in Stoneleigh. Her year of birth was around 1784 according to the 1851 census entry [2] and from her age at her death in 1853 [3]. However, some correspondents have put her birth at around 1788 [5]. In either case, her baptism has not been located in the Stoneleigh parish register for any year around this period. Malcolm Burbury did manage to find the following baptisms, but none of them were for a child named Catherine.
Sarah, bapt. 5 March 1769 to Richard and Elizabeth COX
Mary, bapt. 20 April 1780 to James and Ann COX
Elizabeth, bapt. 5 May 1782 to James and Ann COX
Thomas, bapt. 7 September 1788 to James and Ann COX
Elizabeth, bapt. 7 September 1788 to James and Ann COX
William bapt. 10 August 1793 to James and Ann COX
John, bapt. 27 March 1796 to James and Ann COX [3]
Malcolm surmises that it is possible Catherine was baptised in a nonconformist chapel. However, he also notes that William and Catherine's marriage was witnessed by a Thomas and Mary COX, and that the minister who conducted the marriage was also a Thomas COX. Would the minister have been permitted to sign as witness to his own work? Whatever the case, for the moment Catherine must remain a mystery.
4. The Market Gardeners - James and William
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James Burbury (1807--1890) and William Burbury (1822--1901) were the eldest and youngest sons respectively of William and Catherine of Stoneleigh [3]. James never married [5], but he lived and worked with William at their market garden nurseries, first at Whitemoor Gardens, Kenilworth [6], and then at Arch's Lane, Berkswell [7], and finally at the Crewe Farm, Kenilworth [8], where they both died, James in 1890 and William in 1901 [1] [3].
The younger William started off his working career as a millwright. He is listed as a "wheelwright" in the 1841 census, when he was still living with his parents at Stoneleigh [9], but in later references, his occupation is given as "millwright". I need to check the 1841 census reference to see if "wheelwright" is some sort of mistranscription. On 23 October 1848, William Burbury, millwright, married Elizabeth KENCH in the parish of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, whilst living at Southrop in Oxfordshire [5]. This is our William, as later sources such as the censuses from 1861 to 1891 state that his wife Elizabeth was from Hook Norton in Oxfordshire [6] [7] [8] [10]. Another reference that calls William a millwright is the entry in the Kenilworth baptism register for William and Elizabeth's son William in 1853 [11]. William does not appear with his wife Elizabeth and eldest daughter Mary in the 1851 census return for Hook Norton, and he also does not appear in Warwickshire during this time, so his whereabouts in 1851 are at present unknown [1].
It is the 1851 census for Hook Norton which gives "Mitchel" as a middle name for William and Elizabeth's eldest daughter Mary [1], and this is one piece of evidence that supports Irene Makepeace-Lott's theory that the Stoneleigh family descend from Thomas BURBURY and Catherine nee MITCHEL who married in Stretton on Dunsmore in 1780 (see Identifying William Burbury of Stoneleigh's Parents for further discussion on this.
Click here to read a discussion of the attempts to identify William of Stoneleigh's parents
Another question that arises from this is what was William doing in Oxfordshire? Irene Makepeace-Lott tells me of her aunt Dorothy Burbury (daughter of Frank and Ruth nee BEAN) who told Irene back in the 1970s that William joined the "Free Church" and was cast out of the family by his "Leek Wootton relatives" as a result, and so he went to Oxfordshire and became involved in the wool industry, as both Hook Norton and Chipping Norton were wool towns [1].
This suggests that the Stoneleigh Burbury family was closely related somehow to the Kenilworth Burbury family, which included the Burburys that lived at Wootton Grange in Leek Wootton. However, apart from the obvious fact that the surnames are the same, no direct evidence of this has been found.
Click here to go to the information page for the Kenilworth Burbury family
James the eldest son of William and Catherine was a gardener (or a gardener and florist) according to all census entries that have been found for him from 1851 to 1881 [2] [6] [7] [8] [9]. He was aged 44, unmarried and still living with his parents in 1851. Both parents had died by 1853 [3], and James probably inherited whatever estate they might have left behind.
It must have been around this time that James joined with his brother William the Millwright -- 15 years younger than him -- in setting up a market garden. Their brother John was only 16 months younger than James and was already working as a gardener [12], but for reasons we can only guess at, it was William and not John who went into partnership with James. Although the Kenilworth register called William a "Millwright" in 1853, from 1855 onwards the same registers were calling him a "Gardener" instead [11]. The 1861 census shows James and William at Whitegate Garden, Kenilworth [6], presumably already successfully carrying on their business which continued at Berkswell and culminated in their later business at Crewe Farm.
The 1861 census shows:
| Name | Rel. | Mar | Age | Occupation | Birthplace |
| James BURBURY | Bro | W | 54 | Gardener & Florist | Stoneleigh |
| William BURBURY | Head | M | 40 | Gardener & Florist | Stoneleigh |
| Elizabeth BURBURY | Wife | M | 36 | Gardener's wife | Hook Norton |
| Mary BURBURY | Daur | U | 11 | Scholar | Hook Norton |
| William BURBURY | Son | 9 | Scholar | Hook Norton | |
| Sarah BURBURY | Daur | 7 | Scholar | Kenilworth | |
| Elizabeth BURBURY | Daur | 4 | Scholar | Kenilworth | |
| Thomas BURBURY | Son | 2 | Scholar | Kenilworth [6] |
The "W" against James' name in the above census transcription is a puzzle, and Malcolm Burbury (who provided me with the transcription) says that it might be a transcription error, as all other references to James up until his death in 1890 state that he never married, and Irene's transcription of the same census entry gives James as indeed unmarried [1]. The other puzzle is why James' name was entered first when William was the head of the household. This might indicate that James was the senior partner and/or dealt with all the paperwork.
Some time in 1865 the family moved to Berkswell, where James, William and William's family (minus William and Elizabeth's children William and Elizabeth) appear living at Arch's Lane Nurseries [7]. After this they moved to "Crewe Farm" near Kenilworth in about 1879, and subsequently appear there at the time of the 1881 census [8], where they continued to live until James died in 1890 and William in 1901. Unfortunately Arch's Lane no longer exists, and Irene regrets that she does not have a picture of the house which was demolished [1].
Irene's notes include some descriptions of "Crewe Farm" which appeared in local publications in 187 and 1888. They are transcribed below:
(From "Farm Houses 1887", p.5)
WM. BURBURY, Crewe farm, 227 3 5*
Part of this farmhouse and some of the outbuildings, also about 3 acres of land were occupied by the late Joseph Shakespeare who died this year. WM. BURBURY now occupies the whole of the house and all the outbuildings and the small grass field which was occupied by the late Joseph Shakespeare. It is a good farmhouse with 6 or 7 bedrooms, 2 living rooms and good outbuildings, but the house requires stripping and re-tiling, a room papering, a window re-leading, barn roof re-tiling and a new door for barn, also a bedroom floor and staircase repairing.
(From "Farm Houses 1888", p.6)
WM. BURBURY, Crewe farm, 227 3 5*
This is a good farmhouse with 6 or 7 bedrooms, 2 living rooms and good outbuildings. The house has been re-tiled and a bedroom raised this year, windows re-leaded, floors and staircases repaired and rooms are being painted and papered. House has also been spouted; in fact the house has been put into excellent repair. Barn roof has also been re-tiled and a new door provided for barn, but some painting is still required for outbuildings and a large yard metalling or filling up.
* Area in acres, roods and perches.
James and William appear to have been successful in their enterprise, according to Irene, they succeeded in putting a new cabbage on the market called "Drumhead" which is used to this day. William was a keen researcher, and while Dorothy Burbury was living at Ivy Cottage in Berkswell, she remembers that William was working on developing a blue rose. She showed Irene a purple rambling rose (probably Veilchenblau, says Irene) with which William was experimenting around the time he died .William's son Thomas James took over the Upper Crewe when his father grew old. Thomas' younger brother Frank occupied the Lower Crewe from 1886 to 1888 and then moved with his wife Ruth to Leamington Spa and became a butcher [1].
(Back row, left to right):
Ruth Burbury nee Bean,
Frank Burbury,
Annie Bean nee Burbury,
John Bean,
Helene Bean (young girl seated),
Elizabeth Burbury nee Kench,
Peter Beesley,
Harold Bean (young boy),
Elizabeth (Bessie) Burbury,
William Burbury,
Harold Burbury
After William's death, his wife Elizabeth lived on with the family. Thomas James continued to have "Crewe Farm" until the latter part of the First World War, but then moved to "Rooksley" at Balsall Street near Berkswell [1].
Click here to read Thomas James Burbury's individual biography
Of William and Elizabeth's other children (siblings of Thomas James Burbury):
Many of Thomas James and Elizabeth Burbury's descendants still live in the Kenilworth area, both within Kenilworth itself and also in neighbouring cities and towns such as Coventry and Leamington. However, none of the family live in the parish of Stoneleigh any more. Some even left England altogether and went overseas. William Henry and Sarah have already been mentioned [5] [15]; another Burbury member from this family who went overseas was Cyril Wilmot Burbury, son of Thomas James and Elizabeth. Cyril married Mary Ann (Mollie) Young, and they had a daughter Myrtle who was born in 1923 [5]. The family went to British Columbia in Canada in around 1930, and although they kept up correspondence with the family back home, eventually they lost touch. Irene asked me and some other research colleagues in the Stoneleigh family to see if we could locate Myrtle, but unfortunately we were too late -- she had passed away in 1967 [17].
(Back row, left to right):
Peter Beesley,
May Beesley,
John Bean,
Elizabeth Burbury,
Thomas Seymour Burbury,
Pollie Burbury,
Harold Burbury,
Lillie Ward,
George Ward,
Ruth Burbury
(Middle row, seated)
Bessie Beesley,
Annie Bean
& baby (probably her son Bryan),
Thomas James Burbury,
Elizabeth Burbury nee Kench,
William Burbury,
Mary Bean & Nellie,
J. Frank Burbury &
Dorothy
(Front row, children)
Doris Burbury,
Cyril Burbury,
William Harold Burbury,
William H. (Harry) Burbury,
Frederick Ewen Burbury,
Harold Bean,
Sydney Ward
5. The Yorkshire Branch
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One of the sons of William and Catherine of Stoneleigh was John Burbury (1808--1883). This John grew up in Warwickshire, but later moved with his family to Yorkshire.
John's childhood and probably most of his working life were spent in Warwickshire. He was baptised in the parish of Stoneleigh along with most of his brothers and sisters [3]. In 1838, at the time of his first marriage to Ellen BUFFEY, he was living in Mill Street, Warwick and working as a gardener. This marriage was solemnised on 14 October 1838 at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Warwick, and John's elder brother James was one of the witnesses . However, the marriage did not last long, as Ellen died in March 1839 [18].
John, now a widower, married a second time to Mary Ann BRADLEY on 28 April 1840 at Saint Nicholas [18]. John and Mary Ann then had quite a large family. Their first three children -- William (b. 1841), James (b. 1843) and John (b. 1844) were all baptised in the parish of Saint Nicholas, Warwick [18], but from the next child Thomas (b. 1847) onwards, the family appears to have moved to nearby Kenilworth, as all the subsequent children -- Charles (b. 1849), Arthur (b. 1850), Alfred (b. 1852), Ellen (b. 1853) and Elizabeth (b. 1856) -- were all baptised there [11]. The 1851 census gives the family's address more precisely as Tan House Lane, Kenilworth [12].
A problem occurred when identifying John and Mary Ann's children. Malcolm Burbury looked at the parish registers for Saint Nicholas, Kenilworth and found the following series of baptisms, all performed on the same date of 24 June 1857:
Elizabeth, daughter of John and Elizabeth, gardener
Ellen, daughter of John and Elizabeth, gardener
Alfred, son of John and Elizabeth, gardener
Arthur, son of John and Elizabeth, gardener [11]
There was no known couple John and Elizabeth Burbury in Kenilworth at this time. However, the 1861 census for Sowerby St Peters in Halifax, Yorkshire has four children with the above names as the children of John Burbury, widow, along with the other known children of John and Mary Ann [19]. So it appears that somehow the mother's name was confused in the Kenilworth baptism register.
Malcolm gives a hypothetical situation that might explain this: the parish registers for Saint Nicholas, Kenilworth contain the burial of a Mary Burbury of Kenilworth aged 47 on 30 July 1857 [11]. Mary Ann Burbury nee Bradley was aged 40 at the time of the 1851 census [12], so we can assume that this is a record of her burial. Noting the closeness of the dates of the four baptisms and Mary Ann's burial, it is possible that Mary Ann, remembering that the youngest four children had not been baptised but being too ill to go to the church herself, entrusted the task to her husband and perhaps also her sister-in-law Elizabeth (wife of her husband's brother William). And thus at the church, the record became confused and the sister-in-law Elizabeth was accidentally recorded as the children's mother.
As mentioned above, John, now widowed for the second time, is found in the 1861 census living at Sowerby in Halifax, Yorkshire, along with nine of his children. This suggests that the family made the move from Warwickshire to Yorkshire sometime between 1857 (when John's wife Mary Ann died) and April 1861 when the census was held. John's occupation is describe as "Outdoor labourer". The only child who did not appear in the household was the eldest son William [19]. We know that William married Sarah Ann in Holbeck, Leeds in Yorkshire in 1862 [20], so it is possible that William was living and working elsewhere in 1861, perhaps in Leeds. The son Charles was aged 13, and his occupation was "House keeper" [19]. His elder brothers were all out working and his younger sisters were still at school, so he was evidently at the age where he could be relegated to look after the house and probably his sisters as well. As Malcolm notes, Charles was probably the best off, as working hours were lengthy in those days.
While looking for this family in the 1861 census, Malcolm also noted that many of the families in the area in 1861 were born in the Coventry and Kenilworth area. This probably indicates that they were recruited by mill owners who travelled the country, especially to places like Coventry where the silk industry had declined, collecting people to work in the Yorkshire cotton and woollen mills. No doubt John and his family had been recruited in this way too.
It must have been a hard life, judging by the early age at which children were sent out to work. And deaths at young ages were not uncommon too. The Burbury family had their own share of suffering in this regard, as three of the children died young: Arthur in 1862 (aged 12), Alfred in 1864 (aged 12) and Elizabeth in 1867 (aged 11) [20].
John and Mary Ann's children were thus as follows:
6. Thomas Burbury the Tailor and/or Publican
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Thomas Burbury (1816--1849) was the third surviving son of William and Catherine Burbury of Stoneleigh [3]. There has been some confusion about the identification of this Thomas and his subsequent children.
The first problem that occurred was largely my fault, and I hope that the following can set the matter straight. Basically, I made an early -- and incorrect -- identification of this Thomas as the son of a Joseph Burbury (1794-1842) who belongs to what I call the Kenilworth Burbury family. This Joseph was the son of Thomas Burbury and Martha nee Perkins [30], but apart from this I had no further information on him. I did not know if he had been married and had any children, and I didn't know where he had lived, except that he had been born at Leek Wootton, which is near Kenilworth. Joseph didn't seem to be a very common name in the Burbury family, and so I reasoned that this particular branch had passed the name down through the generations, as often happens.
However, there was no other basis for this identification, and it is quite incorrect. The truth of the matter is that Thomas was the son of William and Catherine of Stoneleigh, and was baptised on 10 August 1817 at Stoneleigh [3]. But he did not live to a great age, as there is a burial for Thomas Burbury aged 32 in 1849 in the UK National Burial Index for Saint Nicholas, Kenilworth [31].
Thus Thomas was not the son of Joseph and he was not part of the Leek Wootton family. He was the son of William and Catherine and a descendant of the Stoneleigh Burbury family.
The second area of confusion was in Thomas' profession. Several references give his profession as "publican" or "victualler" (terms that were almost synonymous during this period of the 19th century); one of these entries is the 1847 entry in the Saint Nicholas, Kenilworth parish register for the baptism of his daughter Sarah, in which Thomas' occupation is given as "publican" [11]. Another is the Letters of Administration which were granted to his widow Mary on 13 January 1851, in which he is styled as "Thomas Burbury of Kenilworth, Victualler" [32]. Moreover, in the 1851 census for Kenilworth, Mary has her occupation given as "victualler" [33].
However, all other references to him, including the entries for the baptisms of his other children [11], the 1841 census for Stoneleigh [9] and even the parish register entry for the marriage of his daughter Catherine Elizabeth in 1869 (20 years after Thomas died) [34] give his profession as "tailor".
The line of best fit for these references suggests that Thomas was a tailor up until about 1848 or 1849, after which he changed his profession and became a publican. One way to check this would be to examine the granting of publican's licences for Kenilworth around 1848 or thereabouts (if such records are extant) to see if and when Thomas' name appears.
Thomas died in 1849 and was buried in the parish of Saint Nicholas, Kenilworth [11]. His wife Mary subsequently appears in the 1851 census as a widow living at 22 Albion Row in Kenilworth. With her were her young children, and also two young nephews Samuel and William Brown. Also lodging with the Burburys at the time was a dealer by the name of Charles COTTON [33]. Charles and his landlady must have got on famously, as they married very soon after the census was taken, on 21 April 1851 [35].
An interesting point about Thomas and his wife Mary is that they were not the first Thomas Burbury and Mary Brown to marry each other. My own great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Burbury (1809--1870) of Coventry married a Mary Brown (1804--1892) in 1829 at Holy Trinity, Coventry [36], and the two couples should thus not be confused with each other, especially as an entry seems to have crept into the International Genealogical Index that duplicates the 1829 marriage in all respects, except tht the year is given as "1839" [35]. This 1839 entry is an error, and Thomas and Mary of the Stoneleigh family married in Coventry in 1842. And although we haven't found a church register entry for Thomas and Mary of Stoneleigh's marriage, Malcolm Burbury cites a civil registration reference number for the marriage of 1842/4/16/520 [20].
Thomas and Mary had several children, all of who grew to adulthood and married. Their elder son James (b. 1841) married a girl by the name of Sarah and had two children Frank and Florence [37] [38]. Frank married and had at least one son, also Frank [39], so it is possible that a modern-day Burbury family exists that is descended from this branch, although this has not been confirmed.
However, Thomas and Mary's second son Joseph (1845--1931) had a large family which continues to the present day. See 7. The Burburys of Elgin, Illinois below for the story of his family.
7. The Burburys of Elgin, Illinois
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Joseph Burbury (1845--1931) was born in Kenilworth and baptised in the parish of Saint Nicholas [11]. He was a watchmaker by trade. He married Saran Ann Riley (1846--1936) in 1871. In 1879 Joseph travelled to America, and eventually settled at Elgin in Illinois, which was the site of a growing watchmaking industry [40]. You can read more about Joseph himself in his own individual profile.
Click here to read Joseph Burbury's individual biography
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Many of Joseph's children continued to live in the Elgin area and to work in the watchmaking industry there. And there are still many people bearing the Burbury surname who live in the United States and who are descendants of Joseph and Sarah Ann. Most of them still live in and around Elgin, including Barry and Robert Burbury (grandsons of Joseph's youngest son Lawrence Carlos Burbury) and their families. Another branch, descended from Ernest J. Burbury, an elder son of Joseph, lives in the southern states of the United States, mainly around Georgia. |
 Figure 12 - Ancestral Burbury family home in Elgin, Illinois (photograph courtesy of Bruce Riley) |
It should be noted that the Burbury families that live in Maine and Massachusetts are not descended from Joseph Burbury of Elgin, Illinois. They belong to a distinct family grouping that I call the Brandon Burbery family. At present no known connection has been confirmed between the Stoneleigh Burbury family and the Brandon Burbery family.
Click here to go to the information page for the Brandon Burbery family
8. Future Areas for Research
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Other related links: