1. Introduction
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Stretton on Dunsmore is a small village lying in a part of Warwickshire known as Dunsmoor Heath. The village has been in existence at least since Anglo-Saxon times. During the Reformation in the 16th century, the parish of Stretton was merged with neighbouring Wolston, but in 1694 Stretton on Dunsmore one again became a distinct parish in its own right [1].
The BURBURY / BURBERY family has had a strong presence in the village of Stretton on Dunsmore and surrounding areas for several hundreds of years at least. The first mention of the surname in Stretton on Dunsmore parish registers occurs with the marriage of William BURBURY of neighbouring Wolston to Mary CONSTANT or CONSTANCE of Stretton on 13 February 1742, and this was followed by the baptism of a child Mary in September 1743. It was no doubt Mary Constant's family who were the natives of Stretton on Dunsmore at this time, as her parents Thomas and Mary had married there almost 30 years previously [2]. And this William Burbury's family did not stay in Stretton on Dunsmore, but instead moved to the neighbouring parish of Bourton on Dunsmore [3].
Click here to go to the information page for the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family
It wasn't until about 25 years after this that the Stretton on Dunsmore parish registers start to show a more consistent pattern of residence by the Burbury family in the village [2]. Some of the new settlers belonged to a family that I call the Wolston Burbery family (because they came from Wolston), and there were a few other unplaced families that might also have belonged to the Wolston Burbery family or to their close cousins the Brandon Burbery family.
Click here to go to the information page for the Wolston Burbery family
Click here to go to the information page for the Brandon Burbery family
In any case, the family that I call the Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury family starts with a Mary BURBURY whose son William was baptised in Stretton on Dunsmore in 1798 [2].
2. Who was Mary Burbury?
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The names that I give to the various families in the area (such as the "Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury" family or the "Wolston Burbery" family), reflect the fact that there are several BURBURY / BURBERY families in this region of Warwickshire who cannot be definitely linked to each other. However, I am sure that some if not all of these families do share a common relationship, if it could only be discovered. Because of this, I like to start by examining the earliest-known members of a family to see if any theories can be developed as to who they were and how they may fit in with other families.
As mentioned above, the earliest-known member of the Stretton on Dunsmore family was a Mary Burbury. Not much is known about her, except that she had a son William who was baptised in Stretton on Dunsmore in 1798. The parish register entry show that William's birth was "illegitimate", or in other words, his parents were not married at the time of his birth. However, the baptism entry for William mentions that he was the "reputed son of John LESTER" [2].
I don't know who John Lester was apart from the name, although it is something that could be perhaps followed up with more research (for instance, was John forced by the parish to provide support for Mary and her child?). There appears to be no subsequent marriage between John and Mary either, so William clearly grew up as a BURBURY, and -- minor spelling differences aside -- his descendants continued to bear this surname.
So who was Mary Burbury? How long had she lived in Stretton on Dunsmore, and who were her parents? Which one of the other BURBURY / BURBERY families who lived in the same general area did she belong to? If Mary's son William was born in Stretton on Dunsmore, the first place to look for Mary is in the Stretton on Dunsmore parish registers. As William was born in about 1798, we can assume that Mary was born at least fifteen years before that, but probably earlier.
Following is a list of some candidates for Mary the mother of William Burbury. They are taken principally from parish records. This list is by no means definitive or complete; it only represents what I have been able to locate.
| No. | Name | Baptised | Parents |
| (1) | Mary BURBURY | 24 Dec 1769, Ryton on Dunsmore | William and Susannah [4] |
| (2) | Mary BURBURY | 10 Mar 1774, Ryton on Dunsmore | William and Susannah [4] |
| (3) | Mary BURBURY | 5 Mar 1775, Stretton on Dunsmore | William and Elizabeth [2] |
| (4) | Mary BURBURY | 19 Mar 1775, Stretton on Dunsmore | John and Ann [2] |
| (5) | Mary BURBURY | 5 Dec 1781, Holy Trinity, Coventry | William and Hannah [5] |
| (6) | Mary BURBURY | 18 May 1783, Stretton on Dunsmore | Thomas and Catherine [2] |
Marys (1) and (4) can be dismissed fairly quickly, because they both died in infancy; Mary (1) died in 1770, within a month of her baptism [4], and Mary (4) did not survive 10 days [2]. I would tend to discount Mary (5) as a possibility too, as she was baptised in the parish of Holy Trinity in Coventry, and she occupies a known place in yet another family grouping (the "Coventry Burbury" family) which lived and had its children baptised in Coventry spanning a lengthy period from 1778 onwards [5]. Hence there is nothing at all that directly links Mary (5) to Stretton on Dunsmore. Mary (6) could also be considered a doubtful option, as she would have been around 14 years old when William was born in 1797 [7]. Therefore, the two principal candidates that I would propose for Mary Burbury the mother of William are:
Of these two candidates, my personal favourite would be Mary (3). The reason for this is that although Mary (2) was baptised at around the right time, her baptism occurred in the parish of Ryton on Dunsmore [4]. Okay, so Ryton and Stretton were neighbouring parishes. But her parents and immediate siblings (members of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family) continued living pretty well everywhere else *but* Stretton on Dunsmore throughout the subsequent years. So although her age would be about right, there still isn't much that directly links Mary (2) to Stretton on Dunsmore.
On the basis of the above, I would tentatively suggest that Mary Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore was the daughter of the William and Elizabeth Burbury mentioned above. However, even if this is correct, it may not directly help us much when it comes to linking the Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury family into other families. The reason for this is, William and Elizabeth Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore are *themselves* unknowns who can't be directly linked into any other families. So it's a bit like we've moved the roadblock back a hundred metres or so, but the road is still blocked.
Click here to go to the article on the unplaced William Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore
The above article on William Burbury doesn't draw any solid conclusions about who William was. He might have been William (1) (son of William and Mary née CONSTANCE), or he might have been William (2) (son of William and Elizabeth née GEORGE). However, if my gut feeling is anything to go by, the likely identification of Mary Burbury as the daughter of William and Elizabeth née RUSSELL makes me suspect that Mary's father William was more likely to be William (1), which would link the Stretton on Dunsmore Burbury family directly into the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family.
3. The Next Few Generations in Stretton
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William BURBURY (1798--1864) was the son of Mary Burbury and his reputed father John LESTER [2]. He appears to have lived the whole of his life in Stretton on Dunsmore, working as an agricultural labourer [6] [7] or road labourer [8], and he died in April 1864 and was buried in the parish where he had lived his whole life [2].
Not a particularly eventful life, perhaps, but he still wasn't above causing problems for me the researcher 150 years later. The problem with William is with his marriage -- I can't find a convincing marriage for him, although he definitely married and had quite a few children.
The 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses for Stretton on Dunsmore show him and his immediate family quite clearly -- his wife's name was Elizabeth and she was born in about 1791, also in Stretton on Dunsmore. The same censuses together with the parish registers for Stretton on Dunsmore tell us that William and Elizabth's children were Maria (b. 1822), Catherine (b. 1824), James (b. 1829) Joseph (b. 1831), and Lucy (b. 1834) [2] [6] [7] [8].
As I mentioned above, the problem here is with the marriage of William and Elizabeth. The Stretton on Dunsmore parish registers contain no references at all to a likely marriage, and the only two marriages I've managed to locate that look anywhere suitable were both registered in Coventry.
As both William and Elizabeth were of the parish of Stretton on Dunsmore, it would seem incongruous for them to have been married in a Coventry parish, particularly for the BURBURY / WHITMORE marriage which took place after banns had been read [9]. I wouldn't dispute that all of the children mentioned above belong to the one couple, just that the date and location of the marriage remains unknown at this stage.
The Burbury family continued to live in Stretton on Dunsmore through the next generation of the family. William and Elizabeth's daughter Maria married George MUMFORD, and they appear in the 1851 census with some children [10], although I haven't managed to follow through with this family past this point.
William and Elizabeth's second surviving son Joseph (b. 1831) married Ellen SMITH on 4 July 1856 in Stretton on Dunsmore [2], and they also appear to have lived in Stretton on Dunsmore for most or all of their lives. Joseph began his working career as a servant [11], then later became an agricultural labourer [2], and then spent the latter half of his life working in the brickmaking industry [13] [14]. Incidentally, in the 1881 census Joseph and his family are shown as living at Well Head, which is a group of houses at the end of the Brookside road and slightly outside the main village of Stretton on Dunsmore [13]. The excellent book "Stretton on Dunsmore - The Making of a Warwickshire Village" does not say much about industries in the village other than agriculture, but perhaps there might have been a brickworks located at Well Head at this point in time [1].
After the Stoneleigh Burbury family, the descendants of Joseph and Ellen would probably account for the second-largest number of BURBURY households living in the United Kingdom today. Joseph and Ellen had a large family, as Figure 4 shows. Nothing much is known about three of the daughters -- Maria, Sarah Ann and Fanny. A fourth daughter Hannah died at a young age [2], and yet another daughter Elizabeth married James Oakley and had a family of four children [15]. Two of their sons -- William and James -- married and had children of their own. They also moved from Stretton on Dunsmore to Long Lawford (which was only a few miles away) to work in the limestone quarry there [16]. The 1901 census shows them living as neighbours with their families who were still very young at the time, and I have not been able to trace these families any further, although quite possibly they also continued on to the present day.
The two main lines of descent from Joseph and Ellen Burbury were through their eldest daughter Mary Ann (b. 1857), and their youngest son Joseph (b. 1876).
4. How Bedworth Became Linked to Stretton
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Early on in my career of research into the BURBURY families in England, I noticed a strong Burbury presence in the area around Bedworth and Nuneaton, to the north of Coventry in the West Midlands. I corresponded with a few people who were members of that family, and from information they provided, I was able to put together a basic family tree for what became known as the "Bedworth Burbury" family.
The Bedworth Burbury family began with a Henry Burbury who had been born in 1879 in Stretton on Dunsmore in Warwickshire, but later moved to Bedworth to work in the coal mines there. Henry's birth was registered as "illegitimate", with no father known, but his mother's name was given as Mary BURBERY [sic] [17].
And so I proceeded to write up my notes on this family into the "Bedworth Burbury" family information page, and as the first part of this, I examined all the possibilities to see who this Mary Burbery of Stretton on Dunsmore might have been (much in the same way as I did for her ancestor Mary Burbury at the beginning of *this* article). For the record, the several candidates I found for Mary Burbury were as follows:
| No. | Name | Baptised | Parents |
| (1) | Mary BURBERY | abt. 1845, Curdworth, WAR | Robert and Ann [18] |
| (2) | Mary Emily BURBERY | abt. 1860, probably Wolston, WAR | William and Maria [19] |
| (3) | Maria BURBERY | abt. 1841, Stretton on Dunsmore | William and Sarah [20] |
| (4) | Mary Ann BURBURY | abt. 1844, probably Bidford on Avon, WAR | George and Ann [21] |
| (5) | Mary G. BURBERY | abt. 1853, Bretford, WAR | William and Maria [19] |
| (6) | Mary Ann BURBERY | 15 November 1858, St. Michael, Coventry | Richard and Eliza [21] |
| (7) | Mary Ann BURBERY | abt. 1857, Stretton on Dunsmore, WAR | Joseph and Ellen [2] |
| (8) | Maria BURBERY | abt. 1861, Stretton on Dunsmore, WAR | Joseph and Ellen [2] |
After several paragraphs of discussion and elimination, I came to the conclusion that Mary (7) (in other words, the eldest daughter of Joseph and Ellen Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore) was the most likely candidate for Henry Burbury's mother. And yet I didn't proceed to combine the Bedworth Burbury family and the Stretton on Dunsmore family on this basis, because I wasn't absolutely sure of the identification.
Part of the identification problem stemmed from the fact that Mary Ann married a George MIDWINTER in Stretton on Dunsmore in 1880 [2] and she consistently appeared in the censuses from that point on as "Mary Ann MIDWINTER", but her son Henry BURBERY did not appear in *any* of the households with her [22] [23]. Nor did he appear in his erstwhile grandparents' households in 1881 or 1891 [13] [14].
However, there *was* an infant Henry in the Midwinter's household in 1881 and 1891, and this infant Henry was the right age (in *both* censuses!) to be Henry Burbury [22] [23]. So it was either the totally obvious facts staring me in the face, or it was an amazing red herring-type coincidence. Was Henry MIDWINTER in fact Henry BURBURY?
And it turns out that yes, it was the same person. The young Henry MIDWINTER in the household of George and Mary Ann MIDWINTER was none other than Mary Ann's child Henry who had been born before she married George. And so this was enough to show for certain that Henry's mother Mary Ann was the daughter of Joseph and Ellen BURBURY of Stretton on Dunsmore.
The evidence for this came from a journal that had been written by Henry Burbury himself after he grew to adulthood. This journal is in the process of being transcribed by Henry's grandson Henry William ("Batch") BURBURY, and I have not yet seen what it contains exactly. But Batch told me that Henry mentions his MIDWINTER family in the journal, and this is what has finally cemented the idea that Henry Burbury's mother was Mary Ann MIDWINTER née BURBURY [24]
5. Henry Burbury of Bedworth
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Henry Burbury of Bedworth was apparently not an educated man, and he was not well versed in his letters during his early years. At some stage he went to work in the pits at Bedworth, and while there he came across another family with the same surname. Henry asked someone in this other family how the surname was spelt, and was told "Burbury". As a result, this is how Henry and his subsequent family spelt their name.
Henry found out some time later in life about his own illegitimate birth, as he mentions it and the fact that he located his own birth certificate in the journal that he wrote. Henry's grandson "Batch" Burbury is currently in the process of transcribing the journal, but the job is apparently not easy, because Henry was semi-literate and he wrote in a very colloquial dialect.
Henry fought in the Boer War, and then came back and worked in the coal mines at Bedworth. He also fought in World War I, and called one of his sons Ypres after the village in Flanders where a battle took place (although I understand the son in question was more popularly known by his second name Wilfred) [24].
Henry and his wife Nellie had a large family, in terms of children and grandchildren, so that the BURBURY surname remains prevalent in Bedworth, Nuneaton and Coventry as a result.
6. Other Burbury Families in Bedworth
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There are still many Burburys living in and around Bedworth who are descendants of Henry Burbury of Bedworth, but there are other Burburys in the area who were not Henry's descendants but still appeared to have connections to Henry's family. For instance, one of Henry's modern-day descendants, another Douglas Burbury of Bedworth, provided me with some information on the family. Doug told me how when Henry came to Bedworth to work in the mine, he lodged with a "Nipper" Burbury who was seemingly some relative [25]. Doug didn't know what Nipper's real name was, but he knew of a Colin Burbury, also living in Bedworth, who was Nipper's son. After a brief call to Colin, I learned that "Nipper" was Ernest Burbury, and that he had two brothers Percy and Joe, and a sister Elizabeth. However, Colin did not know the name of their father, and couldn't help me much further [26].
I wondered if this family might have been the one that appears in the 1901 census in Bedworth, headed by a Joseph Burbury and including his wife Hannah and daughter Elizabeth [27]. The daughter Elizabeth was only 5 months old at the time of the 1901 census, which would have put her birth at sometime around November or December 1900.
This theory was supported by the index of births registered in the United Kingdom (which used to be known as the "St. Catherine's House Index" because of where it was stored, but is now generally known as the "GRO index"). The GRO index contains birth registrations for several Burbury/Burbery children whose names closely fit those provided by Colin Burbury. These children are as follows.
| Name | Year | Quarter | Volume | Page | District |
| Elizabeth | 1900 | December | 6d | 496 | Foleshill [28] |
| Percy | 1903 | September | 6d | 536 | Foleshill [29] |
| Harry | 1907 | June | 6d | 595 | Foleshill [30] |
| Ernest | 1909 | June | 6d | 504 | Foleshill [31] |
The birth registrations for Elizabeth, Percy and Ernest match the information from Colin Burbury about his family, so from this I could conclude that Elizabeth (b. 1900), Percy (b. 1903) and Ernest (b. 1909) were three of the siblings that Colin mentioned, with the fourth sibling Joe still unidentified.
There was also a George Burbury whose birth was registered in the district of Foleshill in June 1909 [032], around the same time as the Ernest who appears in the above list of children. This suggests the presence of yet another Burbury family in the area, and it's possible that Harry in the above list was a member of this family instead of Colin's family. The questions surrounding these births could probably be straightened out to a large degree by checking the parish registers for Foleshill and Bedworth around the years in question. This would also be cheaper than ordering a heap of birth certificates from the GRO.
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