1. Introduction
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There are two sizeable family groupings that both spring up in the parish of Wolston in Warwickshire, and it is extremely likely that the two families are connected. To distinguish between the two families, I refer to them as the "Brandon Burbery" family and the "Wolston Burbery" family respectively. (Brandon is actually a hamlet in the parish of Wolston.) The Brandon family is discussed in more detail on the Brandon Burbery family page. This page also contains a detailed discussion of how the Brandon family and the Wolston family might be connected.
Many of the events in the lives of the Wolston Burberys take place in parishes that are close to Wolston, such as Dunchurch, Stretton on Dunsmore and Monks Kirby. The following map shows the relative locations of many of the places that are mentioned in this article.
2. Thomas Burbery of Wolston
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Thomas Burbery is the first confirmed ancestor of the Wolston Burbery family. His date and place of birth are unknown, but he was buried at Wolston in 1763 [1]. One possible reference to his birth -- and to be frank, the only likely possibility I've managed to find to date -- is in the International Genealogical Index (IGI). The IGI has an entry for a Thomas BARBURY [sic] who was baptised in the parish of Exhall near Coventry on 12 January 1711 to parents William and Mary [2]. I haven't seen the actual parish register entry, and so the only knowledge I have of the event is the IGI entry. Exhall is not really that close to Wolston, but the reason why I think this might be Thomas of Wolston's baptism hinges on the assumption that Thomas was closely related in some way to the Brandon Burbery family, because some of the members of the Brandon family who were contemporary to Thomas did in fact live in places that were not far from Exhall. The reader is again referred to the Brandon Burbery family page for further discussion on this particular point.
Thomas Burbery of Wolston was a fairly wealthy man, as evidenced by his last will and testament, which left several large bequests to his wife and children, and included the bequeathing of land [3]. I only have a summary of this will which was prepared by a professional researcher more than 20 years ago from a memorial copy that is lodged at the Lichfield Record Office in Staffordshire, and this summary does not say exactly where the land was located, but I would assume first that it was situated in the parish of Wolston, although Thomas may have owned land elsewhere in neighbouring parishes. The exact text of this will is something that I need to check.
Finding Thomas and his family at all was actually not as straightforward as it perhaps could have been, and maybe there is a lesson for other researchers to learn from my experience. I had collected quite a bit of information on miscellaneous families in the Wolston area, and I also had this will summary for Thomas, but I had no idea who Thomas was and how the various families fitted together. I had scoured the International Genealogical Index, but the information it contained was inconclusive. More than that, the IGI help information stated that the parish records for Wolston had been filmed from as early as 1735, but there were very few Wolston records from these early years in the IGI.
It was during a research trip I made to the Warwickshire County Record Office in September/October 2001 that I had my first real chance to sit down with microfilms of original parish records. One of the first things I did was to check the Wolston parish records, and I found to my mixed delight and horror that a whole volume of the records had not been included in the IGI index, because as I read through the pages, a whole lot of previously-unknown BURBURY/BURBERY entries started flowing forth! And this included details on the family of Thomas Burbery and Ann his wife of Wolston.
The moral of this story is fairly simple, and it is none the worse for having been said many times before: the IGI is a useful reference tool, but it is only an index, and not a complete one at that. There is no substitute for checking the original records.
Anyway, this is something of a digression. But included among the records which did not appear in the IGI were the baptisms for the children of Thomas and Ann Burbury of Wolston. These included Robert (1737), Jane (1738), William (1740), Mary (1746) and Elizabeth (1747) [1].
The names of the three daughters Jane, Mary and Elizabeth matched the names of the daughters in the summary of the will of Thomas Burbery of Wolston [3], and so I looked at this summary afresh. There were some details that didn't seem to match between the two families. The will mentioned a wife Mary, whereas the baptism records gave Thomas' wife's name as Ann. Plus the will mentioned two sons John and Richard who did not appear in the parish records.
The problem of the wives' names was easiest to solve. The Wolston parish registers also contained an entry for the burial of Ann Burbury, styled "wife of Thomas of Wolston", on 12 February 1750/1. This was followed by the marriage by licence of Thomas Burbury of Wolston and Mary Baker of Southam on 17 March 1758 in the parish of Wolston. So here was the evidence that Thomas' first wife Ann died and Thomas married a second time, and it is his second wife who was thus mentioned in his will [1] [3].
As yet I have not been able to find the marriage record for Thomas and his first wife Ann. It does not appear in the IGI, and it has not turned up in any of the parish registers that I have searched. Her surname may have been PORTER, as in his will Thomas mentions his "brother-in-law William Porter" who he entrusts with the care of his children [3]. A William Porter also appears as a witness to the marriage of Thomas' eldest daughter Jane [4].
I have located some references to Thomas and his sons William and John on the Access to Archives web site which give some idea of the nature and location of land which the family occupied in the parish of Monks Kirby. Details are given below. I have not yet had a chance to look at the exact documents referred to. I hope I can do so next time I make a research trip to the United Kingdom, but of course anyone reading this article is more than welcome to try and beat me to the job!
Warwickshire County Record Office: Feilding family of Newnham Paddox [CR 2017/M1 - CR 2017/F263]
- Lease from the 5th and 6th Earls of Denbigh to Thomas Burbery of Wolston Heath, yeoman, 1754 and to William Burbury of Wolston 1792, grazier, of closes called Remaining part of Little Hall Field, Hall Field, Church Meadow, Pear Tree Meadow, East Hall Field, east part of Little Hall Field and the north part of Dods Ground (the earlier lease refers to only a part of this property and includes Great Hall Field). - ref. CR 2017/D86/1-2 - date: 1754, 1792
- Lease from the 5th Earl of Denbigh to Thomas Burbery of Wolston Heath, yeoman, of Smiths House in Newnham Paddox and closes of 196 acres called Smiths Great and Little Hall Field, Smiths Pipers meadow, Pinch Furlong, Smiths Home Ground, Smiths Two Bollards Meadows, New Close, Barn Close, Furze Close and a close of 5 acres all now or late in the occupation of William Burdett. - ref. CR 2017/D87 - date: 1755
- Lease from the 6th Earl of Denbigh to John Burbery of Newnham Paddox grazier, of a messuage and closes called House, Bollards Meadow, Upper Bollards Meadow, Barn Ground, Pool Ground, Little Close, Furzy Field, Four Furzy Grounds and Lower Ground Close. - ref. CR 2017/D88 - date: 1792
- Lease from the above to William Burbery of Wolston, grazier, of closes called Pinch Furlong Meadow and close, Pailton Pasture, Two Porter's closes, Great Bankey Ground, and Panket Meadow. - ref. CR 2017/D89 - date: 1792 [5]
3. Thomas and Ann's daughters
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The "discovery" of Thomas and Ann's family in the Wolston parish registers suddenly meant that a lot of diverse references to Burburys in and around Wolston could be linked together into the one family. An example of this was the will of a Maria Burbury of Pailton (a hamlet in the parish of Monks Kirby, a few miles to the north-east of Wolston) [6].
Maria was a spinster who died on 19 December 1815, and her will was proved on 5 April 1816. Again, I have a summary of this will, not the full transcript, but it mentions three sums of money that were assigned to her as a prospective marriage settlement. One of the people who originally assigned these sums to Maria was John Burbury the Younger, a farmer of Monks Kirby. The marriage in question -- to one Henry Vann of Lilbourne, Northamptonshire -- does not appear to have gone ahead, as Maria remained a spinster until her death [7]. In any case, the sums of money, which together totaled 210 pounds, were bequeathed to Maria's niece Ann Burbury Smith. Probate was granted to Ann Burbury Barnwell, wife of Robert Barnwell, innkeeper of Rugby [6].
I had no idea initially who this Maria was, or who her niece was either. I was confused about the surname "Smith" -- Was this an Ann Burbury who married someone Smith? And so why did she later change her surname to Barnwell? Did she marry again?
But then, once I had the details on the family of Thomas and Ann Burbury from the Wolston registers, this started to make a little more sense. The first piece of the puzzle was that Thomas and Ann had a daughter Mary who was baptised in 1746 [1]. She was a possible candidate for Maria. The second clue was that Thomas and Ann also had a daughter Jane who married Thomas SMITH on 8 November 1763 at Monks Kirby [1] [4]. So suddenly it made sense: Maria's niece was the daughter of her sister Jane BURBURY and her husband Thomas SMITH. I have been unable to find the baptism of the niece Ann so far, but I did find her marriage in the IGI -- on 30 October 1792 at Bilton, Rugby, Ann Burbury SMITH married Robert BARNWELL [2]. So there she was.
Bilton is a small village which was west of Rugby, but now forms part of the greater Rugby urban sprawl. Clearly Ann and her husband Robert must have operated an inn somewhere in the area. And this led me to one more clue which confirmed the theory: this was the burial of Mary Burbury aged 66 on 22 December 1815 at Bilton [8]. The age of this Mary puts her year of birth at around 1749 -- not quite 1746, but as Mary the testator died on 19 December 1815, this clearly was her.
One thing that I still have not yet resolved about Mary's will is the reference to John Burbury the Younger, Farmer of Monks Kirby. It is likely that this is Mary's brother John who married Eleanor DORMER and farmed at Monks Kirby [1] [4] [9]. But if this is true, then it begs the question of who John Burbury "the Elder" was. I cannot offer any satisfactory explanations or thories on who John the Elder might have been, but finding him would no doubt shed some valuable light on the earlier generations of the Wolston Burbery family.
4. The family of William Burbery of Wolston
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Thomas and Ann's first child was a Robert who died while in his mid-teens. Their second son, and the first one to grow to adulthood, was William (1740--1814) [1].
William appears to have carried on living in Wolston, as evidenced from the entries for the baptisms (and sadly, some burials) for his children which appear almost exclusively in the Wolston parish registers [1]. He married Anna Maria BAGSHAW of Dunchurch (d. 1774) on 28 Jul 1763 in Dunchurch [10] and they had several children who were baptised from 1763 to 1774 [1] [10]. Their last child Charles must have been sickly, as he was baptised on 6 January 1774, but died soon after and was buried two days later. Perhaps there had been problems with the birth too, as Anna Maria herself was buried not soon after, on 15 January [1].
When researching families in a particular region -- and this is particularly true with many of the BURBURY and BURBERY families of Warwickshire -- it can be difficult to identify individuals in the records because of the sameness of names that are used. The Burbury and Burbery families of Warwickshire seem to have had a great love for names such as William and Thomas, and their wives were often named Mary or Elizabeth. William Burbery of Wolston married an Anna Maria, which is not a particularly common name combination, and one would think that this would make it easier to locate their children in the parish registers. But it was not so: on several occasions Anna Maria is simply listed as "Ann" [1] [10]. And then, to compound this problem, William remarried after Anna Maria died, and showing a complete lack of imagination (or maybe he just liked the name?), he chose for his second wife another lady named Ann. This was Ann MASON of Stretton on Dunsmore, who William married on 6 July 1778 in Stretton on Dunsmore [11].
The identification of this marriage is on fairly secure ground. The Stretton on Dunsmore parish register unfortunately does not give the statuses of the parties to the marriage in this instance, so we cannot tell from the register if William was a bachelor or a widower. And because of the abundance of people with the same name in the area, it is reasonable to question whether this was indeed the same William getting remarried. I feel sure it is, because William's will mentions a daughter Sarah, wife of John Veasey [12], and no baptism record for a child Sarah born to William and his first wife Anna Maria could be found. The Wolston registers do have a child Sarah being baptised to William and Ann in 1780 [1], so I think we can safely assume that this was William's child by his second wife.
William and Anna Maria's eldest son Thomas cannot easily be described as "of" a particular place, because of all the members of the Wolston Burbery family, he is the one who seems to have moved around the most. He was baptised in 1763 in Dunchurch (maybe his mother went back to her childhood home to have her first child?) [10], but married Frances PHILLIPS on 12 June 1792 back in Wolston, and their first daughter was also baptised there in 1793 [1]. After that, however, Thomas appears to have gone north to the family holdings in Monks Kirby, as from 1794 to 1813 he is found living in Pailton (a hamlet in the parish of Monks Kirby) and baptising his children there [4].
In 1814 Thomas went back to Wolston, as shown by the baptism entry for his final child Caroline [1]. His residence at this time is given as Wolston Heath and his status is "Yeoman". From there Thomas and Frances' movements are unclear for a substantial period of time -- about 30 years -- until they both died within about a year of each other, Frances in June 1848 aged 72, and Thomas half a year later in January 1849 aged 86. At the time they were living in Leamington Priors, probably enjoying their retirement, and they were buried in the ancestral parish of Wolston [1].
Thomas was a yeoman, but I do not know if he left a will. It seems almost certain that he and Frances left no male issue, and indeed only one son was born to them -- John Lickorish, who sadly died in infancy [1] [4]. (Lickorish was a surname which cropped up with regularity in the Wolston and Stretton on Dunsmore parish registers, so no doubt young John had been named after someone).
Although Thomas and Frances had no surviving sons, they were blessed with nine daughters. Two of these (Frances and Sarah) died young [1]. Of two others (Amelia and Caroline) nothing is known past their baptisms [1] [4]. Elizabeth married John Hancox [1] -- another prominent surname in the parish registers -- and Harriet married Joseph JENAWAY [2]. The other daughters -- Sophia, Ann and Alice -- operated a milliners and dressmaker's business at 6 Lower Parade [13] and later at 66 Warwick Street in Leamington [14], assisted by their sister Harriet.
William and Anna Maria's second son John also moved around the family's holdings during his life, and the pattern is similar to his elder brother Thomas. John married Mary EVERTON on 29 May 1790 in Wolston [1], and was living in Wolston at the time, but for the next seven years their children were baptised in Monks Kirby [4]. In 1798 John and Mary's daughter Maria died aged about five and was buried in Wolston, and at this point the register states that the parents were "of Toft" (a hamlet in the parish of Dunchurch), and from that point on the Wolston registers consistently state that John resided at Toft [1].
I also have a summary of John's will, which states that he is "late of Toft, but now of Wolston", and at the time he made the will he was 63 years old [15]. Even after placing him into the greater Wolston Burbery family tree, there are still some points about this will that confuse me.
Firstly, it doesn't help matters that John and Mary appear to have named their first two children (daughters) Ann Maria and Maria. But this is a small matter, and in any case, Ann Maria appears subsequently with both names in all the references I have found to her, so this helps to tell her apart.
The main problem is the son William who is mentioned in the will. John and Mary did have a son William whose baptism was recorded in the Monks Kirby parish registers as having taken place in 1798 [4]. But this cannot be the William being referred to here, because by the time the will was signed, this William would have been at least 31 years old, not younger than 21 as the William in the will clearly is. This particular problem is solved easily enough because the first William in fact died young, and was buried in Wolston on 27 June 1801 [1].
So did John and Mary have a second child that they named William too? They must have, but to date, I have been unable to find any record of a baptism for such a William. And this is after having checked all of the obvious places, namely the parish registers for Dunchurch, Wolston, Stretton on Dunsmore and Monks Kirby, and more besides in the course of pursuing other lines of enquiry. His baptism might have been in some other parish that I'm missing. Or maybe the second William simply wasn't baptised?
In any case, he turns up elsewhere, of adult age and with a wife and fairly substantial family behind him. The references for this are the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses for Stretton on Dunsmore. The 1841 census cannot be relied upon at all for accurate dating, and it does not include places of birth, so the identification of William in 1841 [16] is deduced back from the 1851 census entry. In the 1851 census, I found the following family:
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Name BURBERY, William BURBERY, Sarah BURBERY, Maria BURBERY, John BURBERY, Fanney BURBERY, Ellen BURBERY, Elizabeth BURBERY, Caroline |
Rel. Head Wife Daur Son Daur Daur Daur Daur |
Status M M --- --- --- --- --- --- |
Age 41 38 10 9 8 6 4 1 |
Occupation Ag Lab Ag Lab Wife Ag Lab Daur Scholar Scholar Scholar Scholar --- |
Place of birth Toft Dunchurch Stretton on Dunsmore Stretton on Dunsmore Stretton on Dunsmore Stretton on Dunsmore Stretton on Dunsmore Stretton on Dunsmore [17] |
The 1861 census gives much the same information, except that William's place of birth is given as Dunchurch instead of Toft, which is not a significant difference as Toft is a hamlet in the parish of Dunchurch in any case [18]. William's age of 41 in 1851 and 50 in 1861 respectively (giving a year of birth of around 1810), and Toft/Dunchurch as his place of birth overwhelmingly suggest that he is the son of John and Mary Burbery of Toft who is mentioned in John's will. If he was born in 1810, he would have been still under age in 1829 when John made his will.
William married Sarah GLOUSTER (1816--1872) in December 1839 in the parish of Saint Michael, Coventry [18], but the family continued to live in Stretton on Dunsmore for the next few generations [11]. They seem to have left the land, as William's son John (b. 1843) became an engine driver and moved to Rugby [20] [21], and his younger son William, while staying in Stretton on Dunsmore, is listed as a labourer or gardener in subsequent censuses up until 1891 [22].
5. The family of Thomas Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore
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 Figure 4 - Family of Thomas Burbury of Stretton on Dunsmore |
The second surviving son of Thomas and Ann of Wolston, this Thomas Burbury (1741--1818) married Elizabeth KENCH on 22 April 1766 at Wolston [1]. He was a grazier, although I am not sure where. His will gives no definite clues to this, although it states that he was "of Stretton on Dunsmore" at the time the will was made. It also mentions the trustees as being his friends Joseph Johnson of Dunchurch and Philip Kench of Toft, but also John Cattell of Easenhall (a hamlet in the parish of Monks Kirby). So he also seems to have spent his time travelling back and forth between the family's holdings in these parishes. Whatever the extent of this Thomas' holdings, he does not seem to have had much family to leave it to. His wife Elizabeth died in September 1811 and was buried at Wolston [1], and Thomas' will mentions a single child, his daughter Ann who was wife of John Mann of Ladbrooke [11]. The bulk of his estate was eventually to be left to his two grandchildren William Kench Mann and Ann Mann [23].
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6. The family of John Burbery of Monks Kirby
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The third and final son of Thomas and Ann Burbery of Wolston was John (1744--1816). Unlike his two brothers, nearly all of the information I have on John places him solely in the parish of Monks Kirby throughout his life.
Having said that, the first two references to John are not found in Monks Kirby. They are, respectively, his baptism in Wolston on 17 March 1745 [1], and his marriage to Eleanor DORMER in the parish of Ashow, Warwickshire on 11 January 1775. Ashow is a small parish bounded by Stoneleigh, Kenilworth, Leek Wootton and Cubbington. The DORMER family seems to have been prominent in the parish, and so John was probably getting married in his wife Eleanor's home parish. He himself was given in the marriage register entry as living in Monks Kirby [9].
From then on, though, he appears in Monks Kirby from the baptism of his first son William to his death and burial in July 1816 [4].
From a reference cited earlier, we know that John lived at Newnham Grounds in Monks Kirby, and he occupied land as a tenant of the 6th Earl of Denbigh in 1792. This land was described (in a summary of the referenced document) as "... a messuage and closes called House, Bollards Meadow, Upper Bollards Meadow, Barn Ground, Pool Ground, Little Close, Furzy Field, Four Furzy Grounds and Lower Ground Close" [5].
I am aware of several lines of descent from this John down to the modern day, although they nearly all seem to involve Burbery daughters who marry away from the family. One of my earliest correspondents for this family was a Gertrude (Trudi) Herda of Kansas, a descendant of a branch which emigrated to the United States. Her research had taken her back to this John, but she was unable to go any further. However, she had speculated that John might have been the son of William BURBERY and Mary nee CONSTANCE (or CONSTANT) of Bourton on Dunsmore.
William and Mary were the earliest-confirmed ancestors of the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family. Unlike the Wolston family with its plethora of wills and references to yeomen, the Bourton on Dunsmore family were not wealthy; in fact, William of Bourton and his close family were regularly listed as paupers (dependent on parish charity) in the parish registers for Ryton on Dunsmore where they later lived [26]. Furthermore, although William and Mary did have a son John who was baptised around the same time as John Burbery of Monks Kirby (1747 for William and Mary's son as opposed to 1745 for Thomas and Ann's son), William and Mary's son died in infancy [27]. So this fairly well precludes the possibility of John of Monks Kirby being descended from William and Mary of Bourton on Dunsmore.
Click here to go to the information page for the Bourton on Dunsmore Burbery family
6a. The Middlesex branch
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There is a lot of speculation about whether the many families with the surnames BURBURY, BURBERY and BURBERRY (and other families with similar variant spellings) are related to each other. In particular, we do not currently know if the BURBURY and BURBERY families of Warwickshire and the BURBERRY families of Surrey are related, and the gulf between them is more than just one of distance.
However, in the Wolston Burbery family, we have a definite case of a family branch that originated in Warwickshire, but later flourished much further south in London. This is the family of William BURBERY (1775--1822), son of John Burbery and Elizabeth nee DORMER of Monks Kirby.
William himself was baptised in Ashow, his mother's home parish [26], but lived in Monks Kirby at least during the later years of his life, and was buried in the churchyard of Saint Edith, Monks Kirby [4]. However, he married his wife Alexandrina SMITH in Tottenham, Middlesex (in the general area of London) [2] and several of his children grew up and continued to live in London rather than Warwickshire [28].
The only son of William and Alexandrina was James Ross BURBERY, who was born in Tottenham, Middlesex in about 1818 [29]. He was still living in in the same general area, specifically at Stamford Hill in Middlesex, at the time his mother Alexandrina made her will in 1847 [30]; and a year later he married Sibylla Lock CORNISH in Shoreditch, London [2].
James and Sibylla had two known children: James Ross junior and Alexandrina Elizabeth [2]. James married Catherine May COLEMAN in May 1876, and their daughter Alexandrina Elizabeth married Joseph James HAYES on 2 April 1876 at Saint Botolph parish church in Bishopsgate, London [28]. I am indebted to Alexandrina Elizabeth's descendant Sharen Valentine for the subsequent details on her descendants.
Alexandrina was something of a disappointment to her family. She was born into a degree of wealth and status, and had the Baroness Burdett Couts (an important lady of her time) as godmother. But she made a marriage to someone who was her social inferior, and as a result her family disowned her. Later on they must have relented, as they set up a trust fund for her. Sharen tells me that this trust fund is still in existence, but unfortunately they can't seem to find it! [28]
6b. The Monks Kirby branch
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Thomas Burbery (1781--1855), the second son of John and Eleanor Burbery of Monks Kirby, married Sarah Ralphs in 1806 in Leicestershire [25]. Sarah was born in Dunton Bassett, Leicestershire, which is not far over the county border from Monks Kirby [31]. The family lived at Newnham Paddox in the parish of Monks Kirby, where Thomas was a farmer and grazier holding rights under Lord Denbigh.
Thomas of Monks Kirby was another member of this family who left a will. This will starts with a somewhat cryptic statement to the effect that Thomas had already bestowed their share of their inheritance on his sons John, William and Frederick and on his daughter Elizabeth, and so they were not to receive anything further [32]. I don't know what these four childen received as their share of their inheritance, but the reason for receiving it early appears to be connected to the fact that these four children and their families emigrated to the United States, with the exception of the eldest son John who remained in England but no longer worked the land for his living [33].
The ties between the Monks Kirby branch of the Burbery family and Leicestershire continued to remain strong, as several of Thomas and Sarah's children were baptised there and also also had their marriages registered there. The two main areas of Leicestershire where the family appears are around Dunton Bassett (Sarah's native place), and also Seagrave, which is north of the city of Leicester. Thomas and Sarah's eldest son William married his cousin Sarah Eliza Burbery in Seagrave [25], and a younger daughter Sarah married someone by the name of WILD and their child George was also born in Seagrave (around 1845) [31]. I do not know what the reason was for the members of this family venturing this far north.
The following tree shows the children of Thomas and Sarah Burbery of Monks Kirby. The names in brown are those of the children who received their inheritances early.
The daughters Sophia, Mary Ann, Sarah, Emily and Eliza all received bequests ranging from five pounds to 25 pounds. These daughters appear to have remained in the Monks Kirby area [2] [4]. The son Francis is not mentioned in his father's will; the only reference to him is his baptism which appears along with the baptisms of several of his siblings in the parish of Willey, next door to Monks Kirby [2]. Possibly he died at a young age. Of the remaining children of Thomas and Sarah -- the ones who received their bequests early -- the only one to remain in England was the eldest son John. The others, William, Elizabeth and Frederick, all emigrated to the United States. (See The Migration to America below for details.)
Further information on the eldest son John remained a mystery uintil recently. The IGI had no record of John's birth or baptism, and my blanket searching of the Monks Kirby parish registers failed to turn up anything either. His baptism record may be waiting to be discovered in a Leicestershire parish register somewhere, perhaps that of Dunton Bassett where his mother came from.
He turned up, however, in the census returns for The Newarke in Leicestershire in the years 1851, 1861 and 1871, living in Middle Street. (I am indebted to David Franks of Oxfordshire for finding and sending the 1851 and 1861 returns to me.)
These census returns chronicle what appears to be something of a drop in status for John. From being a farmer in 1833 at the time of the baptism of his daughter Sarah, his occupation in the census vary from a "labourer" (1851) [33] and a "bricklayer's labourer" (1861) [34] to a "groom" [35]. I wonder what the reason for this was, and also for the reason why John's other siblings emigrated to the United States. perhaps it wqs because of a rural downturn, or because there was simply not enough land to go around for such a large family. But normally it would have been the eldest son (this John) who would have inherited the family land, whereas in this case it was the third son Thomas [32].
John and his subsequent family spent all their time in Leicester from this time onward until the 1901 census. He and his wife Maria had two sons, John and Joseph. John's last-known reference is in the 1851 census when he was aged 15 [33], but Joseph's family continues to be found all the way through the census returns until 1901 [36].
Joseph worked in the shoe trade, which was a major industry in Leicester at this time, and was followed in this trade by his second son Joseph too [36]. My information on this family ends with the 1901 census return, so I can only wonder at this stage if the family has continued to the present day, although with such a large family as Joseph senior had, it could be quite possible that it did.
The third son Thomas was the only son who appears to have stayed in Monks Kirby, and as a result, he was the major beneficiary of his father's will. He inherited his father's rights to the land occupied by his father at Newnham Paddox, together with all the stock and farming implements, and also the bulk of his father's household goods [32]. He was already well advanced in years when he married Catherine IVENS, daughter of John Ivens of Harborough Magna, in 1872 [37]. No children for Thomas and Catherine have been located, and so it would seem that the male line of this branch of the Burbery family ended with the death of Thomas in 1879. The couple were living in Harborough Magna at this time, perhaps in reirement, although Thomas was buried in his family's ancestral parish of Monks Kirby [4]. Catherine continued to live in Harborough Magna until at least after 1901, and she was described in the 1901 census as "living on own means" [38]. With no issue from Thomas and Catherine's marriage, it would be interesting to know who benefited from their estates after their deaths -- this is somethng that I would like to check at some stage.
One other loose end, however, is that Thomas was actually described as a "widower" in the 1851 census [31], althugh he was described as a bachelor in the marriage register when he and Catherine were married [37]. The census might be in error, and in any case no stray children appeared in the household, so perhaps we can keep holding the thought that Thomas had no surviving issue at the time he married Catherine, and that continued until his death.
7. The Migration to America
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The will of Thomas Burbery (c. 1781--1855) of Monks Kirby stated that four of Thomas' children (John, William, Elizabeth and Frederick) had already received their bequests. (See The Monks Kirby branch above.) The eldest son John left the career of a farmer and grazier and moved to nearby Leicestershire [33], but the other three emigrated with their families to the United States of America.
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