Family history research – Burt

Market Lavington Museum is not a records office, but sometimes people researching the family history of forbears who lived here come to look for births, marriages and deaths in our villages or ask about relevant places of work. From time to time, researchers offer us copies of their family trees and so on. We keep these in filing boxes and ask our stewards to ensure that visitors do not take any contact details of donors or descendants who are likely to still be alive.

A recent visitor had printed out research of a family, whose connection with Market Lavington and area dated back to the 1700s, but they had moved out of the area in the 1800s. This was offered as a donation to the museum. Just looking at the births and deaths in one family shows how different life was then.

We learn that Robert Burt, born about 1702 and his wife Mary Shore born 1707 were born in different parts of Wiltshire but spent most of their married life in Market Lavington. They married in Bishops Cannings, near Devizes. Their first child, William, was born in Edington but the rest of their children were born in Market Lavington. Obviously, in the 1700s, couples did not have access to modern family planning and there were often many births in a marriage. Looking at the information from this family research, we realise that life expectancy was much less reliable than it is today.

The 1st child, William, born in 1729, died when he was 9 years old and was buried in Market Lavington.

The 2nd child, James, died in 1730, when he was about 5 months old. His parents had another baby boy the following year and also gave him the name James. He only lived for 7 months, dying in 1732.

Later that year, John was born. The research does not inform us about how long he lived.

The 5th son, Thomas, born in 1733, lived for just under 18 months.

Next came Robert, born in 1735, a few months before his brother Thomas died. Robert survived into adulthood and got married in Warminster and was there when he died, aged about 45.

The 7th son, born in February1736, was also given the name Thomas, but he died a month later.

Yet another Thomas was born in 1738. He was a survivor and died in Market Lavington in 1831, so he would have been over 90 years old!

After all those sons, Robert and Mary’s 9th child was a daughter, born in 1739. No details are given about her life.

The 10th child was another son, Richard, born in 1741, but we have no further details about him.

The final child was a daughter, Anne, born in 1744. She lived to marry in Warminster, where she died, aged about 54.

Mary, the mother of all these children died aged about 38. She had borne 11 children in her 17 years of marriage. Her husband, Robert, died the following year, aged 44. We know that at least five of their children predeceased their parents.