The Burton Family Boys

Since I've been studying genealogy, I've become acutely aware of how tenuous a thing it is for a family name to survive from generation to generation. In earlier times everyone had large families, what with child mortality from sanitary conditions and epidemics being so high. Lots of kids helped insure that at least one boy would survive in each generation to carry on the family name.

My great great great grandfather, Joseph Burton, had five sons: James, John, Henry, William, and Thomas. Of these five, Henry and William had no children, and John had only a single girl child. Only James and the youngest son, Thomas, my great great grandfather, had boys.

James had three sons: Frederick in 1851, Thomas in 1858, and Henry in 1862.
Thomas had two sons: Joseph in 1850 and Albin in 1868

I looked up James' son Thomas and found that he was still living in Wiltshire in 1901, as was his brother, Henry. Frederick had moved to Andover, Hampshire, but was also still in England by the time of the 1901 census. I suspect none of these brothers immigrated to America.

Turning to Thomas, my gg-grandfather's sons, Joseph and Albin, we find that Albin, the younger son, was still living in England in 1901. Older brother, Joseph was the only Burton boy to immigrate to America, which he did in late 1879 or early 1880 after having a son, Thomas, in 1879. It was in America, in the state of Pennsylvania, that my Grandmother, Gwendolain Burton, was born around 1887. While not important for survival of the Burton name, it sure was an important event for me.

It will be interesting to research further to find out if Joseph's son, Thomas (or a later son, Alexander) produced sons to carry on the Burton name in America. In England, the descendants of James' sons, Thomas and Frederick (son Henry evidently had no children), whose names were Ashton, Edwin, Frederick, Henry, and Arthur, almost certainly produced a son between the five of them, and Thomas' son, Albin had two boys, Reginald and George, who could have produced a boy or two between them. If so, my Burton ancestors in Wiltshire and Hampshire probably number in the dozens, if not hundreds. Maybe I'll run into one or two on our upcoming trip.