My interest is in the Elizabeth Burn who baptized her base born son Joseph Burn in Mary Tavy in 1806. We have long known that she is the mother of our progenitor but I have had some doubts that she is actually the Elizabeth Burn daughter of Roger and Susanna Bromblecombe Burn born in 1789 in Mary Tavy. Records have pointed this direction. The sister of this Elizabeth Burn, for example, is the informant for the death certificate of Joseph Burn. My central doubt has been around names since neither Joseph nor his children would reference either Roger or Susanna in the naming of any of their children– not necessary of course but remarkable nonetheless.
I am pleased to report that Elizabeth is proven as the daughter of Roger. It starts with the record of Elizabeth Burn who married James Unsworth in Plymouth, England in 1813. He is a member of the Royal Artillery. This caught my eye because I think it likely that the father of Joseph Burn met Elizabeth in Plymouth because he was linked to the navy. I am still not sure why this happened but Burn descendants appear to match with Dorset’s Joseph Hyde and the easiest way to make this happen is through the port city of Plymouth because Mary Tavy is just not a place that would have drawn a lot of folk outside of miners. I say more about this in the blog for Joseph Burn and Joseph Hyde.
James Unsworth and Elizabeth Burn have one child Richard James Unsworth born 1814 in Mary Tavy. So Elizabeth seems to have stayed in her home village, while her husband probably continued in the military. He died sometime before 1839 (but likely closer to 1814, since they did not have any more children). At that point, Elizabeth Unsworth, the widow, remarried to James Williams who was the widower of her sister Ann Burn Williams. The marriage record actually identifies her as the daughter of Roger Burn. Since Unsworth is not a local name, this is, as they say, a smoking gun, proving that this Elizabeth is the sister of Ann and Tammy and daughter of Roger.
and we can be pretty certain that she is the mother of Joseph but this is a little more inference. James Williams is found in the 1841 Census almost next door to Joseph Burn in Blackdown with his wife Elizabeth who is 45 and his daughter Ann and son Richard. Elizabeth Williams died in 1845. He then remarries 13 day apart from Joseph Burn’s marriage to his second wife in consecutive entries in the Tavistock register.