Laura Annie Burr WRIGHT’s maternal grandparents are on the Shared Tree but disconnected from her. In 1911, William BURR claimed to have had thirteen children with Mary Jane BARKER in 39 years of marriage of whom four had died before the census that year. Filey Genealogy & Connections has eleven of the children but I haven’t been able to find the other two. The Shared Tree has nine children and you can find them here. William Burr on FG&C is here. Laura’s uncle Thomas Barker BURR was an anniversary person in January (AP 110 · baptism · 19 January).

A father naming a son Esme and a daughter George is clearly a man of distinction. I was happy to go with FG&C in thinking Esme was a girl but no, he joined the army and rose from the rank of Lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1884 to Major in the 11^th (Prince Albert’s Own) Hussars at the time of the Anglo-Boer Wars. He was honoured as a soldier but died of heart failure on a polo field in Cairo.

He seems to have died without issue but several lines of his ancestors go back to pre-conquest times.

William HARLAND was also a soldier. Dan Eaton says he lived most of his life in Filey and after marrying Daisy JONES the couple lived at 9 Queen’s Terrace, West Parade. They had two sons, Richard and Thomas William before the Great War began. In 1915 William senior enlisted in the Royal Engineers and served with them until the end of 1917. He then joined the newly formed Tank Corps, retrained and served with the 5^th Battalion until wounded in action. Dan says he received attention at a casualty clearing station, where a chaplain wrote a letter to Daisy at William’s request. He must have been more seriously wounded than the medical staff thought because he died on the way back to his base before the end of the day. He is buried at Tincourt and there is a Billion Graves link on the Shared Tree to a photo of his headstone.