Origins of surname
This surname is derived from various places in England with the same name, but the derivations are not always the same. Most come from the old English burna, meaning 'stream' and ham, meaning homestead, but sometimes the hamm element means 'water meadow', and the Lincolnshire Burnham started out as Brunnum, meaning 'spring'.
Early records
The first Burnham baptisms recorded in Jersey are those of the four children of William and Harriet Nowlen, who were baptised in St Helier from 1846 to 1854. They included William Thomas, baptised in 1852. He gave his birth year as 1865 when serving in the Merchant Navy during the Great War.
William and his brother Joseph came to Jersey in about 1840. William married Elizabeth Baker at Trinity in 1840 and they had a daughter Emma, before Elizabeth died. William remarried to Harriet in 1844.
Joseph, a publican in St Martin in 1841, married Ann Sohier in 1844, when he was shown in the marriage record as a 'gentleman'. They do not appear to have had any children.
Variations
- Burnham
Family records
Church records
- Burnham baptisms in Jersey
- Burnham marriages in Jersey (groom)
- Burnham marriages in Jersey (bride)
- Burnham burials in Jersey
Family trees
Great War service
Notes on our list, abbreviations used etc
- Frank William Burnham (1888- ) (St S) son of William Thomas and Alice Clara, Private, RJGB
- Lloyd Burnham (1887- ) (St H) son of Charles George and Elizabeth Jane Dickson, OV, Sergeant, Canadian Infantry
- William Thomas Burnham (1852- ) (St H) son of William and Harriet Nowlen, Mercantile Marine (birth date given as 1865)
- Stanley Burnham (1890- ) (St H) son of above, Mercantile Marine
Occupation records
Family wills
These wills created by members of the Burnham family are now held by Jersey Archive. By visiting the archive site and using the names, dates and reference numbers shown here, it is possible to view a copy of each will. You will have to subscribe to the Archive's online service to do this. To find out more about this collection, which covers the period from 1663 to 1980, and how to search for your family's wills there, visit our Jersey wills page
- Burnham : Charles George , 1 Headingly, Peel Road, St Helier 30/07/1906 Bequeaths to Elizabeth Jane Dickson the property 1 Headingly, Peel Road; to Charles Burnham the property 2 Headingly, Peel Road - Unknown date , 14/May/1909 , D/Y/A/68/52
- Burnham : Mabel Eliza , widow of Henry James Richard Underhill, of Springbank, Vallee des Vaux, St Helier and formerly of Burnhill, St Mark's Road, St Saviour - 13/Jul/1964 , 25/Jan/1971 , D/Y/B1/155/1
- Burnham : Reginald Knott , Allendale, Victoria Road, Georgetown, St Saviour - 13/May/1941 , 28/May/1941 , D/Y/A/108/28
- Burnham : Robert , Baron Renwick of Coombe, of Hernes Cottage, Winkfield, Windsor, Berkshire - 02/Sep/1971 , 22/Mar/1974 , D/Y/B1/203/5
Burial records
Family album
Family businesses
1887 advert from L'Almanach de la Gazette de Jersey for coach painter William Thomas Burnham
Family gravestones
Click on any image to see a larger version. See the Jerripedia gravestone image collection page for more information about our gravestone photographs
Tips
The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.
We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling
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New records
Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form
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