The FamilySearch website posts guesses of his year and place of birth (c 1807 and Woburn, Bedford) but these were extrapolated incorrectly from his granddaughter’s place of birth.
35 His baptismal record from Bower Hinton Chapel in Martock states that their abode was Montacute at the time of his birth.
124Listed in the 1841 census with his wife and 3 children living on West Street in the parish of Ilminster.
129From 1851 Census data:
“CENSUS No. 2
Part of the Parish of Montacute, Middle Street, Wash Lane, The Borough.
Pages 23
Persons 185 Male 231 Female 416 Total
Enumerator Samuel Tasell
Entry number 24:
Borough
BURT Edward Knuritt [sic] 55 Surgeon - working Montacute, Somerset
Harriet 54 Straw Bonnet Maker Montacute, Somerset
WALKER Elizabeth Servant 15 House Servant Ilminster, Somerset”
127At first it was unclear which was the correct middle name. Kayvett, Kyvett, Kyvet, Kenyvet and Kayoch (from FamilySearch
35), Knuritt
127 or Knivitt
73). A search of all these possibilities on the Internet yields nothing but Knyvett is a common and well-established name and appears like to a combination of Kayvett and Knuritt. Furthermore, there was a branch of Knyvetts in Wiltshire, the neighbouring county so I believed this to be the true name. This was then verified from the discovery of information from Bessie Lina Burt’s family tree.
35from his great-grandson Cyril Lodowic Burt’s account:
39“On my father’s side my family, as the surname will suggest, were country folk from Wessex. According to a genealogical tree, which some enthusiast compiled many years ago, my grandfather [Edward’s son] owned a farm and a quarry at a place called Montacute - land which had been granted to a remoter ancestor in Tudor days, so the story went, for services as Warden of that portion of the New Forest. The legend is partly born out by a coat of arms bearing three bugles, to which a few more distant relatives lay claim...
Racially, I was reminded, I was a mixture of Angle, Saxon, and Celt, and from the earliest years was warned to avoid the well-known defects of each, and to cultivate their redeeming qualities... [At home] On the the bookshelves there were ancient medical tomes belonging to my great-grandfather.”
He leased a huge amount of land in the Montacute house grounds from the Phelips family, and also owned land that his wife’s uncle Naboth Burt leased from him.
130His wife is a widow by the time of the 1861 census. Index of Wills and Administrations for 1858 lists “BURT Edward Knyvett, Effects under £100, 29 April, The Will of Edward Knyvett Burt late of Montacute in the County of Somerset Apothecary deceased who died 14 February 1858 at Montacute aforesaid was proved at Taunton by the oath of Harriet Burt of Montacute aforesaid Widow the Relict and the sole Executrix.”