A married man and his lodger

[trish1120]

STANLEY Baldwin;
His father, Alfred Baldwin, was also Conservative MP for West Worcestershire (Bewdley) from 1892. On Alfred’s death in 1908**, Stanley succeeded him as MP. His business experience helped his appointment as Financial Secretary of the Treasury in 1917***, in David Lloyd George’s wartime coalition government. Concerned at the financial costs of the war, under the false name of ‘FST’ in a 1919 letter in The Times he appealed for voluntary donations by the rich to help reduce the war debt. He himself gave a fifth of his own wealth.

[dtcoulson]

Oh wow, thanks for sharing that. That is simply awesome, as my son would say.

[heywood]

i echo your son   

Well done Trish!

[dtcoulson]

BTW I found the photo of Enoch and the Rootsweb website it came from, which has Baldwins going back to the 1500s.

(And there is another on GENI that starts more or less with Stanley Baldwin and goes down from there).

[dtcoulson]

Just to finish the story, I decided to look at the connections between the NZ Burrow family and the Politician Baldwins in the UK.

What is striking to me is that Henry Burrow *KNEW that he was related to the MP Stanley Baldwin.
He could not have worked this out for himself. He must have known this via his parents that Stanley was a relative and that requires an exchange of letters between the UK and NZ that spans the 40-odd years between 1860 (when the Burrows came to NZ) and Stanley's rise into politics.

As I see it, the essential link must have been Henry's mother, Sarah Lea (Baldwin) who died in 1901. Alfred Baldwin entered politics in 1892. That means Sarah must have received a letter from a sibling in the UK in or after 1892, something to the effect "Guess what cousin Alfred is doing these days...". Sarah would have been 67 years old at the time. Cousin Alfred was younger than her by 15 years.

But here things get more curious. Alfred died in 1908, well after the death of Sarah Lea and therefore after the end of the letter exchange. Did Henry continue the correspondence into a new generation or was he observant enough to work out that Stanley was the son of Alfred and therefore a second cousin? Did he look up his other Baldwin cousins, from the addresses on the letters sent to his mother? These are things we will never know. But I am impressed that an emigrant to NZ in 1860 should still be writing to her brothers and sisters on the other side of the world in 1892.

I'm out of questions to ask, so I will finish with a wide thank you to all that participated in this topic. We drifted a long way from the original premise but the outcome was very interesting.

Cheers
David C

[trish1120]

All the best and I must say it was an enjoyable Family to work on

[dtcoulson]

Hi Trish,

By luck I have stumbled onto another descendant of the emigrant Burrow family. She had also been told while growing up that her great grandmother, Sarah Burrow (nee Baldwin) was related to Stanley Baldwin. Again proof that Sarah received letters from 'home' for forty years and that one or more of her children kept an eye on Stanley's career after her death.

Going to put a question on the Australia page now, in pursuit of one of the children.
(The mission continues....)

-DC