Mark Burgess was born in Kensington in 1877. His parents moved to London from Cambridgeshire and Berkshire and married in 1874. His father, also called Mark, was an ostler, but Mark junior took up carpentry as a trade and eventually had his own business making pianos. He used Kramburg as a trade name because it sounded foreign; it was formed from Mark backwards and the beginning of Burgess.

Family tradition has it that Mark's father taught the young Prince of Wales to ride at Windsor Castle and lost his job when he was found playing cards with the Prince. The only facts that support this in any way are that Mark's mother's family did come from a village called Clewer that is now part of Windsor and that his father did work with horses. On the other hand I have not yet found where he was in the 1851 census and he must have met Emma Finmore somewhere before he married her, so why not where she was living, in sight of Windsor Castle?

There is a separate page giving more information about Mark, including his piano and plane construction activities and an intriguing letter to the Prime Minister.

The ancestry tree for Mark Burgess is quite extensive now that I have traced several lines back to the eighteenth century. I have split it into two sections; one for each parent.

First, Mark Burgess himself:

now his father, also Mark Burgess:

and his mother, Emma Maryon Finmore:

As several names are repeated in these trees here are some explanatory notes for the links below.

William Bray, miller, born about 1703
Mark Burgess, piano manufacturer, b. 1877
Rose Burgess, b. 1905
George Finmore, baker and Thames fisherman, born about 1759
Mary Fish, laundress, born about 1781
Hannah Jeneway, born about 1770.

William BrayMark BurgessRose Burgess George FinmoreMary FishHannah Jeneway