George Burrell was the son of George Bird Burrell and his wife Ann, née Sherring. According to the baptism register of St Peter's church, Thetford, he was baptised there on 23 August 1789, having been born on 1 April 1787. However, the record of his burial (see below) states that he was aged 34 at the time of his death on 16 September 1822, while the newspapers gave his age as 33. The most likely explanation perhaps is that the space between his birth and baptism was exaggerated in the first record, and that his actual birth date was 1 April 1788.
In 1809 he published An Account of the Gifts and Legacies that have been given and bequeathed to charitable and public uses in the Borough of Thetford. Cf. O.13.15, No. 14. A volume of extracts made by Burrell from Borough assembly books, presumably when he was preparing his book, survives (Norfolk Record Office, MC 965/1).
On 26 April 1817 he married, somewhere in Suffolk, Anne Wing (b. 1788), the daughter of Jacob and Ann Wing of Mildenhall, and on 8 May the same year he became Librarian of the Athenaeum in Liverpool (O.13.13, No. 59).
Anne Burrell had spent some time before her marriage attending a sister with consumption (probably Tabitha, who died in 1817), and not long after she had moved to Liverpool with her husband she in turn began to show symptoms of the disease (O.13.15, No. 122). Several prominent physicians connected with the Athenaeum attended her, giving their services without charge, but the best they could advise was that she might benefit from returning to her 'native air'. Consequently, in February 1818, her husband brought her back to Suffolk. Her case, however, was hopeless, and, though her life was prolonged for a short while, she died at Mildenhall on 15 August 1818.
George Burrell's Catalogue of the Athenaeum Library was published in 1820. On 9 April 1822 he was married for a second time to Susan Sherriff at St Thomas's church, Liverpool, but he survived this event by only five months. He died on 16 September 1822 and was buried at St Thomas's church on the 21st. The burial register gives his age at his death as 34 and his abode as Church Street; the newspapers (e.g. the Hull Advertiser, 20 Sept., p. 3) gave his age as 33.
Susan had evidently been pregnant at the time of their marriage, and her and George's only child Georgiana Bird Burrell was baptised at St Thomas's on 28 November, the place of abode being stated as Brunswick Road. On 29 April 1847 Georgiana Bird, daughter of the late George Burrell of Thetford, married Charles Wigg at St Michael's church, Toxteth Park (Liverpool Mail, 1 May 1847, p. 7).
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