Joseph Warren Burden

Joseph Warren Burden was born in New York on the 28th April 1918. His father was an investment banker in New York and his mother was the British actor, Margery Maude, of stage, screen and television. He attended Groton School, Massachusetts, a private, Episcopal preparatory school from 1933 to 1937. Joseph’s sister, Pamela, said that he was a bit of a maverick and rather than going to Harvard University, as was expected of him, he instead moved to England to study at Christ Church College, Oxford between 1937 and 1939.

England was a familiar place to him as his mother had taken him and his sisters from a young age to visit. As a result, he was a confident traveller and at the age of 14, he had sailed home from Antwerp by himself - the rest of the family followed a week later.

He said he wanted to study at Oxford as his uncle, John Maude, had been at there from 1922 and, at that time, Joseph said he wished to become an Anglican clergyman. However, most of his studies were in what was called Politics, Philosophy and Economics and his occupation aspirations would change over time.

His studies were cut short by at the outbreak of war but, despite enlisting in the British Army, he was still able to complete his degree. Oxford University had introduced a program of war degrees to allow for students who were called up to be awarded their degree before they had completed their studies. Students who had spent a certain number of years at the university and successfully taken the Pass Moderations Examinations could be awarded a war degree. Joseph was awarded a BA degree in 1943.

Joseph had some difficulty in joining up at first as he was an American citizen so he started his third year at Oxford in 1939 but was then invited to join a volunteer American ambulance crew who were working with the French Army. He eventually renounced his American citizenship to enlist in the Seaforth Highlanders.

He served with them for a year as a private but then got a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant and later as a Captain in the 3rd Battalion, Scots Guards. He was killed on the 21 July, aged 26. Just prior to his death he had told his sister that he wished to become a journalist. According Richard S White, a surviving fragment of an essay on the death of one of his comrades suggests that “he would have been an effective writer.”

He had already written one short paper, co-authored with Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of Theodore Roosevelt, on the palaeontology of Papago Springs Cave, near Sonoita in Santa Cruz County, Arizona.

Source: L-R: Joseph Burden and Quentin Roosevelt, Groton School 1935

 

They both attended Groton School and, in the summer of 1934, when Roosevelt was 15 and Joseph was 16, they had decided to travel to the American West and reached south Arizona. They stayed at a guest ranch called La Hacienda de Los Encinos in Sonoita and went exploring the local caves. In one of the caves hey found a number of fossil bones which they excavated. They sent their findings to the American Museum of Natural History who expressed interest in what they had found so they undertook a second visit two weeks later.

It resulted in a short article in the American Museum of Natural History’s research series, Novitates. The paper, entitled “A new species of antilocaprine, Tetrameryx onusrosagris, from a Pleistocene cave in Southern Arizona,” which was published on November 17, 1934, just three months after they had discovered the fossils. They returned to excavate more fossils in 1936 and their discovery led to further expeditions to the caves in later years.

James Burden was initially buried in Démouville before being reinterred in Banneville-la-Campagne Cemetery on the 20th December 1945. His family had this personal inscription placed on his headstone:

I LOOK FOR THE LORD,
MY SOUL WAITS FOR HIM

British Normandy Memorial - Additional Information

You can read the full story and source of the photos in this article for Joseph Burden's and Quentin Roosevelt's discoveries here