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The Burnett Branch
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WILLIAM BURNET(March 1688 - September 7, 1729, surrogate will proved July 9, 1730)William Burnet, colonial governor who was born at The Hague during his father's temporary residence there, was the son of Gilbert Burnet, the celebrated Bishop of Salisbury. The Bishop was not only a man of intellectual distinction himself but had a wide acquaintance among men both of mind and action so that the atmosphere of the home into which the young William was born was one to stimulate his own abilities and ambition. He was, however, by no means a model student, and, although he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at thirteen, he was soon removed for idleness and disobedience." He then received private instruction from tutors and was subsequently called to the bar. About May 1712 he made an impudent love-match with a daughter of Dean Stanhope, his wife dying within three years from a broken heart, it was said, due to a previous attachment. Burnet was a man of ability who had his own way to make in the world. Fortunately, he was the godson of King William and Queen Mary and had numerous friends in high places. On April 19, 1720, he was appointed governor of New York and New Jersey. He promptly sailed from England on July 10 and arrived at New York on September 16. Both at this post and at his subsequent one in Massachusetts, his record was an honorable one. New York, owing to its geographical position with relation to the French in Canada by way of Lake Champlain, and to the Indian fur trade routes to the westward through the Mohawk Valley, was the key colony in regard to the entire colonial Indian policy. Burnet at once sensed the importance of the Indian problem. The English were able to import the goods used in the Indian trade to purchase furs at much lower prices than could the French at Montreal, and this should have given them a great advantage in dealing with the savages (politically incorrect). But although the New Yorkers held a powerful weapon in their hands in the cheapness of their trading goods, this was blunted to a great extent by the fact that there were important merchants who found it more profitable and easier to sell their goods to the French than to trade them with the Indians. Burnet realized that by this French trade the English were handing their strongest weapon to their enemies. It was his endeavor to prevent this and to rectify the Indian policy of the English which furnished the main-spring of his policy as governor. In his first year he secured the passage of a law prohibiting the Canadian trade and subsequently established a trading post at Tirondequot where goods were sold to the savages at half the price at which the French sold them. His Indian policy was not without mistakes in detail but was wise and farsighted in principle. He at once, of course, came into conflict with powerful mercantile forces which cared more for their privat gaoin than for the public benefit. His struggle with certain mercantile groups and with the Assembly became increasingly bitter. He made enemies of such powerful families as the Philipses and De Lanceys, and his action in setting up a court of chancery was roundly denounced by the Assembly in 1727. The English government transferred him to Massachusetts and he left for Boston soon after the arrival of his successor on April 15, 1728. The few months which were left to him before death were marked by the culmination of the contest between the Massachusetts Assembly and governor over the salary question. The argument took constitutional ground and both sides stated their posiitons, which were irreconcilable, with greater clearness and fulness than at any other point in the interminable wrangle (see E.B. Greene, The Provincal Governor in the English Colonies of North America, 1898, pp. 171 ff.) Burnet's stand was honorable throughout and was in no way dictated by avarice, from which vice he was entirely free. Worn out by the work of his office, he died September 7, 1729. While governor of New York, he had married Anna Maria (Mary Van Horne), daughter of Abraham Van Horne and Mary Prevoost of that city. Burnet was distinctly above the average of colonial governors. He was able, cultivated, charitable, just, genuinely solicitous to promote the welfare of the provinces he governed and not unwilling to make personal sacrifices for their good. His struggles with the Assemblies were always for principles and not for personal advantage.
(Some facts as to Burnet's early life may be found in A Life of Gilbert Burnet (1907), by T.E.S. Clarke and H.C. Foxcroft. His will and some other documents were printed by Wm. Nelson in Original Papers Relating to William Burnet (1897). For his career in NY and NJ much material may be found in the NJ Archives, I ser., IV, V, VI, and in Docs. Relating to the Colonial History of New York (London 1757) may also be consulted. For Mass. see Thos. Hutchinson, History of Mass. Bay (London, 1828), vol. III; A Collection of the Proc. of the Great and General Court of HIs Majesty's Province of the Mass. Bay (1729); Green's Provincial Governor as cited above, and the general histories.
William's sister, Elizabeth, married Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1714.)
The General's Memories of the
Brigadier-General Henry Lawrence Burnett.
Union soldier, lawyer was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the son of Henry and Nancy Jones Burnett, and a descendant of
William Burnet, colonial governor of New York.
At fifteen, determined upon getting an education, he stole away from home, equipped with a bundle of clothing, forty-six dollars, and copies of Thaddeus of Warsaw and the Lady of Lyons, and walked about one hundred miles to Chester Academy. Admitted to the school, he remained for two or three years, when he entered the Ohio State National Law School, from which he graduated in 1859. In the same year he began the practice of law at Warren. On the outbreak of the Civil War he became active in support of the Union. At one of these meetings he was challenged by a man in the audience with the question, "Why don't you enlist?" "I will," he promptly replied.
He at once volunteered in
Company C of the 2nd Ohio Cavalry, of which he was chosen captain on August 23.
With his regiment he was sent to Missouri and saw service in the actions at
Carthage
(near Joplin in the southwest of the state)
*,
Fort Wayne, and Gibson, later taking part in the campaigns in Southern Kentucky. In the fall of 1863, with the rank of major, he was appointed judge-advocate of the Department of the Ohio. A year later at Governor Morton's request, he was sent to Indiana to prosecute members of the
Knights of the Golden Circle and
later took part in the cases growing out of the Chicago conspiracy to liberate the Confederate
prisoners at
Camp Douglas.
In these trials, he obtained seven convictions. He was also prominent in the trial of L.P. Milligan for treason before a military commission. He was brevetted a colonel of volunteers March 8, 1865, and in the omnibus promotions of March 13 was brevetted a brigadier-general.
In the prosecution of the assassins of Lincoln he served under Judge-Advocate Joseph Holt with General John A. Bingham as a special assistant, and seems to have borne a major part of the preparation of the evidence.
[A paper which he wrote on this topic was given as a talk at the Goshen Presbyterian Church
and is preserved at the Goshen NY Library and Historical Society.]
After the trials he moved to Cincinnati, where he practiced law with Judge T.W. Bartley until 1869, and then with Ex-Governors J.D. Cox and John F. Follett until 1872.
Probably his greatest case was that of the Rutland Railroad Company against John B. Page: in the closing argument he spoke for sixteen hours with a "consummate ability" that stamped him "the peer of the greatest advocate of the age" (D. McAdam and others, Bench and Bar of New York, 1899, II, 64). He was an organization Republican, a participant in the party councils, and was on especially close terms with McKinley who used to call him "Lightning Eyes Burnett."
In January 1898 McKinley appointed him federal district attorney for the southern district of New York, and on the completion of his four-year term he was reappointed by Roosevelt.
Burnett married three times.
His first wife was Grace (Kitty) Hoffmann
his second, Sarah Lansing died age 29:
His last wife was Agnes Suffern Tailer, of a prominent New York family, who survived him. In his later years he spent much of his time at his country home, Hillside Farm, Goshen, NY, where he kept a large stable of harness horses which he drove on the track of the Goshen Driving Club. In the middle of November 1915, while at the farm, he was taken ill with pneumonia. Despite his serious condition he insisted on being taken by train to his city home, where, two months later, he died. [He was buried in Goshen, NY.] (Burnett's article, "Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Assassins," in History of the Ohio Society of New York (1906); David Miller DeWitt, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1909); The Conspiracy Trial (3 volumes, 1865-1866), ed. by Benj. Perley Poor; Official Records (Army); Who's Who in America, 1912-13; obituaries in the New York Times and New York Tribune, January 5, 1916.) |
He then moved to New York, where at various times he was in partnership with E.W. Stoughton, with B.H. Bristow, William Peet, and W.S. Opdyke, and with Judge James Emott. He was for a time counsel for the Erie railroad, and was engaged in many noted cases, including the litigation over the Emma mine, in which he acted as attorney for the English bondholders.
Grace Hoffmann Burnett [von Oertzen] Major General von Oertzen ran
Royal
