Genealogical Records of Thomas Burnham, the Emigrant, Who Was Among the Early Settlers at Hartford, Connecticut, U. S. America, and His Descendants

ISBN: 9781333498702 出版年：2018 页码：324 Roderick H Burnham Forgotten Books

The compiler having exhaustively searched and digested the records of the family's early history, has re-produced them (the records) in these annals, with little comment, in the endeavor, primarily, to bring our emigrant-ancestor before his descend ants as he lived and contested two centuries ago. As I review his life in the many records he has left, dating all along the way from 1649 to 1688, it seems clear to me, that in seeking a home in this land of space and aborigines — his fortunes at low tide in England — he purposed to become the proprietor of a large landed estate, which he could leave to his descendants. Opposed in this by the policy of the Colonial government, in its autonomy adverse to the holding by individuals of large landed possessions, he used his legal acquirements to counter act, as far as possible, the abridging of his boundaries, and to retain a part of the Indian lands he had acquired by deed and will. That he was not in sympathy with the Puritan element, is clearly shown by the constant contentions, in which he was involved with those in power in the Colony. Additional infer mation, relating not only to Thomas Burnham, Scur., but also to his descendants (derived from public and private records in England and America) has accumulated in the hands of the com piler during the fifteen years that have elapsed since the first publication of the Burnham genealogy. The contents of old papers, deeds and wills, in the possession of a Burnam family in England, supplemented by information obtained at Hatfield, in dicate the connection of the Burnhams in America with the Bur nam s, formerly seated at Hatfield Court, Herefordshire, England.