Glynn-Chatham-Wayne County GaArchives Biographies.....Burroughs, William Berrien 1842 - living in 1913 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 1, 2004, 9:17 pm Author: William Harden p. 1074-1077 WILLIAM BERRIEN BURROUGHS, M. D. Bearing an old and distinguished name in Georgia, Dr. Burroughs has well performed the responsibilities and creditably lived up to the expectations of his family history. During the war between the states he earned distinction as a Georgia soldier. Fifteen years of his career were devoted to the exacting profession of medicine. Resigning a large practice on account of ill health he has since been in business in Brunswick. He has been honored with many of those offices in civic affairs, where the opportunities of service are great, and the duties vitally essential to the general welfare, but in which practically the only individual reward is the sense of public duty well done. William Berrien Burroughs was born April 7, 1842, at Savannah, Georgia. The history of the family goes back to the Elizabethan days of England's glorious maritime exploits. An old record names Capt. Stephen Burroughs as captain of one of three vessels which attempted to reach China by way of Nova Zembla in 1553. Captain Burroughs published a book of his adventures, during which he reached "farthest north" at that time (seventy degrees and three minutes), and was "the first who observed the declination of the magnetic needle." In old books of heraldry is described the Burroughs' coat of arms, and many other records indicate the prominence of the name in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sir John Burroughs, who was knighted in 1624, was an attendant and court official to King Charles I. His descendants have been prominent in England from that time to this, one of them having been in recent years head of the largest drug house in the world at London. The founder of the family in America was John Burroughs, who was horn in Dorsetshire, England, in 1617, and came to America to Salem, Massachusetts, about 1642. As an adherent of Charles I, he had been one of those who fled from England at the time to escape the religious and political persecution after the dissolution of the long parliament of which he had been a member. Soon after arriving in this country, he located at Long Island, and was one of the original settlers of Middle-burg in 1652, where he paid his share of the Indian rate. Being a leading man and skillful penman, he served as town clerk and clerk of court, and made the first map of Newtown. He was one of the seven patentees of Newtown in 1666, and continued in office as town clerk until his death, when his oldest son succeeded him to that office. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren moved to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Fourth in descent from this noted founder of the family in America was Benjamin Burroughs, grandfather of Dr. Burroughs. Benjamin Burroughs was born on Long Island at Newtown, March 31, 1779, and died at Savannah, Georgia, April 14, 1837. In 1795 he brought the name south to Augusta, Georgia, and in the following year moved to Savannah. On July 2, 1799, at the age of twenty he married in Savannah, Miss Catherine Eirick, daughter of Alexander Eirick, a member of the colonial parliament. Her youngest sister, Ruth, married Captain Francis H. Welman, an officer of the British navy, and their daughter, Mrs. John H. Reid, was long a prominent member of social circles in Savannah. Alexander Eirick married Ruth Erwin, a daughter of Christopher Erwin, who was born in county Antrim, Ireland, January 8, 1754. One sister of Ruth Erwin married a Captain Loyer, an officer of the French army, from whom is descended Capt. Richard J. Davant, the present mayor of Savannah. Another sister married Gov. Jared Irwin, her cousin, the letter being changed from e to i. Grandfather Benjamin Burroughs was prominent as a cotton and commission merchant in Savannah. His partner, Mr. Oliver Sturges, and himself, owned a third interest in the steamship Savannah which in 1819 was the first vessel to cross the Atlantic ocean under her own steam. The partners shipped a large cargo of cotton to Liverpool on the first voyage of the Savannah. The vessel sailed from Savannah May 26, 1819, and reached Liverpool after a passage of twenty-five days, during which the engine was employed eighteen days. Benjamin Burroughs was an elder in the Independent Presbyterian church in Savannah, and gave five thousand dollars to assist in building the church in 1817. The names of the children of Benjamin Burroughs and wife were as follows: Joseph H.; William Howe, who married Ann McLeod; Benjamin, who married Rosa Williams; Dr. Henry Kol-lock Burroughs, a former mayor of Savannah, and who married Ella Dessaussure; Oliver S., who married Ann C. Maxwell; Elizabeth Reed, who married Dr. John S. Law; and Catherine, who married Charles Green. Joseph Hallett Burroughs, father of Dr. Burroughs of Brunswick, was born in Savannah, Georgia, June 3, 1803. He was graduated from Yale College and then engaged in the cotton business with his father. On June 26, 1828, he married Miss Valeria Gibbons Berrien, who was born in Savannah, August 4, 1806. Her family was specially distinguished in the south and elsewhere. She was a daughter of John Macpherson Berrien and Eliza Anciaux. Mr. Berrien was quartermaster-treasurer of the French Royal Deux Fonts Regiment, and his commission, signed by Louis XVI, is now in the possession of Dr. Burroughs at Brunswick. Nicholas Anciaux was a son of Chevalier DeWiltteiseno, who was born in Frankfort-on-the-Main in Germany. The Berrien family in America was founded by a Holland-French Huguenot, who settled on Long Island in 1669, and for several generations the family was prominent in the Dutch church and in the town and civil affairs of Long Island. Several generations later in the Berrien family was John Berrien, whose home was in Somerset county, New Jersey. He was a judge of the supreme court of the colony. General Washington made the Berrien home his headquarters for some time and from the doorstep of the Berrien house was delivered the farewell address of Washington to the army. One of the children of this Judge Berrien was John Berrien, the maternal great-grandfather of Dr. Burroughs. John Berrien emigrated to Georgia in 1775, and at the age of fifteen was lieutenant in the First Georgia Regiment, became captain at the age of seventeen, and at eighteen was appointed brigade-major in the Northern Army, by General Lachlan Mclntosh. He served with distinction in the battle of Monmouth and at Valley Forge as well as in other engagements and continued to fight for independence until the close of the war. He married Miss Margaret Macpherson, a daughter of Capt. John Macpherson, an officer in the provincial navy, the Macpherson family having been especially prominent in military affairs during the Revolutionary war. One of the sons of Major John Berrien was John Macpherson Berrien, the father of Valeria Gibbons Berrien. He was an attorney-general in Jackson's cabinet and declined the mission to England on account of domestic affliction. Joseph Hallett Burroughs, the father of Dr. Burroughs, was a factor and commission merchant, was a member of the Presbyterian church, and an old-line Whig in politics. He served as paymaster of the First Regiment of Georgia militia. His death occurred in Savannah in 1854. He and his wife were the parents of ten children, and Dr. Burroughs has a brother, Richard B., who was also a physician, and Charles J., a physician at Jacksonville, Florida. His brother, John W., was a lawyer, in Savannah. Dr. W. B. Burroughs received his primary education in Savannah, and completed it at Oglethorpe University, near Milledgeville, then the capital of Georgia. Oglethorpe University was destroyed during the war. At the breaking out of hostilities between the states, Dr. Burroughs left college and joined the Randolph Rangers as a private. This company and others subsequently became the Seventh Georgia Cavalry, and Dr. Burroughs was sergeant in Company G, of that regiment. The regiment was in Young's Brigade, Hampton's Division, Army of Northern Virginia. With this regiment Dr. Burroughs served all through the war, participating in the battle at Borden's Plank Road, Dinwiddie Courthouse, Stony Creek and other points, and received his parole at Appomattox. At the close of the war he took up the study of medicine under a private preceptor in Savannah, and graduated in medicine at the Savannah Medical College in March, 1867. For fifteen years he was engaged in active practice in Camden county, and accumulated a considerable fortune by his professional activities. When his health failed, in 1881, he moved to Brunswick, and built one hundred houses, most of them small, consisting of about four rooms, and from that enterprise has ever since been engaged in the real estate and insurance business, and a recognized authority on all real estate matters. Dr. Burroughs for fifteen years has been vice president of the Georgia State Agricultural Society, and for twelve years has been president of the Brunswick Agricultural Society. He has held a directorship in the National Bank of Brunswick, in the Brunswick Savings & Trust Company, in the Kennon Cotton Factory, in the Board of Trade, and chairman of statistics in the latter body. He is grand vice chancellor of the Knights of Pythias of Georgia. Dr. Burroughs was appointed by Governor Northen to the national Nicaragua convention which assembled in New Orleans in 1893, and in St. Louis in 1892, and at each convention was elected an executive committeeman for his state by the Georgia delegation. For five years he has been lieutenant governor of the Society of Colonial Wars of Georgia. He was director and superintendent of the department of education at the Georgia State Fairs held in different towns in the state of Georgia, and was appointed by Gov. Joseph M. "Terrell of Georgia, to the office of director of history, and made exhibits at Jamestown in 1907. Dr. Burroughs has made many historical contributions to current periodicals on cotton and on the early history of Georgia. Dr. Burroughs was reared in the Presbyterian faith, and now attends all denominations. He has served eight years as a member of the Brunswick board of education. On January 17, 1872, Dr. Burroughs was married at Waynesville, in Wayne county, Georgia, to Miss Elizabeth Pettingill Wilson Hazlehurst, oldest daughter of Maj. Leighton Wilson Hazlehurst and Mary J. McNish, of Savannah. Her father was a wealthy rice planter of the Saltillo river, and during the war between the states was commissioned major of the Fourth Georgia Cavalry. Major Hazlehurst was a son of Robert Hazlehurst of Charleston, South Carolina. The children of Dr. Burroughs and wife are mentioned as follows: Mary McNish Burroughs, born in Camden county, Georgia, married Charles Walter Deming, who is in the oil and real estate business at Tulsa, Oklahoma; Lilla Hazlehurst Burroughs, born in Camden county, Georgia, and unmarried; Josephine Hallett Burroughs, born in Camden county, married Capt. Clyde A. Taylor, children, Clyde A. Taylor, Jr., and Lilla Hazlehurst Taylor; William Berrien, Jr., born in Camden county, married Ida D. Hartfelder of Elizabeth, New Jersey; Leighton Hazlehurst, born in Brunswick, unmarried; Mac Hazlehurst, born in Brunswick, married Miss Eliza F. McIntosh, of McIntosh county, Georgia. Additional Comments: From: A HISTORY OF SAVANNAH AND SOUTH GEORGIA BY WILLIAM HARDEN VOLUME II ILLUSTRATED THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 1913 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/glynn/bios/gbs525burrough.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 12.1 Kb