Lieut. Richard BURNHAM

Richard married Abigail EASTON on 5 May 1715. Abigail was born on 16 Mar 1687; died on 28 Mar 1784. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Aaron BURNHAM was born on 05 May 1719; died on 14 Sep 1760.

Richard married Sarah HUMPHRIES on 11 Jun 1680. Sarah was born on 11 Jun 1680. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Fact: Dau. of Michael Humphries of Windsor

Notes:

Name:
He is said to have been of Hertfordshire descent; came to Hartford about 1647 or 8, perhaps from Ipswich. Others of the name went from there to Wenham. A Thomas Burhan aged 18, "imbarqued for the Barbadoes, Nov. 20, 1635, Peter Blackloe, master; took the oath of Allegenance and Supremacie; examined by the minister of the Towne of Gravesend." (N.E. Reg., 14, p. 357) His name first appears on the Colonial Records of Conn., Dec. 7, 1648; was made Freeman, May 21, 1657, having been elected Constable the previous February and Chimney Viewer Feb. 11, 1658/9; was in the list of Freemen at Windsor, Oct. 11, 1669. He was a large land holder and speculator, buying land from the Indians. In June, 1659, he was required "to appear at ye Court in Octbr to answr for his former cariage, complayned of to ye Court," etc. He was a lawyer and an educated man, and this complaint was in regard to one of his cases. He was attorney in 1662, for Abigail Betts, accused of blasphemy. For offending the Court in his successful defense of her, "saving her neck," as the court record has it, he was condemned to "ye prison keep", but the Court dared not attempt to carry this sentence into effect, for fear of an appeal to England. They deprived him, however, of his citizenship, for a time, and prohibited him from acting as attorney except in his own cases. His offense seems to have been that he compelled the Court to try the woman by the English rather than the Mosaic law, which they preferred and were in the habit of using. At the General Court in April, some of his purchase from Tantonimo, Sachem of the Podunk Indians, was set aside, on the ground that the lands were not the Sachem's to sell. His house on the east side of the River, was one of the five fortified and garrisoned during the Indian War, 1675.

Thomas married Anna WRIGHT in 1639. Anna was born in 1620 in England; died on 5 Aug 1703. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]