Name/Title
Biographical sketch of Henry L. Burnett (part 1 pg 40)Entry/Object ID
000690Tags
Henry BurnettScope and Content
DESCRIPTION: Biographical sketch of Henry L. Burnett (part 1 pg 40)
TRANSCRIPTION: HENRY L. BURNETT
The Burnett family was planted here in the seventeenth century by men of mark from England. One of its members, William Burnett, was Colonial Governor of New York and New Jersey in 1720-28, and afterward of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Another William Burnett, of a later generation, was a distinguished physician in New Jersey, a member of the Continental Congress of 1776, and a surgeon-general in the army throughout the Revolution. Another in that generation was Samuel Burnett, of New Jersey, a leading promoter of the Revolution, and a man of exceptional culture. At the end of the war he removed to what is now the State of Ohio, and there established his new home. There his son, Henry Burnett, grew up as a farmer, and also a contractor and builder. The latter married Nancy Jones, a member of an old Virginia family, and to them was born, at Youngstown, Ohio, on December 26, 1836, the subject of this sketch.
Henry L. Burnett rebelled, at the age of fifteen, against a mere district-school education, and so stole away from home with a bundle of clothes, forty-six dollars, and two books -- "The Lady of Lyons" and "Thaddeus of Warsaw." He walked a hundred miles to Chester Academy, where James A. Garfield was then a student. There he worked at odd jobs to pay his way. Then he went to Hiram Institute, where Garfield was one of his teachers. Finally he entered the Ohio State and National Law School, and was graduated in 1859. The next year he was admitted to the bar and began law practice at Warren.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the cavalry. Each recruit was to bring his own horse and be paid for it. When the men found they were not to get cash, but certificates,
TRANSCRIBER: Robert Eager