This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Surnames: Burton, Williams, Jackson(Also mentions family members)
Classification: Biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/zh.2ADE/2458
Message Board Post:
Jesse W. Burton, attorney at law, Washington, Ind., was born in Garrard County, Ky.,
October 2, 1828, and is a son of Robert A. and Sarah (Williams ) Burton, both natives of
Kentucky, living and dying in their native state. Jesse W. Burton was brought up on a
farm by his parents in Kentucky until he was fourteen years old, when he entered Bradley
Institute in Garrard County, remaining there several years, after which he entered
Cumberland Academy, at Monticello Kentucky, of which his brother, William M. Burton, was
the principal. By this time he was eighteen years of age and had obtained a good literary
education. He then taught country school some years. At the age of twenty he began
reading law at the capital of his native county, and received a license to practice August
14, 1850. He read law with his brother Allan A.. Burton, afterward appointed by President
Lincoln Minister of the United States of Colombia, South America. He then spent a year
traveling and prospec!
ting for a location in northwestern Missouri. He then came to Washington, but soon
located at Petersburg, Pike County, where he practiced law less than a year, returning
then to and locating in Washington,opening his office May 16, 1853. With the exception of
the years 1875,and 1876, when he resided in Lawrenceburg, Ind., he has continually
resided in Washington since that time, and has earned for himself a high place in the
legal fraternity of Daviess County. Judge Burton, before the War of the Rebellion, was an
old time Whig, casting his first presidential vote for Gen. Winfield Scott. At the
formation of the Republican party, he became a Republican, and at the breaking out of the
war was one of the first to espouse the cause of the Union, making the first Union speech
made in the county. He assisted to raise the first company sent from Daviess County,
Under Captain Charles Childs, and during the entire continuance of that terrible
conflict, was active in giving fi!
nancial and moral support to the Union. During 1856 and 1857 he was p
rosecuting attorney for the district composed of Knox, Daviess, Pike and Martin Counties.
He was a candidate for judge of common pleas, and also for judge of the circuit court, but
defeated in each instance owing to the hopeless minority of the Republican party. On the
23d of November, 1869, he was admitted to practice in the United States Courts. He is a
member of the I.O.O.F. and is P.N.G. of the local lodge; he is also a Master Mason. He
was married November 22, 1860, to Sarah M. Jackson, a native of Elizabethtown, Hamilton
Co., Ohio, by whom he has five children: Ada J.(wife of Frank A. Collier), Emma S.( wife
of Clinton K. Tharp), Mary H., Robert W. and Nellie.
History of Knox and Daviess County Indiana
Goodspeed Publishing; Chicago;1886
Pages 755-756