Representative Hutchins Gordon Burton

Hutchins Gordon Burton (1774 – April 21, 1836) was an American lawyer, legislator, member of Congress, and the 22nd Governor of the State of North Carolina, serving from 1824 to 1827. Although some contemporary and later sources describe him as having no firm party affiliation while governor, he was associated at various times with the Federalist Party and, later, with the National Republican Party. His career spanned state and national office during the formative decades of the early republic, and he was noted for his legal ability and his connections to prominent political families in North Carolina and Virginia.

There is some uncertainty as to the exact time and place of Burton’s birth. Most accounts indicate that he was born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, in 1774, though some sources give his birth year as 1782. He was born into a family that soon suffered the loss of his father, and, upon his father’s death, the young Burton was sent to Granville County, North Carolina—an area that is now part of Vance County—to live with his uncle, Colonel Robert Burton. Robert Burton was a Revolutionary War officer and a prominent politician, and the household into which Hutchins Burton was received exposed him early to public affairs and the legal profession. This environment helped shape his ambitions and provided the connections that would facilitate his later rise in North Carolina politics.

Burton read law and entered the legal profession in North Carolina, establishing himself as a practicing attorney. His abilities at the bar led naturally into public service. He was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly, where he gained experience in legislative matters and developed a reputation as a capable and diligent public servant. In 1810, the General Assembly elected him North Carolina Attorney General, a position of considerable responsibility in the early nineteenth century. As Attorney General he served as the state’s chief legal officer, representing North Carolina’s interests in important legal matters until his resignation in 1816. His six-year tenure in that office solidified his standing as one of the leading lawyers in the state.

After leaving the post of Attorney General, Burton moved in 1817 to Halifax Town, North Carolina, a significant political and commercial center on the Roanoke River. There he resumed the practice of law and quickly entered local political life. On August 14, 1817, he was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons, the lower house of the state legislature, where he served a single one-year term. Halifax was a stronghold of Federalist sentiment, and Burton’s legal and political activities in the town brought him support from both Federalists and elements of the Democratic-Republican Party, reflecting the fluid and transitional nature of party alignments in the period following the War of 1812.

Burton’s growing prominence in Halifax and statewide led to his election to the United States House of Representatives. On August 12, 1819, he was chosen to represent North Carolina in the Sixteenth Congress for the term 1819–1821. His candidacy drew backing from both the Federalists, who were influential in Halifax, and from Democratic-Republicans, indicating his appeal across factional lines. He was re-elected to the Seventeenth Congress in 1821 and to the Eighteenth Congress in 1823, thus serving in the national legislature through a period marked by debates over internal improvements, tariffs, and the balance between federal and state authority. Burton resigned his seat in Congress on March 23, 1824, in anticipation of assuming higher office in his home state.

In 1824 the North Carolina General Assembly elected Burton Governor of North Carolina, and he was re-elected by the legislature in 1825 and 1826, serving three consecutive one-year terms from 1824 to 1827. His governorship coincided with the presidency of John Quincy Adams and the rise of the National Republican and emerging Jacksonian Democratic parties. During his tenure as governor, Burton was at times described as nonpartisan, yet he was also linked by various observers to the Federalist tradition and later to the National Republicans, who favored internal improvements and a stronger national role in economic development. President John Quincy Adams appointed Burton governor of the Arkansas Territory during this period, a significant federal executive nomination, but the appointment was not confirmed by the United States Senate, and Burton remained in North Carolina. His years as governor placed him at the center of state efforts to manage economic growth, transportation issues, and political realignments in the 1820s.

Burton’s personal life connected him to one of North Carolina’s most influential revolutionary-era families. He married Sarah “Sallie” Welsh (or Wales) Jones, a daughter of Willie Jones of Halifax, a leading Jeffersonian-Republican figure in North Carolina. Willie Jones was noted for his opposition to the adoption of the United States Constitution at the Hillsborough Convention of 1788 because it lacked a bill of rights, and his home, “The Grove,” in Halifax was a center of political activity. Governor Burton and his wife resided at The Grove for a time, and he also maintained “Rocky Hill,” a summer residence near Ringwood in Halifax County. The Grove had earlier been associated with John Paul, the young Scottish sailor who, while staying with Mr. and Mrs. Jones before the American Revolution, adopted the surname “Jones” in their honor and became known to history as John Paul Jones, the famed naval officer.

In the later years of his life, Burton continued to manage his legal and property interests, including a large tract of land he owned in Texas. In the spring of 1836, while he and his family were staying at Rocky Hill, he was called to Texas on business related to these holdings. Traveling by stagecoach, he reached Salisbury in western North Carolina and stopped there to attend to court matters. While in Salisbury he met his cousin, Robert Burton of Lincoln County, and agreed to accompany him home for a brief visit. On the journey to Lincoln County they spent a night at the Wayside Inn. There Burton was taken suddenly ill and died within twenty-four hours, on April 21, 1836, at the age of 61. He died while visiting relatives in what was then Iredell County, North Carolina, and he was buried in the churchyard of Unity Presbyterian Church in Lincoln County, a rural cemetery that became his final resting place.

The circumstances of Burton’s death and a related family tradition have long been part of North Carolina lore. According to an account preserved by Armistead C. Gordon, Esq., and published in Marguerite du Pont Lee’s “Virginia Ghosts and Others,” Burton’s wife, Sarah, was returning by carriage to Rocky Hill at dusk with a servant, William, and an infant grandchild with its nurse at about the time of the governor’s death. As they approached the house, which stands on a high hill, Mrs. Burton and William reportedly saw Governor Burton riding down the hill on the white horse he customarily used. Her attention was momentarily diverted by the crying child, and when she looked again, expecting her husband to speak as he neared the carriage, both horse and rider had vanished. Because of the slow mail service of the time, Mrs. Burton did not receive formal notice of her husband’s death until three weeks later, when she learned that he had died at the very hour the apparition was said to have appeared. This story of Governor Burton’s spectral return to Rocky Hill, which was still standing and owned by S. Harrison in 1918, has been repeatedly recounted and is said to have persisted in Halifax County for nearly a century, adding a legendary dimension to the life of a figure otherwise remembered for his legal acumen and public service.