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Description
In Burke's Peerage, the name of an ancient family is shown under the name of Burrows, having originated In Kent, England. The different ways of spelling the same name was a common custom in the old days.
The History of the Burroughs Family goes back to the Elizabethan days of England's glorious marine exploits. An old record names captain Stephen Burroughs as captain of one of three vessels which attempted to reach China by way of Nova Zempla in 1553. In the old books of heraldry is described the Burroughs Coat of Arms, and many other records that 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, and his descendants have been prominent in England from that time to the present day, one of them in recent years having been the head of the largest drug house in the world located in London, England.
The founder of the family in America was John Burroughs, who was born in Dorsetshire, England in 1617, and traveled to Salem, Mass. about 1642 (See Appendix 2). As an adherent of Charles I he had been one of those who fled to America from England at the time to escape the religious and political persecution following the dissolution of the long Parliament, of which he was a member.3
Fourth in descent from John Burroughs was Benjamin Burroughs. Benjamin was born at Newtown, on Long Island, March 31, 1779.4 In 1795, he brought the name of the Burroughs family to the south by relocating in Augusta, Georgia and proceeded in the following year to venture down to Savannah where he planted his roots by marrying a Savannahian, Miss Catherine Eirick on Tuesday July 2, 1799. Miss Eirick was the daughter of Alexander Eirick, a member of the Colonial parliament.
Publication Date
5-22-1991
Recommended Citation
Muntzer, John P., "Benjamin Burroughs" (1991). Savannah Biographies. 31.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sav-bios-lane/31
