John Armistead Burwell (1813 - 1857)

Born 6 Apr 1813 in Woburn Plantation, Mecklenburg County, Virginia

Ancestors

Husband of Lucy Penn (Guy) Burwell — married 26 Jun 1833 in Virginia, USA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Larry Leach [send private message]

Biography

Died 18 AUG 1857. ^[1] 18 AUG 1857. Virginia, USA. Map: Latitude: N38.0667. Longitude: W78.5833. ^[2] Found multiple copies of death date. Using 18 AUG 1857 Residence 1850 Regiment 22, Mecklenburg, Virginia. ^[2] Note: #N23. Marriage Husband John Armistead Burwell. Wife Lucy Penn Guy. Child: Thomas Guy Burwell. Child: John Eaton Burwell. Child: Armistead Burwell. Child: Charles Sturdivant Burwell. Child: Lizzie Anna Burwell. Child: William Hunt Burwell. Child: Lucy Frances Burwell. Child: Sally C Burwell. Child: Edward B Burwell. Marriage 26 JUN 1833. Virginia, USA. Map: Latitude: N38.0667. Longitude: W78.5833. ^[3]

Notes

Note N23North Carolina tobacco farmer John A. Burwell and his wife Lucy Penn Guy Burwell inhabited a world defined by the southern plantation economy and by the social ties of extended family. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, parents and children, and a large crop of cousins corresponded and visited back and forth. Cousins intermarried, further cementing the ties that made up a close and complex kinship web. Favorite first names -- Lucy, Mary, Sally, Elizabeth, Edward, William, John -- were used in related families and in succeeding generations. In this largely rural antebellum setting it seems that family, rather than church, educational institution, or town, provided ones sense of community and identity. Genealogical details are sketchy. The Burwells lived near the North Carolina-Virginia border (Burwell's farmland was actually in Virginia), and two other branches of Mrs. Burwell's family lived close by. Her aunt and uncle E.T. and Edward Townes and their children lived in the same general area, while aunt Mary A.E. Rawlins, husband and children were based about 75 miles away in Danville, Virginia. Another aunt, Mary T. Guy Williamson, and her family had settled near Louisville, Ky. The parents of Lucy Penn Guy Burwell and her two younger sisters, Elizabeth T. Guy and Anna Guy, had evidently migrated to Alabama around 1820. Sometime before 1840 both parents died, and the three girls then made their home with or near their mother's aunts, E.T. and Fanny Townes, in North Carolina. By 1840, Lucy Guy was married to John A. Burwell and settled in Lynesville, N.C. Anna Guy married cousin Edward Rawlins of Danville, Va. in 1846 and they relocated to New Orleans. Her unmarried sister joined her there. John A. Burwell was a prosperous tobacco planter who also produced corn and wheat for market. He did well enough to enjoy moderate luxuries -- a carriage and team of horses, fashionable dresses for wife and daughter, oysters and brandy -- but was clearly not of the richest class of planters. He and his wife owned 15 slaves to work the fields and several to serve in the house. Burwell took great pride in his tobacco, yearly endeavoring to "beat his neighbors" and win the prize awarded by Virginia tobacco merchants for the highest quality crop. Pride seems to have been a primary feature of Burwell's personality, for he set great store not only on his tobacco, but on the quality of the material goods it bought, the beauty of his daughter, the reputation and success of his sons. The work of his plantation, hunting, fishing, and dining seem to have been the preoccupations of his life. John and Lucy Burwell had at least 7 children: Thomas, Armistead, John E., Charles, Lizzie Anna, and a girl and boy whose names are not known. The children were for the most part educated by a succession of teachers hired by Burwell. Lizzie Anna Burwell attended an "institute," in nearby Warrenton, N.C. for some part of her elementary education. After school Thomas Burwell went to work for a commission merchant in Norfolk, Virginia, while the other children remained at home. Details on Lucy Burwell's life are not abundant. She managed a complicated household; bearing and caring for children, directing the work of domestic slaves, gardening, nursing the sick, entertaining company. She appears to have suffered ill health frequently. To her fell the tasks of maintaining the social facade required by a prideful husband -- a husband who was evidently hot-tempered as well as arrogant. In 1857, Lucy Burwell left home, accusing her husband of violent behavior. The marriage ended, Lucy and her daughters went to live with her brother, and little is known about the family after this. There is virtually no biographical information on the slaves -- called "servants" by their owners -- whose work fueled the plantation economy and its elaborate social life. They are mentioned as individuals at birth or death, when ailing, when hired out, when bought or sold. Families were split up when Anna and Elizabeth moved to New Orleans and had their slaves sent to them. Occasionally the women were permitted to visit mothers or daughters. Various members of the Burwell and Guy families wrote of their affection, respect, even love for certain slaves. But although these men and women may have been recognized as individuals, with distinct talents and personalities, they were also possessions, accorded no control over their own lives. Scope and contents: About one third of the 114 letters in the Burwell-Guy collection are business correspondence to John A. Burwell from grocers, dry goods merchants, and the commission merchants who handled the sale of his tobacco, corn, and flour. The latter deducted a percentage of sales income and the costs of transport and storage of produce, then paid Burwell his profits both in the form of goods and money. Letters and invoices from John Jones's Richmond, Va. company and the Petersburg, Va.-based firm of Martin and Dormans generally comment on the tobacco market and its prospects, and advise Burwell on how to cure and pack his tobacco in order to obtain the best prices. A letter dated December 9, 1844, from John Eaton, who was also a planter and probably a relation of Burwell's, offers interesting commentary on North Carolina politics and public improvements. Thirteen letters from Burwell to his son, Thomas, in Norfolk are full of advice on proper moral and business behavior. In December of 1854, he warns the young man at length about fashionable women with "paint on their cheeks, cotton in their Bosoms, & wading on their hips and they pretend to be smart but none hardly have any more sense than to reverse the order of nature..." His fatherly advice is to "[l]ook aloof, & let alone the women, & you will do well." The following month he expresses agreement with Thomas that it is better to "gallant the Young Ladies to Church on Sunday than to 'sit back' in Hotels, & Coffee & Oyster Houses 'puffing cigars.'" He adds, however, that while church attendance instills good morals, "you are not obliged to take all you see & hear at a church as right & good . You have sense enough, if you will, to cull the good from the bad." Burwell's comments reflect his rather casual attitude toward religion -- that it was good for a person, but not in excess, and that it need not occupy a central role in life. Women seemed to place a greater emphasis on attending church, but their letters have little to say about religion. Church-going obviously fulfilled a social function as well as a spiritual one. Plantation children's education was frequent commented upon in correspondence. Some teachers ran their own small schools, while others were hired to instruct the children of an individual family or related families. Children occasionally went away to nearby boarding schools. Boys appear to have attended school more consistently than girls, although both were instructed in a range of academic subjects. John Burwell went through a succession of teachers; one was dismissed for being too "mean," another for being "an abominable fool" who tried to assume an "arbitrary & dictatorial sort of power" over his sons, who would not stand to be treated in this way. Burwell desired his sons to be respectful but not docile: "... never give an insult & never take one. With this motto you avoid difficulty... as well as the finger of scorn & contempt that every gentleman must have for the coward." In three letters to his sister-in-law Elizabeth T. Guy, John A. Burwell writes at length on the life of the plantation, as viewed through his proprietary eyes. He describe illnesses, births and deaths, his sons' intelligence and his daughter's beauty, the success of his crop and the luxuries bought with its profits, and the superiority of Virginia land. In July, 1846 he brags of having "left my own neighborhood entirely out of sight" in this year's tobacco production, which, with the addition of other produce sales, has brought in ,224.00. A letter of April 30, 1847 offers chilling commentary on attitudes toward slaves. Burwell writes with amusement that daughter Lizzie Anna has a black maid, Fanny, of whom she is very fond, but that when Fanny made her angry the little girl asked her father to "cut Fanny's ears off & get her a new maid from Clarksville." A more businesslike expression of the status of slaves as profitable chattel is displayed in a June, 1848 letter which details the expenses and profits due Elizabeth from the hiring out of her five slaves. John E. Burwell, at home on the plantation, wrote six letters to his brother, Thomas, between 1854 and 1857. These comment largely on hunting, which seems to have been a favorite male pastime. He also notes attending a wedding and enjoying "waiting on" two young ladies. When the railroad went through nearby, he amused himself by building a handcar to ride up and down the tracks. The young man appears to have had little in the way of work expected of him; or perhaps he did not consider chores worthy of comment. The remainder of the Burwell-Guy letters consists of social correspondence, largely between women members of the families. Aunts, nieces, sisters, and cousins write typically of domestic life, visiting, social events, fashion, gardening, and illnesses. The women's correspondence is much more fragmented than the men's, in which letters to or from John Burwell predominate. There are nine letters from Elizabeth Guy to sister Lucy Burwell, several to Elizabeth from the women of the Townes and Rawlins families, respectively, and several to Elizabeth or Lucy from Aunt Mary Williamson in Kentucky. The women's letters almost always include some news of the slaves, whom they clearly regarded with affection as members of their households. It is always, however, the affection of a superior for a subordinate, and if these women treated their slaves well and cared about them, they also removed them from families at their convenience and hired them out or assigned them work as they saw fit. After Anna Guy's marriage to Edward Rawlins she and sister Elizabeth had their slaves insured and sent down to them in New Orleans. Elizabeth writes in December, 1846 "They will no doubt dislike to leave very much but tell them to dispose of their plunder to the best advantage, behave well, & they shall be always well treated ..." Once there, Miss Guy hired some of her slaves out to bring in income: "My three men are hired at sixty dollars a month to a gentleman who is very kind to them; but a deduction is made for all the time they are sick of course. The two Jim's are draymen and Coy attends to the stables. Lucretia has grown & fattened very much since she had scarlet fever. I made her some new blue dresses & long sleeve white aprons & she is one of the nicest little maids that I know. The lady who has her is very particularly [sic] with her, & is teaching her to sew." In the same letter Elizabeth consoles her sister Lucy at the loss of her slave Indy. "I feel truly sorry to hear that she is no more. We thought a great deal of her, she always felt so much for you in your sickness. I deeply sympathize with you in the loss you have sustained for I know you will miss her a great deal." Courtship is a recurrent theme in the Burwell-Guy papers, and both men and women seem to have been fond of flirting and appreciative of physical charm. It was evidently not necessary to be coy about expressing ones opinions and preferences, and a lively social life was much desired. After her sister's hasty marriage to Cousin Edward during their visit to Aunt Mary in Kentucky, Elizabeth Guy developed a passion for Cousin Perry DuPuy and sought permission to marry him. When sister Lucy in North Carolina disapproved, her ardor cooled -- much to brother-in-law John Burwell's amusement. William Rawlins writes to his cousin Elizabeth Guy, addressed as "Sweet Sister Lizzy," on June 12, 1844, describing the social season last winter in Norfolk and his current adventures: "there are some beautiful school girls here and I have been flying around some of them." He wants to see her soon so that he may tell her of "courting scrapes and engagements and discards..." In September, 1855 Mary L. Burwell asks cousin Thomas Burwell about her chances with an acquaintance of his, Dr. Robert, who lost his wife recently. She wishes to know if he has "thrown aside the weeds of mourning yet," for she still has "a fondness for young widowers." The collection winds up with the intriguing story of John and Lucy Burwell's divorce, an ugly tale which depicts the underside of their seemingly stable, convivial plantation life. Letters from John Burwell to son Thomas written in March, 1857 lament that his wife has moved out, and that his sons are taking her side, telling things which "should never go out of the family" in court, after saying previously that they would have no part in their parents' quarrels. Unhappy domestic relations had evidently come to a head when Burwell became violent toward his slaves; he was accused of "runing the negroes about with guns & sticks." Burwell asserts that he was doing it "out of fun," that no one was shot or struck, and that a good marksman like himself "knows too well which way his guns were pointed to have done mischief." The court decided otherwise, and granted Mrs. Burwell, who had just given birth to a new son, a divorce. Her husband entreated her to return, vowing never to give "another cross word," and declaring that the decree was "a pack of foolishness." She evidently did not return. The few later letters in the collection do not touch upon the matter. When all of its bits and pieces are put together, the Burwell-Guy collection yields a revealing slice of antebellum plantation life. It portrays a social and domestic setting which emphasized family and hospitality, the tobacco economy that supported such a lifestyle, and the slave system that enabled it to function.

Sources

1. ↑ Source: #S20 Online publication - Ancestry.com. OneWorldTree [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Source: #S28 Database online. Record for Armistead Burwell Ancestry Family Tree 0
3. ↑ Source: #S20 Online publication - Ancestry.com. OneWorldTree [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc.

• Source: S20 Ancestry.com One World Tree (sm) Publication: Name: Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, n.d.; NOTESource Medium: Ancestry.com
• Source: S28 Ancestry.com Public Member Trees Publication: Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.;