Burgess – A Deck of Ancestors

52W Mark V – Week 20: William Burgess

William Burgess, Sr.
(1794-1880)

With William Burgess, Sr., we reach the last of my maternal Great x4 Grandparents. William was born in Putnam, Washington County, New York on May 20, 1794, the fourth of eight children born to Chris John Burgess and Hannah Newland.

Chris John was born Johann Christian Borges, who was born in Fischbach, Hesse Nassau. Johann was a Hessian mercenary who initially fought for the British in the American Revolution, but later switched sides.

Johann was a member of the Second Hessian Division, under the command of Lt. General von Knyphausen, which mustered near Bremen in June 1776. His regiment then sailed for England. In July they set sail for the colonies. In August 1778, he and two others deserted, with Johann ending up in Rhode Island. After doing so, Johann set himself up as a weaver, an occupation he may have had in Hesse. As well, the legend is that Johann changed his name during this time in order to fit in with the colonials.

On March 19, 1782, Johann enlisted with the Rhode Island Regiment and served for nine months. Johann served with a fellow named Jabez Newland, whose sister was Hannah Newland. Johann and Hannah married in Providence, Rhode Island in 1786.

Hannah had deep roots in colonial Massachusetts, with both sides of her family having arrived there in the early to mid 17th century. In fact, Hannah is most likely a direct descendant of Francis Eaton, one of the passengers on the Mayflower, although there is one link in her lineage that I haven’t quite confirmed.

Five years before marrying Johann, Hannah had been engaged to a man named John Watterman, who was also a Hessian mercenary who deserted to serve with the rebels. In February 1777, Hannah and John declared their intention to marry, but the Selectmen of Norton, Massachusetts denied them permission to do so. One account is that John had a “questionable” German background. That is somewhat ironic, given that Hannah ultimately ended up marrying another former Hessian mercenary.

The more likely reason is that Hannah and John had conceived a child out of wedlock. Hannah was fined five shillings for “fornication and having had a bastard child born of her body”, as well as paying the cost of the prosecution. John was in attendance at the court proceeding and acknowledged paternity. The court ordered John to pay for the maintenance of the child. It appears from the court record that the order was less for social welfare purposes and more to prevent the town from bearing the cost of supporting an unwed mother.

After Johann and Hannah married, they moved to New York and settled at Fort William on the shore of Lake George. From there the family moved to Putnam, where they had their first five children. The family moved to Bolton, New York sometime around 1797, where Hannah gave birth to three more children.

While the family had moved to Bolton, William appears to have ended up back in Putnam later in life, because that is where he married Violate Stockwell on May 1, 1813. Over the next ten years, William and Violate had six children, with five more after a move to adjacent Warren County.

Then William’s world changed.

Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in March 1830. Two years later, in July 1832, William’s eldest child, Harrison, heard a Mormon missionary by the name of Simeon Carter. Harrison joined the fledgling church and was baptised in October 1832. Harrison then convinced his parents and two of his siblings to join. William, Violate, and their children Horace and Rosina were all baptized into the new church, which at the time was called the “Church of Christ”. They were all baptized on December 2, 1832 by another recent convert, William Snow, who himself had only joined the Mormon church earlier in 1832.

This makes William a ground-floor member of the church. He became an active and prominent member. William was well-known to Joseph Smith. William testified on behalf of the defence at one of Joseph Smith’s trials. As well, William’s son William Jr. lived in Joseph Smith’s residence during the time the Latter Day Saints were in Kirtland, Ohio.

In fact, the Kirtland Elders’ Certificates from the Joseph Smith Papers purport that William was ordained a deacon on April 6 1830 – the date the church was formally established. Clearly there was some backdating of his membership.

^{“This certifies that William Burgess has been received into the church of the Latter-Day Saints, organized on the sixth of April, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred hundred & thirty, & has been ordained a Deacon…}

^{Joseph Smith Jr. Chairman.
F[rederick] G. Williams Clerk.
Kirtland, Ohio, April 2, 1836.”}

Despite the official church record, created years after the event, William and Violate’s baptism is documented in William Snow’s journal, written at the time of the event. So I place no weight on the Kirtland certificate. A copy of the diary is reproduced in last week’s post about Violate.

William and family joined the Mormon migration and their search for Zion, a New Jerusalem and holy city in the Americas that the church desired to build its community of the righteous. This was originally Kirtland, Ohio, where William and Violate’s youngest child was born in 1837.

In Kirtland, William purchased a half acre tract of land in 1834 for $50 from a John Reed. The legal description of the property was Lot No. 44, Tract 1. William was one of the chief carpenters who helped construct the church’s temple at Kirtland. Among other things, William laid out the roofing timbers. When William left Kirtland, he sold his land for $180. Not a bad return for a few years’ investment.

In 1840, William and family moved with the Saints to Nauvoo, where William’s primary occupation was farming. William was also involved in the construction of the temple in Nauvoo. The family remained in Nauvoo until the Mormons were driven out in 1846. The Burgesses were amongst the first companies to leave Nauvoo, destined for what is now Utah, but which at the time was still part of Mexico.

“Camp of Israel” was a name used to describe Winter Quarters. These are entries from William’s time there, one from 1847 and the other from 1848, when William and family left for Utah.

Due to the late and rushed start of the migration, the Mormons were forced to set up camp in Nebraska at a site known as Winter Quarters, near where Omaha came to be. William and family were at Winter Quarters for most of its existence, from 1846 to 1848. When they departed, it was with a company of 662 and arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1848.

Location of William’s home in Salt Lake City. Today that is some prime real estate.

William lived in the 16th Ward of Salt Lake City for 12 years, where he was a farmer. He also raised cattle, and had a brand recorded on February 23, 1850. The mark was a stylized number “2” (having a curled flourish at the top) with an arch above, placed on the left hip.

On December 17, 1854, William entered into a polygamous marriage with Dorcas Keeling, who was 43 years old at the time. They married in the President’s Office in Salt Lake City. Dorcas was a recently divorced mother of three. She had been married to George Dykes, who left the church after serving a mission to Great Britain and Denmark in 1852. Dorcas and her children lived in William’s household until Dorcas’s children married and moved out. In fact, two of William’s grandsons, through his son Horace, married two of Dorcas’s daughters. So the sisters were also sisters-in-law, and the brothers were brothers-in-law.

In 1861, the church directed William to move to Pine Valley, which had been established two years earlier as a logging settlement. William was instructed to establish a saw mill there. Lumber produced at William’s mill was used throughout Utah, including the temple at Salt Lake as well as its pipe organ. Lumber from the mill was also used to build the Pine Valley Chapel, the oldest Mormon chapel in continuous use. As well, William built a separate home for Dorcas, a block from where he and Violate lived. By 1870, William had real property worth $500 and personal property worth $200.

William died on November 20, 1880 in Pine Valley, only four months after his wife Violate. Dorcas survived him by a year. William is buried at the Pine Valley Cemetery.

52W Mark V: Now What?

Happy New Year!

For the fifth year in a row, I’m going to participate in Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge. For the first three years, I followed Amy’s prompts. However, for the 2024 iteration of the Challenge, I struck my own path and set my own prompts, as I explained this time last year. In Week 52 of last year’s Challenge, I indicated that I would likely return to following Amy’s prompts.

https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks-themes-for-2026/

However, after seeing the list of this year’s prompts, I decided they were not for me. While I appreciate that there are many new ideas this year, most of them do not speak to me. As well, for many of the prompts, I feel hard pressed to come up with something I haven’t covered before. So I’ve decided to once again strike out on my own and create my own set of prompts.

For me, what I came up with last year really worked for me. Not only did it help my achieve my primary goal of writing up my research, it unexpectedly helped me identify the many unexpected gaps in my research. As a result, I inadvertently participated in Yvette Hoitink‘s Level-Up Challenge! It also helped that I was able to divide my fourth through sixth generations of grandparents into four suits and 52 cards, keeping with my blog’s theme of 52 Ancestors.

I decided that I would write about the next generation of my ancestors. It would once again tie the whole year together and provide me with some focus. However, the seventh generation consists of 64 individuals, which precludes writing about one per week. This problem is partly resolved by the unfortunate fact I have yet to identify seven of my Gx4 Grandparents, but that still leaves me with 57 people to fit into 52 weeks.

Despite that problem, I’m going to forge ahead with the plan to write about my seventh generation of ancestors this year – my Great Great Great Great Grandparents. I’ll figure out how to fit 57 people into 52 weeks as I go.

Continuing with last year’s theme, this results in four “suits” based upon each of my four grandparents. The individuals I will write about are in the orange boxes.

Good luck to everyone participating in the 52 Ancestors Challenge this year!

52W Mark IV – Week 32: Card B6 William Burgess

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons – was founded by Joseph Smith in April 1830 in Fayette, New York. In July 1832, Harrison Burgess of Putnam, New York, heard a Mormon missionary by the name of Simeon Carter. Harrison converted to the new religion and was baptized in October 1832. By the end of that year, Harrison’s parents and siblings (of whom there were at least nine at the time) also joined the Mormon church.

This included my Gx3 Grandfather, William Burgess Jr., who was about nine years old at the time. He was born on March 1, 1822, in Putnam. He was the sixth of twelve children born to William Burgess Sr. (1794-1880) and Violate Stockwell (1794-1880).

The Mormons relocated to Kirkland, Ohio in 1831. By September 1833, William was living there with his family. However, according to secondary sources, William Jr. lived in Joseph Smith’s house for a considerable period of time.

In the meantime, Smith was trying to establish Missouri as the church’s headquarters. However, between the Governor of Missouri driving the Mormons out of the state and a financial scandal involving the Kirtland Safety Society, a joint stock company intended to become a bank, the Mormons relocated to Nauvoo, Illinois in 1839. The Burgess family joined the fledgling church there by 1841, if not earlier.

While in Nauvoo, William joined the Third Company, Fifth Regiment of the Nauvoo Legion, a state-authorized militia that existed from 1841 to 1845. During his time with the Nauvoo Legion, William attained the rank of Colonel. As well, William was ordained as a “Seventy”, a level of priesthood within the Mormon church. He also participated in constructing the Latter Day Saints’ temple in Nauvoo.

William married his first wife, Maria Pulsipher, in September 1840 in Lima, Illinois. More accurately, William entered into a legal marriage with Maria. His next two wives were polygamous unions. Early church leaders secretly began the practice while the church was in Nauvoo. The church did not openly start the practice until 1852, after Joseph Smith had died and it had established itself in Salt Lake City. William and Maria remained married until her death in 1892. They had nine children together.

The Mormons were driven out of Nauvoo in 1846, which marked the beginning of the Mormon Migration to Utah. During the westward migration, over the winter of 1846-1847, about 2,500 church members encamped at Winter Quarters, which was just north of where Omaha, Nebraska came to be. The first settlers arrived in what is now Salt Lake City in July 1847, in what was still Mexican territory.

William and Maria were part of this great migration. They were in Winter Quarters from at least September 16, 1846 to May 1848. They set out as members of Brigham Young’s company, which consisted of about 1,220 people. William arrived in Utah by September 1848 and settled in Huntington, about 175 kilometers southeast of Salt Lake City.

William was not in Huntington for long. By the next year, 1849, he was in Salt Lake City where he joined the militia. Upon enlisting he was made a captain; by 1853 he was a colonel. William also took up farming near Salt Lake City.

Militia record showing both William and his older brother Harrison.

While in Salt Lake City, William entered into a polygamist marriage with my Gx3 grandmother, Charlotte Liggett, on June 3, 1852. William was more than twice Charlotte’s age at the time – he was 30 and she was 14. Sadly, that kind of age gap, and the incredibly young age of the girls, was not uncommon with the early Mormon polygamists.

Shortly after marrying Charlotte, William entered into a mission. It appears that he may have or was to have carried out his mission in Great Britain; however, it is more likely that he performed his mission within the United States. At or around the time William completed his mission, he was ordained as President of the Ninth Quorum of Seventies.

By the start of 1854, William and family were living in Lehi, Utah, which is about 40 kilometers due south of Salt Lake City. The city of Lehi established a school board on February 17, 1854 and held an election for trustees three days later. Three men were elected: William, Preston Thomas, and Daniel Collett. Sixty five years later, William’s grandson, Milton Burgess, married Preston’s granddaughter, Hazel Nelson. Milton and Hazel are my great grandparents.

A month after William was elected to the Lehi school board, he was elected an alderman of Lehi. In addition to his electoral positions, William was one of the founders of the Lehi Dramatic Club, which was established in 1855. Its first productions were plays called “Priestcraft in Danger” and “Luke the Labourer”. The club performed in Lehi’s log schoolhouse, using tallow candles for footlights and painted wagon covers for scenery and curtains. I doubt William actually performed on stage. Rather, I believe he was one of the people overseeing the operations of the club. For example, William obtained the licence required by the town for operation of the club. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible that he may have been treading the boards!

William did not complete his term as alderman in Lehi. He resigned in March 1855, because he and his family moved to Salmon, Idaho, not far from where Sacagawea was born. While in Salmon, William embarked on a three-year mission for the church. The mission was based out of Fort Lemhi, a Mormon mission located about 40 kilometers south of Salmon. Initially, the mission consisted of twenty-seven sent to Lemhi by Brigham Young. At its peak, the mission grew to about 200 people. The Mormons were forced to abandon the mission due to conflict with the Bannock and Shoshone.

Sometime around or after moving to Salmon, likely in 1857, Charlotte left William. The marriage lasted long enough for them to have had one son, which was lucky for me, because he was Horace Burgess, my Gx2 Grandfather. By some accounts, the marriage ended because Charlotte did not get along with Maria; by others, it was because she was disenchanted with polygamy. Some sources indicate that the couple divorced. However, being a polygamous marriage, there may have been no formal civil registration of the marriage and, therefore, no formal divorce. While at the time of their marriage William and Charlotte had been “sealed” (a Mormon ritual meant to bind familial relationships for eternity), Charlotte had the sealing annulled in 1890.

After the Lemhi mission came to an end, William and family moved to Parley’s Canyon, which is now on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, where he had been granted 10 acres of land. William built a sawmill where he milled shingles for use at the nearby fort and for houses. William’s father and his brothers Harrison, Horace, and Melanchton also worked at the mill.

On February 21, 1858, William married Catherine Chamberlain, who was 18 years old at the time. Catherine had been previously married, at age 16, to a fellow by the name of William Randolph Teeples. Catherine and William had at least one child together. I have not researched the circumstances as to when Catherine and William separated, if they did at all. All the while, William was still married to Maria, who was 35 years old by this time. In fact, each of Maria’s last two children were born within a few months of each of Catherine’s first two children with William. Catherine ultimately had four children with William. This means that William fathered 14 children in total.

^{A rough sketch showing the ages of William and his three wives at the time of each marriage. As well, I’ve highlighted the relative times at which William fathered some of his 14 children, including the timing of Maria’s last two children and Catherine’s first two.}

In 1862, William established a sawmill in Pine Valley, Utah, which furnished most of the lumber for southern Utah (then referred to as “Dixie”). It was one of the first sawmills in the region. The mill was a seasonal operation, so until 1880 William divided his time between Pine Valley in the summer and St. George, Utah, in the winter. The Pine Valley sawmill provided the lumber that was used to build the pipe organ for the local church. As well, apparently some of the lumber William milled was used for the construction of the Salt Lake Tabernacle.

In 1880, William relocated to Thurber, Utah, where he spent five years. Finally, around 1885, William settled back in Huntington, where he had begun life in Utah, and spent the rest of his life there. William had many business endeavours in Huntington. He was a bee keeper, which is fitting because Utah is known as the Beehive State. William also bought into the Co-op Mercantile Company as one of the principal stockholders and served as its president for seven years. He also worked as a carpenter, farmed, and raised cattle.

William died on March 14, 1904 after having been bedridden for nine years due to rheumatism and other ailments. He is buried at the Huntington City Cemetery.

52W Mark IV – Week 28: Card B2 Horace Conrad Liggett Burgess

^{Horace Conrad Liggett Burgess (1854-1940)}

What can I say about my Gx2 Grandfather Horace Burgess that I haven’t said before? It seems like I’ve written about or mentioned him many times in the four years that I’ve been participating in the 52 Ancestors Challenge.

Horace was born in 1854 in Lehi, Utah. As far as I can find, he was named Horace Liggett Burgess. His middle name reflects the Mormon custom of giving their children their mother’s maiden names as middle names. Census and marriage records show he was still using Liggett as his middle name in his late 40s. It was not until after he moved to Canada in 1903 that he began to use Conrad. The family lore I’ve found suggests he adopted the middle name Conrad later in life in order to add support to his claim in a dispute over his ownership of some land. Horace dropped Liggett from his full name when he applied for homesteads in Alberta in the first decade of the 20th Century. The name Liggett does not appear on his death certificate or headstone.

Horace was the only child of William Burgess and Charlotte Elizabeth Liggett, who married in 1852. The union was polygamous, as William was still married to his first wife, Maria Pulsipher. William and Maria had been married for 12 years at the time and had six children; they remained married until Maria died in 1892. Moreover, William was more than twice Charlotte’s age when they married – he was 30, she was 14. Based on my research, this was typical of polygamous Mormon marriages of the time.

Charlotte left William sometime around when Horace was three. Apparently she did not get along with Maria. Horace went with his mother when his parents separated. Charlotte remarried in 1857, entering into another polygamous marriage. By the time Horace was 17, he had five half-siblings through his mother and step-father. William married his third wife in 1858 – another polygamous marriage for him, too. William had three more children with Maria and four with his third wife. In all, Horace had 19 half-siblings.

Horace had no memories of his biological father during his childhood and teens. Based upon the 1860 and 1870 censuses, Horace went by his step-father’s surname. According to his half-brother George, Horace was 18 when he learned the identity of his biological father from his mother. Horace then sought out his father and began using the surname Burgess.

Horace married his first wife, Sarah Florilla (“Rilla”) Cook, in Goshen, Utah on March 3, 1876. He was 21 and she was 18. Together they had nine children – seven boys and two girls. Six children survived childhood and into adulthood. By 1887 the family had moved to Lawrence, Utah. As of 1891 they had relocated to Vernal, Utah.

I don’t know how Horace earned a living at the time he married or when his first two children were born. However, by 1880, he was working in Goshen as a teamster. It appears that he worked at this occupation in one form or another for the next twenty years.

^{1880 United States census, Utah Territory, Utah County, Goshen Precinct, Enumeration District 35, page 3.}

Rilla passed away in January 1894, a few weeks after giving birth for the ninth time. Just over a year later, on June 1, 1895, Horace married Julia Josephine Lundquist in Atlantic City, Wyoming. It is neither a city nor located by the Atlantic. In fact, the village is well more than twice as far from the Atlantic as it is from the Pacific. Apparently it takes its name from the fact it’s on the eastern (Atlantic) side of the Continental Divide.

Horace was 13 years Julia’s senior. It was her third marriage. Julia was born in Sweden and immigrated to the United States when she was 16. Horace and Julia had nine or ten children. I say nine or ten because I cannot find much evidence regarding their first child, said to have been born sometime in 1895. Even his name is unconfirmed. I have it as Lewiston Leon Burgess, other places it’s James Harvey Lewiston Leon Burgess. If he in fact existed, Horace and Julia had five children in the United States and five in Canada.

Based on the records I have, how Horace came to be in Wyoming is little more than an exercise in speculation. I suspect it was related to Horace’s occupation of transporting freight.

Horace is included twice in the 1900 census, in Freemont and Sweetwater counties, both in Wyoming. For both, his occupation was entered as “freighter”. Since records for other times show Horace as a teamster, it’s likely that his work as a freighter meant he transported cargo. The fact he was listed in the 1900 census at two different locations, it may be that his transport work involved travel between the two counties.

The Freemont County census shows three of Horace’s sons as being with him in that county, with their occupations listed as sheepherder. One of those sons, John, is also listed in both census records. Together, this suggests that Horace’s transport work might have been related to agricultural products.

Horace and family moved to Canada in 1903, when Horace made the first of two attempts at homesteading. In August of that year he settled on a piece of land near Grassy Lake, Alberta, which is midway between Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. The venture did not last long, because he had returned to the United States the following year. In a subsequent application for a homestead at another location, Horace reported that he had forfeited his claim to this land.

The family came back to Canada soon afterwards and made a second attempt as a homesteader on a piece of land near Brant, Alberta, about 60 kilometers southeast of Calgary.

Horace obtained entry for the land on June 19, 1905. He built a home on the land and began continuous occupation in April 1908. That was the same year Horace was naturalized as a Canadian national (at that time, a British subject domiciled in Canada). According to the homestead application Horace filed in June 1908, on two occasions after entering the land he spent several months working in British Columbia. On this homestead, Horace had seven horses and ten head of cattle. The land was granted to him on August 22, 1912. Horace remained here until 1916. I do not know his ownership status there after that time.

^{The yellow square marks the land granted to Horace Burgess, upon which he was a homesteader – not far from Vulcan!}

Sometime in 1916, Horace and family relocated to a farm at Glenwood (at the time, “Glenwoodville”), north of Cardston. Sometime after 1916, Horace and family moved several times, to places in Utah and Idaho, but they did not sell their home in Glenwood. Horace, Julia, and their two youngest children moved back to Glenwood in September 1924. It appears that from up to 1930, Horace divided his time between Glenwood and Cherry Grove, which is midway up the province close to the Saskatchewan border.

Two years before Horace left Glenwood the last time, the village honoured its oldest residents at a banquet in January 1928. At age 73, Horace was the oldest of those honoured. However, the bar for what was considered “aged” was pretty low. According to the newspaper account of the event, from age 72 “down to 33 consisted of what was considered the aged of the town.” I suppose midlife crises in Glenwood occurred when people were in their teens.

Horace ultimately retired in 1930 and remained in Cherry Grove from that time on. His hobbies included vegetable gardening. Horace passed away at age 85, on February 25, 1940. While the cause of death was due to kidney problems, the registration of his death said it was secondary to “senility”, amongst other health problems. Horace is buried at the Cherry Grove Cemetery.

^{Horace’s Gx3 and Gx4 grandsons, visiting the land he farmed just over 100 years ago.}

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