1From Benjamin Franklin to ———, [February 1746?]. (Franklin Papers)
.... It could have been written in any of the years from 1745 through 1747. It is inserted here because of its possible connection with an episode of which Governor Gooch informed the Virginia House of Burgesses, Feb. 20, 1746: “Several Transports with Two Regiments bound to Cape Breton, to preserve the valuable Conquest of Louisbourg, … by bad Weather and contrary Winds, have been forced with...
2Abigail Adams to John Adams, 25 July 1775 (Adams Papers)
Peyton Randolph, the president, had left Congress late in May to assume his duties as speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses; on 24 May John Hancock was elected to succeed him (
3From Thomas Jefferson to Richard Adams, 18 December 1794 (Jefferson Papers)
represented New Kent and Henrico in the Virginia House of Burgesses before the American Revolution and had served as representative for Henrico in both houses of the General Assembly during the War for Independence (
4From George Washington to Burwell Bassett, 19 June 1775 (Washington Papers)
...Kent Country, Va., where GW and Mrs. Washington visited often during the 1760s and early 1770s, usually in conjunction with their trips to Williamsburg, some twenty miles southeast of Eltham. Burwell Bassett represented his county in the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1762 to 1775 and in the first four Virginia conventions between 1774 and 1776.
5From George Washington to Jeremy Belknap, 15 June 1798 (Washington Papers)
The learned Richard Bland (1710–1776) was a powerful figure in the Virginia House of Burgesses in the decades before the American Revolution. He collected and preserved many important documents but is not known to have written a history of Virginia.
6From James Madison to William Bradford, 19 June 1775 (Madison Papers)
...same time, his letters of 29 May and 24 December 1774 to the Earl of Dartmouth, telling about the recalcitrant American Whigs, were published in colonial newspapers. On 10 June 1775 the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted Jefferson’s “Address,” rejecting Lord North’s so-called “Conciliatory Proposals” of 20 February. On 24 June the Burgesses, after bidding defiance to Dunmore, adjourned...
7From James Madison to William Bradford, 28 July 1775 (Madison Papers)
Both the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress appointed commissioners to treat with the western Indians at Fort Pitt (
8From James Madison to Charles Caldwell, 22 July 1825 (Madison Papers)
Thomas Barbour (1735–1825) was a prosperous Orange County planter at Bloomingdale, near Montpelier. Barbour served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769–1775, and thereafter, as county lieutenant of the militia (Lowery,
9Thomas Jefferson to Dabney Carr, 19 January 1816 (Jefferson Papers)
Virginia; House of Burgesses [index entry] Virginia; House of Burgesses, journals of [index entry]
10From George Washington to Charles Carter of Ludlow, 14 September 1790 (Washington Papers)
...Robert “King” Carter of Corotoman, Carter married Elizabeth Chiswell (1737–1804), daughter of Hanover County burgess John Chiswell and Elizabeth Randolph Chiswell. Carter himself served in the Virginia House of Burgesses from the 1760s through 1790, representing King George County and then Stafford County. His reckless extravagance earned him the contemporary nickname of “The Blaze,” as well...