The following article appeared in the

ORANGE COUNTY POST

on

Thursday, April 23, 1970

Page 9

'BIG' LITTLE BRITAIN

The Robert Burnets

by Margaret V. S. Wallace

The Burnets, spelled with one t and the accent on the first syllable in early days in Little Britain, are traced to the Burnards of Normandy. Roger de Burnard came to England in 1066 with William the Conqueror. Several generations later, in 1324, Alexander Burnard or Burnet was made a Baron. He was "Keeper of the King’s Forests" and had on his coat of arms the highlander, the greyhound and the bugle horn. William Burnet (1688-1729), colonial governor of New York and New Jersey in 1725, was of the same family.

A Robert Burnet (1637-1714) was one of the proprietors of East Jersey in 1680 and settled in New Jersey after 1700. His son Robert was born near Edinburgh in 1701. He and two brothers came from Scotland to America in 1725. They settled in Raritan, J.J. where Robert was a tailor. In 1729 he bought from Andrew Johnston and John Parker of Perth Amboy, N.J. 200 acres on the Andrew Johnston patent in New Windsor, Ulster County, N.Y. His brother Patrick came with him and helped him get settled and then returned to New Jersey.

Robert Burnet’s deed is recorded in Kingston. It is dated October 7, 1729. He paid sixty pounds, "the said Robert Burnet his heirs and assigns forever rendering yearly and every year unto our Sovereign Lord the King, the usual rent of two shillings sixpence for every hundred acres." His land is described as "beginning at the south-west corner of 250 acres sold to Peter Mulliner" 50 chains south of John Humphrey’s land. It was bounded on the north by Peter Mulliner’s land and on the east and south "by land contained in the grant to the said Andrew Johnston and remaining unsold, and westerly by Doct. Hume and by Low and partners," that is, by the western boundary of the patent. John Reid, an older man with three daughters came with him and soon bought 200 acres east of him. In 1730 some of the Clinton party bought land on this patent, Charles Clinton to the south of Robert Burnet and John Young and Alexander Denniston south east of him.

He built his log cabin slightly southwest of the center of his tract near a spring according to Ruttenber. This is known also from the fact that his grandson Robert Reid Burnet started housekeeping in his grandfather’s cabin, and as his first purchase of land was acres in the southeast corner of his uncle John’s western half of the tract, that locates it. Mr. Anthony Congelosi, the present owner of the western half of Robert Burnet’s 200 acres, says there is a foundation hole in the southeast quarter of his farm. Later Robert Burnet moved to the eastern half of his farm and built a bigger house. This eastern part of his farm he willed to his son James, the farm known recently as the Wixon farm, then Reyns, and now Nadas, on Bull Road.

Robert Burnet married John Reid’s daughter Anne in 1730. They had five sons and three daughters, James 1732-1807, John 1739-1824, Robert 1740?-1790, Mary 1741-1831, Margaret who is mentioned in his will but whose dates are not yet discovered, Sarah 1745-?, Thomas 1748-1835 and Patrick 1750-1825. All of the sons fought in the Revolution. The father had served in the French and Indian War under Captain Thomas Ellison.

We have Robert Burnet’s signature on a 1765 document relative to the Little Britain church, and on his will, which is at the New Windsor Cantonment. He probably attend church at Bethlehem, but those earliest records are lost. Later, when the Little Britain church was built in 1765 he owned on of the square pews near the pulpit, with McDowells on one side of him and Shaws and Kernochans on the other. He is described as a firm Presbyterian and rigid disciplinarian. He was a big man, six feet two inches tall. He died in 1774, and may be buried in the old Clinton burying ground, where many of the Clinton neighbors were buried, or possibly on his farm as was often done in those days. A stone marked "Burnet" was in a shed on the Congelosi farm until a recent fire destroyed it. It could have been a grave stone or a boundary stone.

James Burnet and his large family will appear in another article.

John Burnet inherited the western part of his father’s farm in 1774. He was a major in the Revolution. He served with General James Clinton in the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign. His wife signed herself Gertie on deeds. She is thought to have been a Vandermark. He seems to have had money troubles. By his father’s will he got the farm but had to pay eighty five pounds toward the legacies to other children. The New Windsor Cantonment has an indenture dated May 20, 1774, showing that John Burnet owed Dirck Lefferts of the City of New York 200 pounds, and he mortgaged his 100 acres to him. This was right after he inherited it. Also at New Windsor Cantonment is an indenture dated May 23, 1785 by which John Burnet and Gertie his wife sold to Robert R. Burnet 25 acres, the southeast corner of his 100 acres for 100 pounds. In 1787 Dirck Lefferts released the farm to Robert R. Burnet for 169 pounds and 11 shillings, and in 1791 John Burnet signed over to his nephew Robert R. Burnet the whole 106 acres, whatever title he might still have had to it, for five shillings. John’s children were William, Mary who married her cousin John, son of Thomas; Frederick, and Elizabeth who married Charles Humphrey. John and at least some of his children with him went "west." Many who served in the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign were enticed by the lush land in central New York. He died at Oaks Corners, town of Phelps, Ontario County, NY.

Ruttenber says that Robert settled on the Genung farm. It is now owned by the Geolys and best known in Little Britain by the names Genung, Shuart and Stone. He may have rented. The ownership of the farm has been traced back from Robert Wallace Genung to Andrew D. Masten, to Nathaniel Ackerly, to John Jackson whose daughter was Mehitable, wife of Nathaniel Ackerly, to Daniel McAnally. He took mortgages on many farms and became the owner of some of them. The deed from Daniel McAnally to John Jackson is dated June 9, 1832 and describes the land "the southermost half of 100 acres of land witch Jeremiah Tuthill and John Tuthill purchased from Joseph Swasey and is the westerly end of lot number three in a certain tract of land granted by letters patent to Lewis Morris deceased..." The Swasey and Tuttle deeds are not recorded in Goshen or in Kingston. Perhaps if Robert Burnet had owned the land he would have been mentioned along with Swasey and Tuttle. We have to take Ruttenber’s word for it that Robert Burnet lived on this farm on Station Road, as called now. Ruttenber says he married Nancy McClaughry, but Ruttenber seems to be the only one who knows this. His will of 1790 names his wife Ann. He had left his first farm and had bought one in the part of the town of New Windsor that is now in Hamptonburgh. Baptismal records of Brick Church, Montgomery note the baptisms of two children of Robert Burnet and Anna Davis, Elizabeth in 1765 and Isabella in 1767. These children are not mentioned in his will. We can only surmise that they died young, that his first wife Nancy had died and he had married again. Davis is a name connected with the region of his second farm. His will dated 1790 is at the New Windsor Cantonment and is recorded in Kingston. He named four sons and a daughter, Henry, William, Abner, Samuel and Jane. The brothers sold the farm to their sister’s husbands, James Davis. If there was a Nancy McClaughry, the children were not hers, for her father, Patrick McClaughry, did not mention them in his will along with other grandchildren.

Thomas Burnet married Mary Johnston. They had seven children, John, Benjamin, Robert, Isaac, James, Margaret and Elizabeth. His second wife was Sarah Smith who had no children. Thomas was a private in the Revolution. He became blind at the battle of Fort Montgomery, and was given a pension of $80 per year. His mother Anne Reid Burnet, gave him 100 acres which she had inherited from her father John Reid and which he had bought from Samuel Boyd. Thomas Burnet sold this land in 1794 to John McLean, husband of his niece Ann, daughter of his brother James. Then he went west with his brother John. This land was just west of the farm of John Cook, Rev. Thomas G. Smith, George Denniston, Mary Arnott and various others, and now Henry Wolf. It is the southern part of the farm now owned by the Alsdorfs.

Patrick Burnet married Keziah Cook or Coleman, and lived on a farm north of The Square, and north of Sarah Hamilton’s Tavern. They had three sons, George, Robert and Hiram. Hiram’s son Hiram sold the farm out of the family. It is now under Stewart Field.

Mary Burnet married Neil McCarty [McArthur] and had four sons and two daughters, John, Alexander, Neil, Henry, Nancy and Mary. Her son Alexander was a printer on The Play boy and Henry was a printer on The Index.

No information has been found about Margaret except that she was alive in 1771 when her father willed her forty pounds.

Sarah Burnet married Henry Man Neely and had two sons and a daughter, David, Robert and Ruth.

these four sons and three daughters have disappeared from the Little Britain scene. It was James, the oldest son, who continued to make the Burnet name important in the early days, and some of whose descendants are still with us.

Information for this article has been taken from deeds, wills, cemetery lists, Ruttenber’s History of the Town of New Windsor, and much of it from the Burnett Note-book compiled by Mr. David Burnett of Middletown.

Back to Index of Articles

Created by Elizabeth Finley Frasier

Comments

Created November 8, 2000