George Burrington
|
His Excellency George Burrington |
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|---|---|
| 3rd and 5th Governor of North Carolina | |
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In office 1724–1725 |
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| Monarch | George I |
| Preceded by | William Reed (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Sir Richard Everard |
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In office 1731–1734 |
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| Monarch | George II |
| Preceded by | Sir Richard Everard |
| Succeeded by | Nathaniel Rice (acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1682 |
| Died | February 22, 1759 |
George Burrington (1682 – February 22, 1759) was the Governor of North Carolina from 1724 to 1725 and 1731 to 1734.
Burrington gained his office as governor through family influence. He was known principally for physically threatening other North Carolina officials, including most notably Chief Justice Christopher Gale. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina replaced him as governor because so many colonists complained about his behaviour.
However, Burrington's successor, Sir Richard Everard, proved even more unpopular with the people of North Carolina and they eventually requested that Burrington be re-appointed. When the Crown bought the colony back from the Lords Proprietors in 1729, Burrington was appointed as the first royal governor of North Carolina. He was instrumental in exploring and settling the Cape Fear area of the colony.
Maurice Moore, Edward Moseley, John Porter, John Baptiste Ashe, and other members of "the Family," a group of mostly South Carolinian families, allied by marriage, began the Lower Cape Fear in 1726 in Brunswick Town, originally with Burrington's help. After Burrington's return to London in 1726, however, this South Carolina-biased settlement became wholly "illegal" in North Carolina; Maurice Moore and his brother-in-law Edward Moseley built the settlement with blank patents (official patents with dates and acreage left out), many of which were inflated to as much as three times the acreage indicated on their self-inscribed warrants. In 1731, Governor George Burrington was sent back to North Carolina to deal with the Family. He voided Moore's patents on the east side of the Cape Fear River and filled them with his own "creatures" as the Family called them to begin the town of Wilmington. The Family's Brunswick Town soon failed because of the competition. The powerful Family, with Martin Bladen's brother-in-law Nathaniel Rice's help, then ran Gov. Burrington out of the colony after possibly killing a few of his supporters.
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