Thomas Burnham

Thomas Burnham (1619 – June 24, 1688) was a lawyer and colonist, who was born in England and migrated to the American Colonies sometime prior to 1645. He lived most of his adult live in Connecticut where he was a lawyer and a landowner. He was among the earliest puritan settlers in Connecticut, living in Podunk and finally settling in Hartford, Connecticut. He purchased most of the land covered by the current towns of South Windsor, Connecticut and East Hartford, Connecticut. He was the first American ancestor of a large number of Burnhams. He died in Hartford at the age of 69.

The ancestry of Thomas Burnham and when he departed from England is a subject of ongoing debate. One of his decedents and author of his 1884 genealogy, Roderick Henry Burnham, believes that his family came from Hatfield, Herefordshire, England. Genealogists Cathy Soughton and Henry B. Hoff found evidence that he was baptized at Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire, England on 28 October 1619, the son of John Burnham, a yeoman farmer; however, genealogist Mary Pitkin uncovered flaws in this conclusion. A letter from one of his descendants states that he sailed for the Barbados from Gravesend in 1635; but this Caribbean connection could be a mistake since a different Thomas Burnham was "buried from St. Michael’s, Barbados on 1 Aug 1674." There is no surviving record of when Burnham arrived in America, but he married Anna Wright ca. 1645 in Hartford, Connecticut. Pitkin states, "there are enough mentions of Thomas in Windsor over the years to prove that he was in Connecticut continuously between his arrival there and his death" on 28 June 1688 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut.

Burnham successfully defended a school teacher, Abigail Betts who had been accused of blasphemy, claiming "Christ was a bastard" and she could prove it through the scriptures. Burnham successfully defended her by asserting that blasphemy was not a capital crime in England, and thus could not be one in Connecticut under its charter. But by "saving her neck" the Puritan authorities disenfranchised him and prohibited Burnham from further practice of the court.

In 1659 he purchased from Tantonimo (sometimes spelled, Tan-tonimo), Chief sachem of the Potunke Native Americans, a tract of land now covered by the towns of South Windsor and East Hartford, on which he afterward lived, and a part of which is still in possession of his descendants. He held this land under a deed from Tantonimo, and later in 1661, by a deed from six of the latter's successors and allies, by which they renounce "all our right and title in those lands aforesayd unto Thomas Burnam and his heirs."

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