Captain John Burton, of Longfield - Disputed origins

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Burton-309

Disputed Parents

It is unclear if the father or parents of the brothers Burton emigrated to Virginia in the 1600s, or, in the alternative, fathered Thomas "of Cobbs" Burton and this man, John Burton, in England, most likely in the 1620s, with Thomas and John then immigrating to Virginia either before or after the marriage of John and his wife, and either with or without one or both parents. There are no records to support any of these possible scenarios. In any case, Thomas, John, and John's wife and kids are all in Virginia by the time that Thomas and John jointly acquire the Cobbs plantation in 1656. That purchase is the first fact which clearly associates Thomas, John, and their relatives with Henrico County, Virginia. Anything earlier is speculation derived from unconnected records which cannot be clearly linked to any of those people who ended up at Cobbs.

While many sources exist on the life of Thomas and his brother, John, and their descendants, as described in the Burton Chronicles[1], everything about their parents and heritage is purely a guess at best.

It has been supposed that John was the son of Richard Burton and Katherine Christian, who were married around 25 years before John's birth; at least borderline too old to have been his parents (both born circa 1580). It is conceivable that this couple were John's grandparents, but that is just a conjecture. [2] This theory was dispelled by Mrs. Glenn M. Turnell some years ago in an article which still remains one of the best on the subject. [3]

With a different assessment of the birth dates of Thomas and John as had been presumed by earlier researchers, it is actually more likely that a different Richard Burton, who was age 28 (thus born about 1596) when he arrived in the "Swan" in 1624, was the father of both Thomas and John in Virginia. His age and arrival date in Virginia fits well with the idea that Thomas was born no later than 1628 and John no later than 1630, both in Virginia rather than in England. There is only one other Burton who is known to have arrived in Virginia earlier: George Burton, Gent., who arrived in the "second supply" in 1608. Most of the earliest Virginia settlers died, so George is a far less likely candidate, and he would have been much older than Richard at the time Thomas and John were born, leaving Richard (b. 1596) as the most likely candidate from known arrivals. Any known arrivals after 1630 could not have fathered Thomas and John in Virginia before 1630, and there is no known record of an older Burton bringing to Virginia a younger Thomas and John. Of course, there were probably many Burtons whose written records were lost at various points in time, and are thus unknown to us.

The Burton Chronicles do seem to offer up a John Burton who died in about 1660. Given that John, the brother of Thomas, dies circa 1690, this might be the father. In 1660, "John Drayton administers the estate of John Burdon (Burton?), deceased." The typo was clarified by a 1663 entry: "Attachment granted against the estate of John Burton for 170 pounds tobacco and cask." But John and Thomas were seated at Cobbs by 1656, so if that was their father, why didn't one of them get assigned as administrator? Was it only because they were seated in Henrico rather than Charles City County? Or was that John Burton not the father of our Thomas and John Burton after all? Who knows for certain? (See the profile of the Unknown father Burton for more about the disputed parents.)

Given this amount of uncertainty, it seems we would be better off detaching Captain John ‘of Longfield’ Burton as son of Captain Richard Burton & Katherine Burton