Posted by Bruce Burroughs
on 7/26/2002, 6:09 am
I just found your site. Congratulations on a great job in organization and utility. I descend from John Burroughs and have been wrestling with the linkage prior to Mathews County for years. My main clue is a biography of Samuel Burroughs, son of John Henry Burroughs, who was the Portsmouth Post Master. It says that John Burroughs came to Mathews County from Stafford County "at an early day." I have not found the common progenitor for Elzy and John who appear on the country tax rolls in the early 1800s.
Here's what I do know: John Burroughs and his wife, Joanna Borum (daughter of John Borum of Mathews County; she died in Portsmouth in 1858 at the age of 66.), lived in the New Point Comfort area until John died about 1835. Their youngest son, John Henry Burroughs, was born there in 1828. John Henry Burroughs departed Mathews County for Norfolk by 1850, and worked in the Gosport Navy Yard as a ship wright. There he married Georgiana F. Elliott (daughter of Elizabeth Robins and William Elliott of Accomac County) in 1851. John and Georgiana Burroughs had 12 children (nine boys and three girls). He died in Portsmouth in 1891 at the age of 63; she died there in 1895 at the age of 59. Their youngest son, Edward Robbins Burroughs, born in January 1875, married the widow Agnes Virginia Cook McKeel (daughter of William Varney Cook of Augusta, Maine, and Mary V. Martin of Baltimore) on January 1, 1900 in Baltimore, Maryland. Edward R. Burroughs died in Portsmouth in April 1914 at the age of 39; Agnes died there in July 1944 at the age of 72. Their oldest son, Edward Robbins Burroughs, was born in Portsmouth in August 1902. He married Queenie Mae Gardner (daughter of Thomas Jefferson Gardner and Natalie Estelle Applewhite of Southampton County) in Portsmouth on December 31, 1926. He died in Dayton, Ohio on October 3, 1983 at the age of 81. Edward Robbins Burroughs is my father. I have lived in Hampton since 1970.
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