My Genealogy Hound

DR. FRANKLIN BURRITT, who was for many years a prominent business man of Fredonia, is a son of Charles and Orpha (Tucker) Burritt, and was born at Fredonia, Chautauqua county. New York, February 24, 1827. Charles Burritt was born in Connecticut and came in 1808 to Fredonia, where he owned for some years a log shoe shop on a part of the site of the Putnam block. Ill health caused him to abandon shoemaking and engage in the drug business, of which he was the pioneer at Fredonia, where he had a drug store for nearly fifty years. He served as a lieutenant in the war of 1812, and was a whig until Fillmore’s election, after which he became successively a “silver gray” and democrat. He was an industrious and estimable man and died March 9, 1866, when he was approaching the close of his eightieth year. He married Orpha Tucker, daughter of Major Samuel Tucker, and reared a family of two sons and two daughters. Captain Samuel Tucker (maternal grandfather) was born and reared in Vermont, where he was a neighbor of Ethan Allen, and served under the latter at the capture of Ticonderoga. He was one of the company of Continental soldiers which was drawn up into line at the execution of Major Andre.

Franklin Burritt grew to manhood at Fredonia, where he received his education in the schools and academy of that place. Leaving school he went to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he remained three years. He then returned to Fredonia and engaged in the drug business, which he followed until 1870, when he retired from active business. He read medicine and practiced considerably in connection with his drug business during his early life. He served for several years with Gov. Patterson, of Westfield, on the State board of charities and was a manager of the Buffalo State hospital for the insane, which position he resigned after serving four years.

On May 15th, 1849, he married Ann Norton, of the town of Pomfret. They have two daughters living: Mrs. F. N. Conn and Mrs. P. B. Cary. Mrs. Burritt is a daughter of Elisha and Harriet (Lowell) Norton, who came from Vernon, Oneida county, about 1815, and settled two miles southwest of Fredonia, where they reared a family of two sons and two daughters. Elisha Norton was a son of Isaac Norton, a native of Berkshire, Massachusetts, who was an early settler of the town of Pomfret.

During his active life and especially in his younger days, Dr. Burritt was an active Democrat. He was elected supervisor of the town of Pomfret in 1870, when the Republican party had a majority of two hundred votes in the town. He served very creditably in that position for four years and continued in the Democratic party up to 1884, and then connected himself with the prohibitionists, whose principles he has supported ever since.