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Below is a family biography included in The History of Jasper County, Missouri published by Mills & Company in 1883.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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EDWARD H. BURTON, born in Schuyler county, Ill., Oct. 14, 1841, where he was raised until he went into the army. In August, 1862, he enlisted in the Seventy-second Illinois Infantry, and in March, 1864, was transferred to the Second Mississippi Colored Infantry, known later as the Fifty-second Colored Regiment, of which he became sergeant, and soon again promoted to lieutenant in command. It may be of interest, and a fact not generally known, that both officers and the colored troops under their command when captured by the Confederates, were shot, in order to deter Federal officers from assuming command, and also to intimidate negroes from enlisting in the Federal ranks. He married Winnie Lond, Oct. 22, 1865, at Meridian, Miss., who was born in Philadelphia, Penn., Oct. 16, 1841, and there raised, the daughter of a piano manufacturer. The children’s names are Luther H., Carrie D., Edna, Marguerite, Nathan, Clara R., and Amber, who died Sept. 21, 1869. The subject of our sketch removed to Cherokee county, Kan., in 1867, and to Jasper county in the spring of 1868, on a farm of eighty acres in Twin Grove township, on the Spring River bottom-land, one of the first settled places in this section of the county. Mrs. Burton has genius and talent in a variety of ways. She of her own free will and independent of any organization, went south during the war and taught the colored troops, when they were encamped, and gives instances of their remarkable aptness to acquire whatever they are taught. She is also an artist in water-colors, of no mean attainments, which some of her paintings from nature demonstrate. Mr. Burton in his younger days attended an academy at Denmark, Iowa, then under the charge of Professor Edson, who is now Professor of the Normal Department of Iowa College. As a natural consequence this family represents more than the average attainments in education and the parents are enabled to exert a salutary influence upon their children, the community, and fill the measure of life with some of the joys only known to farm culture.

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This family biography is one of more than 1,000 biographies included in The History of Jasper County, Missouri published in 1883.  For the complete description, click here: Jasper County, Missouri History, Genealogy, and Maps

View additional Jasper County, Missouri family biographies here: Jasper County, Missouri Biographies

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