Walter Snow Burges
Walter Snow Burges was born on September 10, 1808, in Rochester, Massachusetts, to Abraham Burges and Rhode Caswell. He attended school in Sandwich, Massachusetts, before graduating from Brown University in 1831. He spent the next four years teaching at Thaxter Academy on Martha’s Vineyard, and he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1835. He married Eleanor Burrill in 1836, and they had at least three children: Cornelia, born around 1838; Sarah, born around 1839; and Dora, born around 1841.
They settled in Providence, Rhode Island, and Burges became a prominent lawyer. He supported the Democratic Party, and he attended the Democratic National Convention in 1848. He served as federal district attorney for Rhode Island from 1845 until 1849. He then served as Rhode Island’s attorney general from 1851 until 1854 and from 1860 until 1863. He became a state supreme court justice in 1868. He retired from the bench in 1881, and he died in Rhode Island on July 26, 1892.
DATABASE CONTENT
| (4671) | Burges, Walter Snow | 1808-09-10 | 1892-07-26 |
- Conflict Side: Union
- Role: Civilian
- Rank in:
- Rank out:
- Rank highest:
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 3
Places - Records: 2
Groups - Records: 1
- (1) [politician] ~ Democratic Party
SOURCES
1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Rhode Island Deaths, 1630-1930, available from Ancestry.com; Patrick T. Conley, The Makers of Modern Rhode Island (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012)
