Thomas Burnside

Thomas Burnside, the fourth president judge of Luzerne county. Pa., succeeded Judge Gibson as president of the eleventh judicial district. At a court held July 29, 1816, his commission dated June 28, 1816, was read and he took the oath. He continued to preside at the regular terms of court from August term, 1816, until April term, 1818. He resigned July 6, 1818. Thomas Burnside was born at Newton Stewart, Ireland, July 28, 1782. M. Auge in his "Lives of the Eminent Dead and Biographical Notices of Prominent Citizens of Montgomery county, Pa.," states that "Some years ago the author interviewed several of our older inhabitants to learn what might linger in their memory as to the olden time. One of them stated that before the commencement of the present century, there resided a short time on Main street, near Stony Creek (Norristown), a Scotsman named William Burnside, who adhered to the old continental costume of looped-up hat, straight coat, buckskin breeches, with long stockings and large silver shoe buckles. He had recently arrived from the old country and stayed here a short time only, before locating, as he afterwards did, near Fairview, in Lower Providence township. Here he had several sons born to him. When quite a young man Thomas Burnside, son of William Burnside, was thrown from a horse and had a limb broken. The tedious hours of his confinement were therefore spent in reading, and shortly after he entered upon the study of the law, which was soon mastered, and he was admitted to the bar February 13. 1804. He did not long remain here, but went to Centre county." His parents emigrated to the United States in 1792, and settled in the county of Montgomery, in this state. Thomas was apprenticed to a trade, but this not suiting his inclination or ambition, he managed to lay by money sufficient to pay for one year's schooling in the city of Philadelphia, and immediately after commenced reading law with Hon. Robert Porter, from whose office he was admitted to the bar of Philadelphia in 1804. In March of that year he went west and settled permanently at Bellefonte, Centre county, Pa., then on the frontier, and which he always regarded as his home, though his occupation in after life on the bench in different parts of the state called him away. He at once commenced a lucrative practice, and in this laid the foundation of that eminent position to which he attained in subsequent years as a land lawyer. No man in Pennsylvania better understood the land laws of his state than he. It is doubtful if he had his equal. His name is intimately blended in the settlement of titles to real estate in Pennsylvania. Warrants and surveys, Indian purchases, tax titles and Yankee claims were familiar matters with Thomas Burnside, and he was always regarded as authority on these questions. Possessing that peculiar fervid temperament which seems to belong eminently to the Scotch character be entered into the profession with great zeal, and at the same time took an active part in the politics of the country, which was then running at fever heat. He was of the Jefferson, McKean and Snyder school in politics, and a leader. He represented his district in the state senate in 1811, his first public honor. Three years later he was sent to congress. At the close of the session of 1816 he returned home, and in the summer of that year he was appointed judge, as before stated. Hon. David Scott succeeded him as president judge of this judicial district. During his residence in Wilkes-Barre he was a great favorite with the citizens from his social, genial habits. His duties on the bench were discharged with signal ability, and he was as popular with the bar as he was with the people of the town. It was here that he formed that life-long intimacy with the late George M. Hollenback, Esq. No two men were ever more closely united in personal intimacy. It was, indeed, remarkable, the friendship that existed between them. In 1817 he was elected a member of the borough council of Wilkes-Barre, and was president of the council. Garrick Mallery, Samuel Maffit and Andrew Beaumont were also members of the council that year.

Judge Burnside returned to Bellefonte in 1818 and resumed his profession at the bar. In 1823, or thereabouts, he was again elected to the senate of the state. During this term he was speaker of that body. In 1826, while a member of the senate, he was appointed president judge of the fourth district, which included Centre county. Here he remained continuously on the bench for fifteen years, discharging with great tact and signal ability the delicate duties of his place. In 1841 he was appointed, on the death of Judge Fox, president judge of the Bucks and Montgomery district. In 1845 he was commissioned by Governor Shunk as one of the justices of the supreme bench of the state, where he remained till his death, which occurred on March 25, 1851, at the ripe age of three score and ten years. As an advocate, Judge Burnside ranked in the profession more as a substantial lawyer and profound jurist than what we understand as an orator. He was strong before the jury. No man had a better knowledge of human nature. In his intercourse in the different positions of life he had acquired that important element of success in all occupations, of knowing the character, and weighing them too, of the masses. That crowning feature of the human intellect, which Pope has defined as the greatest acquisition, the knowledge of man, was the predominating element in the well balanced mind of Thomas Burnside. As a judge, he ever aimed at the all important point of administering fair and impartial justice. He had a contempt for legal technicalities when they crossed the beaten track of equity. His whole mind seemed occupied with the noble desire of rendering equal and exact justice, and in carrying it out, to disregard the cobweb meshes which sometimes intervene between right and wrong. His opinions were short and terse, always to the point, and not clouded by a multiplicity of verbiage. He was a man of strong impulses, and maintained his opinions most strenuously. This one can afford to do when in the right. Judge Burnside was a most agreeable man in his social relations. He enjoyed a joke, and in turn he could give one. Some of his anecdotes are still fresh in the minds of those who survive him in this city, though over half a century has intervened since he left the bench of this county. This biographical notice may be summed up in saying: That Judge Burnside was a genuine and acknowledged example of the men who in the early history of the country gave the stamp and impression upon their age, as one marked by stern necessity, simple manners, generous in hospitality, and whose professional labors far exceeded the compensation awarded to them; the type of a race of men, if not extinct, at least adulterated by the customs and manners and practices of the age succeeding them; a character, resulting from the close economy and limited means of their day and generation; their descendants have acquired lessons of ease and prodigality unknown to their ancestors. A judge now receives four times the salary of one in the days of Burnside, and very probably does not do half the labor of a judge of that time. Of the lawyers and judges of the forepart of the nineteenth century, Thomas Burnside may be justly compared with the best of them in ability, learning and honesty of purpose. In these particulars he was an ornament to the legal profession, and his ermine as a judge maintained its purity to the close of his eventful life. He left to survive him ten children. His wife was Miss Mary Fleming, of Bellefonte.

Source: George Brubaker Kulp. Families of the Wyoming Valley: Biographical, Genealogical and Historical Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Vol. 3. Wilkes-Barre, PA, 1890, pp. 1098-1101.

Submitted by Nancy.