The Burwell family was prominent in Mecklenburg County, Va., and Vance, Warren, and Granville counties, N.C., in the 18th and 19th centuries. Colonel Lewis Burwell, son of Armistead and Christina Blair Burwell, was born 26 September 1745, in Williamsburg. He moved to Mecklenburg County, Va., fought in the American Revolution, and served in the Virginia Assembly. With his first wife, Anne Spotswood Burwell, he had twelve children, including Armistead (d. 1819), Lewis (fl. 1792-1848), and Spotswood (1785-1855), all farmers in Mecklenburg County.
Spotswood Burwell married Mary ("Polly") Green Marshall (1792-1856), and had nine children, including William Armistead (1809-1887), Lewis D. (1813-1874), Blair (1815-1848), Armistead Ravenscroft (1820-1867), George Washington (1823-1873), Robert Randolph (1829-1892), and Mary Anne Spotswood (1825-1874), who married Dr. Otis Frederick Manson. Spotswood Burwell lived in both Granville County, N.C., and Mecklenburg County, Va.
Spotswood's son William Armistead Burwell moved to Burke County, N.C., in the 1830s to attempt a gold-mining venture, and later returned to Granville County to continue farming. He married Mary Graves Williams (1810-1896) and had one child, William Henry (1835-1917). William Henry attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, graduating in 1856, and then returned to Warren County, where his father had settled, to work on the farm. He was drafted into the Confederate army in 1861, but left the army upon purchasing a substitute in 1862, and moved to Alabama to marry Laura T. Pettway (1841-1871). He stayed in Alabama until the end of the war, when he returned to Warren County to resume farming. In later years, he continued to grow tobacco, cotton, and other crops, living at various times in Warren, Vance, and Granville counties in North Carolina and at his Berry Hill plantation in Mecklenburg County, Va. He married three times and had sixteen children.
From the guide to the Burwell Family Papers (#112), 1745-1997, (Southern Historical Collection)
