Robert Burton, Revolutionary War officer, delegate to the Continental Congress, lawyer, and politician, owned a large plantation near Williamsboro in Granville County (now Vance County), N.C., as well as much land in what eventually became Tennessee. The collection includes correspondence; deeds, receipts, ledgers, and other financial and legal materials; and miscellaneous items of Robert Burton and his son, Horace A. Burton. Letters to Robert Burton include a letter, 1775, from Benjamin Hawkins (1754-1816) concerning the American cause; eight letters from John Williams (1731-1799), five of them, August-October 1778, from Philadelphia, where he was serving a delegate to the Continental Congress, with military news and other war-related information, and one February 1776, from Harrodsburg, Transylvania (now Kentucky), about his situation there and other matters; and two letters, 1779-1780, from Richard Henderson (1735-1785) in Holston, Tenn., and Boonesborough, Ky., about the Transylvania Colony and other matters. Letters to Horace A. Burton include one from Elisha Mitchell (1793-1857) concerning Mitchell's testing of mineral water that Burton had sent him. Many of the legal papers are late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century items relating to land in Kentucky and the Powell River valley in Tennessee. Two ledgers of Robert Burton consist of general accounts, 1777-1785, including a record, 1780, of a sale of a horse to Daniel Boone and tables of depreciation and coinage for North Carolina and Virginia; and accounts of whiskey distilled, 1784-1789.
