Henry Cornelius Burnett

Birth Date

1825-10-05

Death Date

1866-09-28

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

Trigg County, Kentucky, attorney, politician, and soldier. Essex County, Virginia, native. Son of Isaac Burnett and Martha Garnett Burnett. Married to Mary A. Terry Burnett in Trigg County on May 13th, 1847. Father of Mary Burnett, Muscoe Burnett, and Henry Burnett. Educated at common schools and a Hopkinsville academy. Studied law and admitted to the bar in 1847. Attorney in Trigg County in 1850. Owned five enslaved persons in Trigg County in 1850. Clerk of the Trigg County Court from 1851 to 1853. Member of the House of Representatives of the United States of America representing the First Congressional District of Kentucky from 1855 to his expulsion on December 3, 1861. Attorney and magistrate in Cadiz, Kentucky, in 1860. Owned seven enslaved persons in Trigg County in 1860. Served in the 8th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment (C.S.A.) as colonel from November 11, 1861, to February 10, 1862. President of the provisional government convention in Russellville in November 1861. Representative of the Provisional Confederate Congress from 1861 to 1862. Senator in the First and Second Confederate Congresses of Kentucky from February 19, 1862, to February 18, 1865.

Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Population Schedule, Kentucky, Trigg County, District 1, p. 291B.
Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedule, Kentucky, Trigg County, District 1, p. 2 of microfilm.
Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedule, Kentucky, Trigg County, p. 189.
Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedule, Kentucky, Trigg County, p. 392A.
Kentucky Marriage Records, Madison County Courthouse, Richmond, Kentucky, Trigg County Marriages, Film #000321335, p. 113, p. 74 of microfilm.
Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky: Confederate Kentucky Volunteers War 1861-65, vol. 1 (Frankfort: Legislature of Kentucky, 1915), 376-77.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, s.v. “Burnett, Henry Cornelius,” (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B001120) (accessed November 30, 2016).
Berry F. Craig, “Henry Cornelius Burnett: Champion of Southern Rights,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 77 (Autumn 1979): 266-74.
“Burnett, Henry Cornelius,” The Kentucky Encyclopedia, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 144.
“Death of Hon. Henry C. Burnett,” Daily Courier (Louisville, Ky.), October 2, 1866. “Proceedings of the Hopkinsville Bar on the Death of Hon. Henry C. Burnett,” Daily Courier (Louisville, Ky.), October 3, 1866.
KYR-0004-033-0001.

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