Named event or history
Governor Burke taken prisoner at Hillsborough and held by the British.
From the state marker“Governor of N.C., was captured in Hillsboro by David Fanning and his Tories, Sept. 12, 1781, and taken to Charleston, S.C.”
State historical marker: G-16: Thomas Burke
9 indexed works are connected with this event.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Letter of 2 December 1783 from William Johnston, Orange County legislator and agent for the loyalist Edmund Fanning, to Adlai Osborn of Rowan County, about selling Fanning's Rowan lands to satisfy a judgment. Johnston also remarks on the death of former governor Thomas Burke. A photocopy. State Archives of North Carolina, PC.644.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
Governor Thomas Burke's correspondence for August 1781, a heavy month of 168 images from his first summer in office. Winston Caswell is among the writers. Places named include Hillsborough, the Deep River and Chatham, Granville, Halifax, Richmond and Wake counties, all against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
July 1781 letters of Thomas Burke, elected governor the month before. Richard Caswell is among the writers, and across 137 images the papers reach Hillsborough and Bladen, Chatham, Cumberland, Duplin, Halifax, Richmond and Wake counties during the Revolutionary War.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
A run of Governor Thomas Burke's letters dated 28 July to 29 August 1781, in 63 images. The correspondence reaches Hillsborough and Anson, Bladen, Cumberland, Franklin, Granville, Northampton, Wake and Warren counties. Burke had been elected the state's third governor that June.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
Letters of Governor Thomas Burke from September 1781, in 71 images. Burke was captured at Hillsborough by the Loyalist David Fanning that year and later resumed his duties. Bertie and Chatham counties are also named in the month's papers.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
A short run of Thomas Burke's correspondence, 9 to 11 September 1781, in 12 images. Granville County and Hillsborough are named. Burke, the state's third governor, fell into Loyalist hands at Hillsborough later in 1781.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
Dr. James Webb was a Hillsborough physician, a university trustee and the local agent for the Bank of Cape Fear. Most of his papers, 1781 to 1846, concern the bank: letters of 1827 to 1846 with other agents, cashiers and State Bank officers about discounts, the value of currency, the bank failures of 1839 and daily business. Revolutionary War supply and land grant papers also appear. State Archives of North Carolina, PC.127.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
Senate joint resolutions of 8 and 9 February 1781, 24 images, on tax gatherers in counties without treasurers, a rejected resolution for Samuel Ashe, a rejected allowance for corn supplied to the army, and an order sending Brigadier General John Butler to raise some or all of the Hillsborough District militia.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
The State Archives' Miscellaneous Collection: letters, deeds, land grants, surveys, wills, leases and other single items dating from 1689 to 2017, some as photocopies or transcripts from other repositories. Writers and subjects vary widely, governors and generals among them, and Orange County figures among the many places touched.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this event. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this event itself.
Stewart E. Dunaway's life of Thomas Burke (about 1747 to 1783), the Irish-born physician, lawyer and poet who settled at Hillsborough, sat in the Continental Congress and became North Carolina's third governor in 1781. Loyalists under David Fanning captured Burke that September; he died at Tyaquin, his Orange County home. The 2009 second issue has 195 pages with illustrations, maps and an index; the first appeared in 2008.
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Thomas Burke, a doctor and poet from Ireland, settled at Hillsborough in 1774, sat in the Continental Congress and became North Carolina's third governor in 1781; Stewart E. Dunaway tells his life. Taken prisoner that September by David Fanning's Loyalists, Burke escaped British captivity in 1782 and died in 1783 at Tyaquin, his Orange County home. Printed through Lulu at Morrisville in the 2000s; 160 pages with illustrations, maps and an index.
David Fanning's own account of his years as a Loyalist partisan in North Carolina, 1775 to 1783, including his 1781 raid on Hillsborough, where he captured Governor Thomas Burke. Edited by Thomas H. Wynne and first printed privately at Richmond in 1861, it was reissued in 1865 by Joseph Sabin of New York with an introduction by John H. Wheeler and notes partly by former governor David L. Swain; 86 pages.
Willis P. Whichard's biography of David Lowry Swain, governor of North Carolina from 1832 to 1835 and president of the University of North Carolina from 1835 until his death in 1868. The subtitle ties Swain, nineteenth-century North Carolina and the university together, and the book belongs with the lives of college presidents and governors. Published in 2022.
Between the end of proprietary rule in 1729 and the Revolution, five governors ruled North Carolina for the Crown: George Burrington, Gabriel Johnston, Arthur Dobbs, William Tryon and Josiah Martin. Blackwell P. Robinson's short account of them was issued in 1963 by the Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission; 74 pages with portraits, coats of arms and a facsimile.
Thomas Burke, the Irish-born physician and lawyer who settled in Hillsborough in 1774 and was governor when David Fanning's Loyalists captured him in 1781, wrote these twenty-three poems, from verses on the war for independence to love poems. Seventeen were printed here for the first time. Richard Walser supplied an introduction and notes, and the 69-page book, published in Raleigh in 1961, imitates eighteenth-century printing.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Stewart E. Dunaway's life of Edmund Fanning (1739-1818), the colonial officeholder in Hillsborough whom the Regulators singled out and who left North Carolina as a loyalist, together with the Fanning family's genealogy. Self-published through Lulu in 2011, 223 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, genealogical tables and maps. Topics include American loyalists and Hillsborough and Orange County biography and genealogy.
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Picture: Thomas Burke, 2013. No known copyright restrictions. Photograph by State Archives of North Carolina; www.flickr.com; via Wikimedia Commons
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