Recently I became aware of a Facebook page (*1) produced by Newt
Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and now a Fox News contributor. The title
of this page is “What If? History that could have been” and it has short 5-10
minute videos about events in US History where Speaker Gingrich explores
alternative scenarios that might have happened if things had been just a little
bit different. These include such scenarios as “What if Robert F Kennedy had
not been killed?”, “What if Japan had won the battle of Midway?”, or “What if
the Louisiana Purchase hadn’t happened?”, or more recent history such as, “What
if Comey had been honest about the Clinton investigation?”. As a student and enthusiast about history, I
have enjoyed each episode and I encourage you to view them.
But one particular episode specifically caught my attention. It was
titled, “What if Aaron Burr hadn’t shot Alexander Hamilton?” Since Aaron Burr
is my 2nd cousin, six times removed, I have a particular interest in
things related to him. I’ve written a little bit about him previously (*2), but
I’d like to go into a little more depth about several aspects of the Burr
family and their involvement in the early years of the United States.
Aaron Burr, Sr., and
Princeton
Aaron Burr, Sr., was born in 1716 in Connecticut. He attended Yale
College, graduating in 1735. While there he became personally familiar with Jonathan
Edwards and his wife Sarah [Pierpont] Edwards, daughter of my great*7
grandfather, James Pierpont, the principal founder of Yale. In 1736, Burr
became the minister of the Presbyterian Church of Newark, NJ.
In the early 1740s, a rift in the Presbyterian church affected the
faculty and student body at Yale. As a result of this rift, Burr, Jonathan Edwards,
and Jonathan Dickinson founded the College of New Jersey (later to become
Princeton University) in 1746 (*3). Dickinson became the first president but
died just a few months later. Burr then became the second president, serving
from 1748-1757. In 1752, he married Esther Edwards, the daughter of Jonathan
Edwards. They had two children, Sarah “Sally” (b. 1754), and Aaron Burr, Jr.
(b. 1756).
Burr, Sr., passed away in 1757. Jonathan Edwards then became president.
Burr’s two children were given briefly into the care of the Edwards, but Burr’s
wife, Edward’s wife, and then Edward’s himself all passed away within the next
year. The two children eventually ended up under the guardianship of Timothy Edwards,
their maternal uncle.
Aaron Burr, Jr.
Aaron Burr, Jr., was educated at Princeton with original plans to enter
the ministry (*4). But just a year or so later he changed career paths and went
to law school at the Litchfield Law School which was run by his brother-in-law
(see below). Then with the start of the Revolutionary War, he entered the
military from 1775 to 1779. Returning to his law studies, he passed the bar in
1792 and began his law practice in New York City.
Burr served in the New York State Assembly, then as the New York State
Attorney General, then as a U.S. Senator from New York. He ran for president in
the 1796 election, coming in fourth behind John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and
Thomas Pinckney. (At the time, members of the electoral college cast two
ballots but did not specify an office. The first-place finisher became
president and the runner-up vice-president). In 1800, Jefferson and Burr were
again candidates, the Democratic-Republican party (the original name of the
Democratic party) wanting to have two candidates (one from the South, and one
from the North) in order to draw voters from both parts of the country. The two
men finished in a dead heat and the House of Representatives had to take a
subsequent vote where they elected Jefferson as the president and Burr as the
vice-president. But the two men did not particularly like each other. However,
as the president of the Senate, Burr did an admirable job, including shepherding
passage of the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which provided for
the elections of the president and vice-president to prevent the situation that
Jefferson and Burr found themselves in. In addition, he helped set many of the Senate
rules and procedures that are still in use to this day.
Unfortunately, Burr is most remembered for his famous duel with
Alexander Hamilton. Dueling was outlawed in New York and was punishable by
death and it was illegal in New Jersey (where the duel took place) but the
consequences were less severe. There have been many speculations about who shot
first, whether Hamilton had modified his pistol to have a hair trigger, whether
Hamilton was even aiming at Burr, etc. But the end result was that Hamilton was
severely wounded. He was evacuated to Manhattan where he died the following
day. Burr fled to South Carolina, but soon returned to finish his term as Vice-president.
Charges against him were eventually dropped, including in New Jersey where the
indictment was thrown out on the basis that although Hamilton had been shot in
that state, he had died in New York.
Sarah Burr, Tapping Reeve,
and the Litchfield Law School
Tapping Reeve attended the College of New Jersey, getting his bachelor’s
degree in 1763 and his master’s degree in 1766. While working his master’s
degree he also served as the headmaster of a nearby grammar school and as a
tutor to the two children of Aaron Burr, Sr., who was the president of the
college. In 1771, when he was 26, he married Sarah Burr, who was then only 17. After
a year of study of law in Hartford, CT, he and Sarah moved to Litchfield, CT to
open a new law practice. In 1773, he built a six-room, two-story house and in
addition to practicing law began teaching law students. His first student was
his new brother-in-law, Aaron Burr, Jr. (*6).
As I noted in (*2), the Litchfield Law School had considerable
influence on American politics. Although it only operated for sixty years, its
graduates included two vice-presidents, three US Supreme Court justices, six US
cabinet members, 97 members of the US House of Representatives, and 28 members
of the US Senate. In addition to Aaron Burr, Jr., and his sister being my 2nd
cousins (six times removed), others of these influential individuals in law or
politics were also my relatives. Some of the graduates of the Litchfield Law
School were:
·
Aaron Burr, Jr. – US Vice-president, US Representative
from NY, NY Attorney General (2nd cousin, six times removed)
·
John C. Calhoun – US Vice-president, US Senator
from SC, Secretary of State, Secretary of War
·
Henry Waggaman Edwards – US Representative from
CT, US Senator from CT, CT Senate, CT House of Representatives, Governor of CT
(grandson of Jonathan Edwards, so also my second cousin, six times removed)
·
John Stark Edwards – US Representative from OH (brother
of Henry Waggaman, so another second cousin, six times removed)
·
Samuel Foote – US Representative from CT, US
Senator from CT, Governor of CT (third cousin, five times removed)
·
Horace Mann – Educational Reformer, US Representative
from MA
·
Elisha Phelps – US Representative from CT, CT
House of Representatives, CT Senate (second cousin of second cousin, six times
removed)
·
John Pierpont – US Senator from VT, VT House of
Representatives, Chief Justice of VT Supreme Count (second cousin, six times
removed)
·
Frederick Tallmadge – US Representative from NY,
NY Senate (fifth cousin, five times removed)
·
Stephen Upson – GA General Assembly (third
cousin, five times removed)
Notes:
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