James Edmund Burton (1776-1850)

He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, before returning to his native Tuam where he was a magistrate. But, in the words of his celebrated nephew, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, he, "wasted every farthing of his Irish property before having the sense to emigrate to Canada." In about 1810, he took Holy Orders and with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel became the first Anglican minister at Terrebonne, Quebec, where he was granted 1,000-acres. He lived at "Burtonville," his house and farm outside what was then the village of Rawdon, a four day journey north of Montreal. By the time he returned to Ireland in the 1830s, he had added another 1,447-acres to his property. He died at Dysart Enos, Co. Laois, where his name is over the door of the church he built there. He was father and stepfather to some twenty children, but "all" his second wife's family (the Graves family) "entertained such a decided antipathy" towards him and neither was there was any love lost between him and his stepchildren.