Henry K. Burgwyn
(Northampton County)
Featured Character – 1863
Henry
K. Burgwyn
Courtesy of the Virginia Military
Institute Archives
Henry “Harry” King Burgwyn Jr. was born October 3, 1841, in
Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. He was the son
of Anna Greenough of Massachusetts and
Henry King Burgwyn Sr., a Northampton County, North Carolina planter. At fifteen his father privately enrolled his
son at West Point. Burgwyn studied under John Gray Foster,
future commander of Union forces in eastern North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North
Carolina in 1857, Burgwyn became a cadet at the
Virginia Military Institute (VMI). While
at VMI, he guarded John Brown during the abolitionist’s trial. Upon his graduation in 1861, Thomas J.
Jackson wrote Burgwyn a letter of recommendation.
Following the outbreak of war, Burgwyn
accepted a commission as the lieutenant colonel of the 26th North
Carolina Infantry and later appointed colonel. The unit served in North Carolina until its
transfer to James Johnston Pettigrew’s Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia
in May 1863. On the first day at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
divisional commander Henry Heth ordered Pettigrew’s Brigade to clear Union
forces from McPherson’s Ridge. During
the twenty-minute assault, the 26th North Carolina Infantry suffered
five-hundred and eighty-eight men killed and wounded out of eight hundred, the
highest toll suffered by any regiment, Union
or Confederate, during the war. Burgwyn was mortally wounded after a Union
rifle shot immediately as he grabbed the regimental standard as the eleventh
color-bearer fell. He died two hours later. Buried on the field at Gettysburg,
his family later reinterred him in Raleigh’s Oakwood Cemetery.