Henry K. Burgwyn

(Northampton County)

Featured Character – 1863


Henry K. Burgwyn

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.