Burwell family of Virginia

The Burwells (known as the Burls among Virginians^[1]) were among the First Families of Virginia in the Colony of Virginia.^[1] John Quincy Adams once described the Burwells as typical Virginia aristocrats of their period: forthright, bland, somewhat imperious and politically simplistic by Adams' standards.^[1] In 1713, so many Burwells had intermarried with the Virginia political elite that Governor Spotswood complained that " the greater part of the present Council are related to the Family of Burwells...there will be no less than seven so near related that they will go off the Bench whenever a Cause of the Burwells come to be tried."^[2]

The family was closely associated with the Fairfield Plantation in Gloucester County, Virginia, but several Burwells also built and operated other Virginia and North Carolina plantations, some buildings of which survive today and are on the National Register of Historic Places. Lewis Burwell III built Kingsmill Plantation's manor house beginning in the 1730s. A few years later, Carter Burwell built Carter's Grove immediately to the east in what became the modern-day Grove Community. Nathaniel Burwell built Carter Hall circa 1795 in eastern Frederick County, Virginia on the approach to the Shenandoah Valley. Place names deriving from the Tidewater aristocrats include Burwell's Bay in Isle of Wight County, Virginia.

While patriot Burwells served in the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812, and many Burwells served in the Virginia House of Delegates until the constitutional revision of 1850, the only politically significant Burwell of the post-Civil War period was Armistead Burwell, a former Confederate officer who became a North Carolina state senator and associate justice of that state's Supreme Court. The most militarily significant member of the family served in the 20th century: Lewis Burwell Puller, (a.k.a. Chesty Puller) from West Point, Virginia became a war hero and Lieutenant General of the U.S. Marine Corps.