Biography

Born in Ireland to a formerly wealthy family, raised by an uncle because of “relentless rancor” at home, Thomas Burke emigrated to Virginia by age 17. He became a doctor and felt he was good at it. But it didn’t pay well, so he shifted to the law instead, practicing in Norfolk.[a] He also wrote poetry! An early rebel, he published a poem in opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act. In 1770 Burke married Mary Freeman, and two years later he bought a plantation north of Hillsborough, which he named “Tyaquin” after his family home. The move came, he wrote, to stop him from overworkin