Notes for Dwight Spaulding Burgess, Sr.: Taken from Rev. Dr. Ebenezer Burgess' book of 1865.
...The origin of the name of Burgess will not admit of controversy. It is a title , civil or official. The inhabitant or representative of a Burgh or Borough is a Burgess. In England, the orthography of the name is well preserved , both in Church and State, and may easily be traced back for three or four centuries; but in this county(USA) it has been corrupted into Burghess, Burges, Burgis, Borgis, Burge, Burg.
Also: During the 12th century, English towns flourished and grew, thanks to the development of trade and commerce. Several new towns were founded by kings and noblemen, and some villages received charters conferring township status. Conscious attempts at town planning were made in new urban developments, such as Leeds and Liverpool, which were constructed on a grid system. Towns were known as boroughs, from the Saxon word BURH, and were centers of trade; the merchants who lived in a borough were known as burgesses." from the book "Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life" by Alison Weir, c 1999, ISBN 0-345-40540-4, page 113.
From the Rootsweb website: "Burgess" came into modern English from Middle English and into that language from the Old French at the time of the Norman Conquest (and into French from the Latin). It is a "metonym" as it designates a station in life: an elder of a town, town official, or later, as in Virginia's House of Burgesses, a free landholder subject to taxation. It was probably first used as an honorific attached to some other name and then adopted as a family name.
The Oxford English Dictionaries gives the following examples of its use:
1225 "Hit is beggares rihte vorte been bagge on bac ond burgeises for to beren purses."
1297 "The borgeis anon the gates made agen him."
1300 "Pilat sat an him a-butte the burges o the tun."
1340 "Ane yongne boryeis and an new ene knight the borgeys wylneth to chapsari."
1340 "Mans lyf ine the erthe is ase borgeysye."
1380 "At Paregot ich was e-bore a borgyes dude me gete."
1420 "Many a riche burias."
1467 "That no prentice have his freedom of Buresshippe."
1472 "There be a doseyn townys in Ingland that chesse no bergyeys, whyche ought to do."
1483 "The burgeyses that were in their gownes and mantellis called their servantes."
It was also an antique term for a person elected to the Parliament (again copied in Virginia). By the way you can still visit the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg on your next vacation. This origin of the name is a coincidence, as the grandfather of Thomas Burgess of Sandwich, Massachusetts, if you are one of the group who supports the Cornish origin of that branch of the family in that hotly contested family conflict, was a member of the Parliament of James I - or Burgess Burgess.
The earliest reference I have so far found to it as a surname is Ralph le Burgeis who was living is Sussex in 1195. Have you found any earlier?
More About Dwight Spaulding Burgess, Sr. and Katherine Armintor, Jr.: Marriage: 28 December 1972, Ft. Worth, Tarrent, Texas.
Children of Dwight Spaulding Burgess, Sr. and Doris Janssen are:
Dwight Spaulding Burgess, Sr. (b. 05 September 1935)
Notes for Dwight Spaulding Burgess, Sr.: