Oil on board, 29 x 23 in., by Robbie L. Nurnberger, 1963
Location: Hearing Room A

Born November 8, 1817 in Accomack County, Virginia.
Died March 14, 1874 in Petersburg, Virginia.

First elected by the General Assembly on February 22, 1866 under the new Constitution of 1864 and began his service on March 7, 1866. Service terminated by Reconstruction and passage of a law requiring removal of any official serving in Virginia (and Texas) with a record of service to the Confederacy.

Elected a second time by the General Assembly on March 23, 1870 to a 12-year term beginning January 1, 1871, but began his service early, on April 12, 1870. Service terminated by resignation.

Education:
University of Virginia, graduated in 1837
Read law, 1837-1839

Other judicial service:
Judge, First Judicial Circuit (Confederate), 1863-1865.

Professional career:
Private practice of law in Petersburg, Virginia, 1839- .
U.S. attorney, Eastern District of Virginia, 1850-1853.
Virginia state delegate, 1865-1866.

Further reading/Research collections 

Sources:
First elected, Election of Judges, col. 2, Staunton Spectator (Staunton, Va.), February 27, 1866, retrieved on March 20, 2014; dismissed, J. Jefferson Looney, “Horace Blois Burnham (1824-1894),” in Kneebone and Bearrs, Dictionary of Virginia Biography (Richmond, Va.: Library of Virginia, 1998), v. 2, 414; elected a second time on March 23, 1870, Court of Appeals, col. 1, Staunton Spectator, March 29, 1870, retrieved on March 20, 2014; began his service on April 12, 1870, The Hornbook of Virginia History, “Judges of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” (2013, December 11), in Encyclopedia Virginia, retrieved on September 15, 2014; resigned, 119 Va., iii; birth, death, education, and career, Samuel Bassett French, “Biographical Sketches [of Virginians],” Library of Virginia; and Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, edited by L.G. Tyler, (New York, 1905), III, 17, both cited by E. Lee Shepard, “Professional Choices in Antebellum Virginia: a Letter of Thomas Robinson Joynes,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 88, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), 355-361, note 4; see also Seargent S.P. Patteson, “The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, II,” The Green Bag, 369-370. Service as U.S. District Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Bicentennial Celebration of the US Attorneys, 1789-1989, retrieved on January 15, 2014; portrait, Library of Virginia catalog, Proceedings of the Seventy-Third Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Bar Association, July 1963 (Richmond: Keel-Williams Corporation, Printers, 1963), 111; and Proceedings, . . . July 1964, 131.