Adobe PDF - Lincolnshire Archives Committee Archivists' Report 24 ...

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etc., and miscellaneous correspondence; In 1968 a visit was made to
the firm’s office at Kirton Lindsey, where the old-established practice
of B. Howlett had been acquired in 1924, and the letter books, dating
from 1837, were listed. A further very large deposit (given the
reference 2 B.D.) was received from the Gainsborough office in 1971
and this year this second deposit has been cleaned and sorted, and is
being listed. The greater part of it consists of clients’ bundles, mainly
dating from 1860 to the late 1g3os, though a small proportion contain
earlier and later material. These bundles have been weeded fairly
severely and much ephemeral material destroyed, nevertheless about
a thousand remain. They have been sorted alphabetically and about
two-thirds of them have now been listed. In the main they relate to
executorships, administrations and trusts, conveyances, leases, mortgages,
claims for damages and suits for debt, with a few divorce cases.
The bundles contain ractically no original deeds or probate copies
of wills, but only dra!!ts or copies, letters and papers. Some contain
rinted sale particulars of properties and occasionally plans. These
gundles
will be subject to a thiry years’ restriction on use.
In addition, in this second deposit there are a number of boxes
representing the firm’s clerkship to various institutions, public undertakings
and companies, some records relating to offices held by the
firm, such as the registrarship of the County Court and the Clerkship
to the Income Tax Commissioners, some of the firm’s own records,
and a good collection of printed sale particulars of landed properties.
It is hoped to describe these records later.
Frederick Merryweather Burton (182g-1g12), the founder of the
firm, was a son of the Lincoln solicitor, Frederick Burton, who
educated him at Rugby. He spent the first six years of his professional
life in practice at Uppingham. He left in 1860 to set up practice
at Gainsborough, taking with him a testimonial, preserved in this
deposit, from his friend and next-door neighbour, the eminent headmaster
Edward Thring. Thring testified not only to his high character,
position as a gentleman, and general ability, but added that he had
managed, to their full satisfaction, all the business connected with the
re-establishment of the school. Another testimonial, from the Sub-
Warden of the school, was addressed to the Lord Chancellor, in
support of Burton’s application for the registrarship of the County
Court, to which he was appointed. He quickly established himself
in local society and before 1872 had acquired the impressive mansion,
Highfield House, Summerhill. A man of wide scientific interests, he
was a fellow of the Geological Society, the Linnean Society and the
Royal Horticultural Society, a life member of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science and a founder of the Lincolnshire
Naturalists’ Union (Lincolnshire at the Opening of the Twentieth
Century, ed. W. T. Pike (1go7), p.142). The page proofs, printed in
1903, of his article on the geology of the county for the Victoria
County History of Lincolnshire, with various addenda and corrigenda,
are preserved with his executorshi papers (2 B.D. 1B/123), with
instructions that his executors shou Pd
send them to the editor. But
that volume was never published. With these papers also are reserved
four rough account books covering the years 1894-1902 ana 1go8-10
in which Burton noted down his personal disbursements, with monthly
and annual totals of income and expenditure. He distinguished
between private income, income from office, and income from the
County Court. The two sorts of official income constituted only a small