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Stephenson County
Mr. Burchard's boyhood until his 13th year was spent in Marshall, but his father, having decided to seek a home in the West, removed in 1838 with his wife and children, at first to Aurora, Erie Co., N.Y. and two years later to Beloit WI. Both Aurora and Beloit possessed educational facilities unusual for new towns at that time, their academic schools then ranking among the best in their respective states. His father having decided to give him a collegiate education, had already caused him to commence, before leaving Marshall, the study of Latin. The opportunities and advantages here afforded for preparation for college as well as for mental culture and discipline in the study of those branches of science taught to the advanced classes were gladly improved, and enabled him to enter, in the spring of 1847, Hamilton College at Clinton, NY, from which he was graduated in 1850. Having selected the legal profession as his future calling he commenced while an under graduate, the study of law under Hon. T. W. Dwight, Law Professor in that college. He returned to Wisconsin after his graduation and continuing his law studies, in 1852 was admitted to the bar and began practice in the courts of Monroe, WI. In 1854 he came to Freeport, and the year following, having been enrolled a member of the Illinois bar, resumed practice as a lawyer, and for many years was actively engaged in professional labor in the courts of Stephenson and adjoining counties.
Mr. Burchard has held many important public positions and frequently received gratifying evidences of the confidence and appreciation of his fellow-citizens. He was chosen School Commisioner of Stephenson County in 1857, and held the office for three years. In 1862 he was elected a Representative for Stephenson County to the State Legislature and again elected in 1864, being during his first term a member of the Committee on Claims, and during his second, Chairman of the Committee on Banks and Coporations. He took an active part in legislature, especially during his secon term and several important laws passed by the latter legislature were drafted and proposed by him, among them the Registry Law of 1865, and the law providing for taking the votes of Union soldiers absent on military duty. For the next four years he held no public office except Trustee of the Illinois Industrial University, then just established by the Legislature and located at Champaign, and he found himself free to devote h is time assiduously to personal and professional business, but in 1869 he was elected a Representative in Congress to succeed Hon. E.B. Washburne, whose acceptance of a place in Gen. Grants Cabinet and created a vacancy which a special election for June 7, 1869, in his Congressional District, was called to fill. Upon being sworn in as Member of Contress at the ensuing December session, Mr. Burchard wa appointed by the Speaker, Mr. Blaine, a member of the Committee on Banking and CUrrency, of which Gen. Garfield was the Chairman. In the succeeding Congress he was appointed a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, considered the most important committee of the House, and subsequently re-appointed by Speaker Blaine in the following Congress, and then again by Speakers Kerr and Randall, making eight years of continuous service upon that committee. During these five terms of Congressional service, embracing the ten years from 1869 to 1879, the most important measures and National legislature, relating to
reconstuction in the seceded States to teh coinage and currency of the country, to the refunding of the bonded debt, and the resumption of specie payments, and to the modification and reduction of tariff and internal revenue taxation, were the paramount subjects of discussion and practical consideration. The records of the debate in Congress show his patient study and earnest efforts to understand and adopt the wisest action upon these difficult questions, and the prominent part he took in their ultimate disposition.
Before teh close of his Congressional career Mr. Burchard, in 1879, by President Hayes, was appointed Director of the United States Mint, and immediately after the expiration of the Congressional term entered at Washington, and had charge of all the mints and assay offices of the United States, ten in number. The coinage act of 1873 which createdteh mints bureau had suspended, and the act of 1878 had directed the resumption of the coinage of silver dollars. Both of these laws had occasioned most earnest discussion and the expression of widely divergent views as to their wisdom and utility. Deeming it exceedingly important that accurate information should be given to members of Congress and to the country in regard to the production, coinage, use and circulation of the precious metals. Mr. Burchard diligently applied himself to collect monetary statistics, not only as to the US but as to the other commercial countries of the world. By the aid of the officers of his bureau and through official inquiries made to foreign governments, and suggested by him, he was able to prepare and annually publish in the mints reports statistical tables showing approximately the coin and paper circulation, and the amount of gold and silver produced and coined in nearly every civilized nation. His labors in this direction were not only appreciated and found useful legislators and monetary writers in the US, but received flattering notices and encomiums from European statisticians. To facilitate the collection of such statistics, Congress made after he became Director, an annual appropriation of nearly $5,000, and the information gathered by the use of the means at his command, was embdied in his five special annual reports on the production of the precious metals in the US, showing in detail as far as practicable the amounts yiellded by the principal mines or mining regions of the gold and silver producing States and Territories. At the end of his first term in 1884 he was re-appointed by President ARthur to a second term, but upon the incoming of the Democratic administration in 1885 was removed and his place given to one who had been identified with that party.
In September of the latter year Mr. Burchard was appointed by Gov. Oglesby upon the commission to revise the revenue laws of the State, and report the recommendations agreed upon to the succeeding Legislature. Upon the conclusion of his duties on this commission Mr.Burchard, in 1886, resumed the practice of law and opened his office at Freeport. He has the honor of being one of the few persons in the United States elected to membership in the International Statistical Institute, which lately met at Rome, and is composed of statisticians and writers on a economic questions of the highest standing in their respective countries. His family consists of his wife and one son, he having married in 1861 to Miss Jane Lawyer, eldest daughter of Michael and Catherine Lawyer, who had resided for many years in Stephenson County, and were among its most influential and respected citizens. His son, Edward L. Burchard, was born at Freeport, Sept. 5, 1867, and is now a student in the Freshman Class at Beloit College.
Transcribed by Christine Walters
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Hon. Horatio Chapin Burchard, attorney-at-law, and a prominent citizen of Freeport, has been for many years not only closely identified with its business interests, but also active and conspicuous in the political history of Stephenson County and of the Prairie State. His parents were Horatio Burchard and Frances Chapin, whose home during the earlier years of their married life was in the town ofMarshall, Oneida Co., NY, where Mr.Burchard, their eldest son, the subject of this sketch, was born Sept. 22, 1825. His grandparents belonged to well known New England families of English ancestry, and were, on the father's side, Jonathan Burchard and Beulah Ely of Springfield Mass., the place of h is father's birth, in 1791, and on his mothers' side Benjamin Chapin and Sarah Fuller, who lived near Springfield, in Shicope, where his mother was born in 1792, and passed her girlhood until her marriage in 1816. His grandfather, Jonathan Burchard, was one of the pioneer settlers of Oneida County, arriving there with his family in 1797.