John Burton (II)

BURTON, John (II). b. Stratford, Essex, 23 July 1803; d. Stratford, 22 July 1877. He was in business as a cooper, and a member of the Congregational Chapel at Stratford, where he was a Deacon and Sunday-school teacher. According to Kelynack (1950) he died of smallpox contracted when visiting a poor chimney-sweeper. Burton wrote many hymns for children under the signature ‘J.B., Essex’. About forty (Burton’s calculation) were published in the Child’s Companion during the 1830s and 1840s. Many were collected in One Hundred Original Hymns for the Young (London: Religious Tract Society, 1850). Burton said in the preface that the hymns were ‘especially presented to Parents and Teachers, by one...