Hutchins Gordon Burton (d. 1836), attorney and public official, was probably a native of Virginia. He moved to North Carolina at an early age, attended the University of North Carolina in 1795, later read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1806. Burton represented Mecklenburg County in the North Carolina House of Commons for one full session and part of a second, 1809–10. He resigned his seat after being elected state attorney general, a position he retained until 1816. The following year Burton returned to the lower house of the state legislature, representing the borough of Halifax. He served in the United States House of Representatives, 1819–24, and as governor of North Carolina, 1824–27. Burton allied himself politically with strict constructionists and those who opposed the extension of federal power. A proponent of education and state-funded internal improvements, during his governorship free public education in North Carolina advanced with the passage of the Literary Fund Bill. President John Quincy Adams nominated Burton as territorial governor of Arkansas in 1829, but the Senate did not confirm him. He was also a high-ranking Masonic officer (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; DNCB description begins William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1979–96, 6 vols. description ends , 1:285–6; Daniel Lindsey Grant, Alumni History of the University of North Carolina [2d ed., 1924], 88; Charles L. Coon, The Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina [1908], 1:xiii, xix, xxx–xxxvii; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 3:630, 634 [6, 15 Jan. 1829]; Raleigh Register and North-Carolina Gazette, 26 Apr. 1836).