Archives West Finding Aid

William Thomas Burney (b. 1852) was the son of Morrison W. Burney and Nancy Brown Burney and brother of Sally Burney Cramer. He was educated at the common schools of Palmetto, Ga. and later studied law at the University of Virginia. He came to Oregon in November of 1878, where he practiced law and later was appointed Registrar of the United States Land Office at Oregon City, Or. in 1886, after which he operated a land office in Portland. On 1880 February 21, he married Alice Blandina Simpson (1861-1891), daughter of Gen. Benjamin Simpson and Nancy Cooper Simpson. They had five children: Lounora (died as a baby); Ben Simpson; Dora; Alladine, who married Arthur Wayland Wright and had one daughter, Nancy Burney Wright; and Nancy Katherine, who married Walter Glen Cox and had a son, Glen Cox, Jr. After Alice's death, William married her sister, Elanora "Nora" Simpson in August of 1895. They had one son, Tom.

General Benjamin Simpson (1816-1910) was the third out of the eleven children of William Simpson (1793-1858) and Mary "Polly" Kinsey Simpson (1797-1858). He and his second wife, Nancy Cooper Simpson (b. 1819) had ten children: Sylvester (b. 1844); Samuel L. (1845-1898), who married Fanny McFarlane; Louisa, who later married Roy Stowall; Dora (b. 1855), who married William Milton Killingsworth; Elanora (b. 1856), William Thomas Burney's second wife; Frank; William, who married Mary Dickenson and had two sons, Harold and Ben; Grover B. (b. 1858), who later married Alma Beasley and had two sons, Dudley (b. 1890) and Burney (b. 1892); Alice (1861-1891), William Thomas Burney's first wife; and Clarence (b. 1865).

Dora Simpson (b. 1855) married in 1875 William Milton Killingsworth (b. 1850), a Portland, Or. real estate developer who laid out the Walnut Park addition, established the city's first streetcar line, and was elected in 1905 to the Oregon state legislature. The couple had six children: Nancy (b. 1877); Fay (b. 1879); William Milton, Jr.(b. 1880); Alice, who later married C. L. Shorno; Louisa "Lou", who later married Harry Swart and had a daughter, Betty Lou Swart; and Flawnice, who later married Dell O'Holon.

Norris Remy Cox (1855-1925) was the son of William H. Cox and Adeline F. Sauvier Cox and brother of Alfred Cox. He married Lillie B. O'Neal, daughter of Thomas O'Neal, in 1879 and practiced as a dentist in the offices of Glenn & Cox, with Dr. John G. Glenn, in Portland, Or. Norris and Lillie had two children, Norris Roy Cox and Walter Glenn Cox. Walter later married Nancy Katherine Burney, daughter of William Thomas and Alice Blandina Simpson Burney, and had a son, Glen Cox Jr.