Family background
Herbert Barton Burton was born at Manning River in 1875, son of Frederick John Burton and Margaret Alice. He married Isabel Maude Haig at Eden in 1900. There were three sons and a daughter of the marriage. He died at Ashfield on 14 November 1955, aged 80 years. Isabel Burton died 18 October 1967, aged 87 years.
Occupation & interests
Apprenticed to a draper, and working as a drapery assistant, Burton worked as a draper as he moved about NSW from the Manning River, Eden and Manly.
Community activity
The Glebe Municipal Reform Association, of which Burton was a member, was formed in 1928, and largely composed of Glebe businessmen who represented the only opposition to the Labor Party’s dominance at local municipal elections between 1925 and 1944.
Local government service
Herbert Burton contested the December 1937 municipal election as a Glebe Municipal Reform Association candidate, a coalition of non-Labor forces, in a field of 36 candidates and was not successful; he stood again as a Reform candidate and in a recount of the December 1940 election in February 1941 was elected for a term of three years (1941-44).
References
‘Suburban Municipalities’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December 1937, p. 8, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17439946
‘New aldermen at Glebe’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1940, p. 11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27949432
‘Death Of Mr. H. B. Burton’, The Cumberland Argus, 23 November 1955, p. 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131386053
Hogan, Michael 2004, Local labor: a history of the Labor Party in Glebe, 1891-2003, Federation Press, Annandale, NSW, p. 142