James Burd was born on March 10, 1725, in Ormiston, Scotland. Little is known of his childhood or upbringing other than his family’s wealth and aristocratic standing. At age 21, he left Scotland for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a merchant. In 1748, he met Sarah Shippen, the daughter of former Philadelphia mayor Edward Shippen. Shippen initially looked down upon the young Scotsman who had little to his name. However, Burd successfully persuaded the former mayor to permit him to marry Sarah. The couple had eleven children together, eight of whom survived to adulthood.

Shippen allowed his son-in-law to manage his vast land holdings on the frontier. Thus, Burd moved his young family west to Shippensburg (laid out by and named for the former mayor in 1749). Records indicate that Burd eventually returned east to settle on a farm in Lancaster County (present-day Dauphin County). In 1755, Burd led an expedition along with George Croghan, John Armstrong, William Buchanon, and Adam Hoopes to lay a road from Harris’s Ferry (present-day Harrisburg) to the Ohio Country. The expedition succeeded, and Burd gained a reputation as a capable engineer.

After the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, Burd joined the British military and received a commission as a major. He served as an engineer in General Edward Braddock’s doomed campaign against Fort Duquesne and aided the construction of the Braddock Road from Fort Cumberland to the Monongahela River. In 1757, Burd assumed command of Fort Augusta (now in Northumberland County) after the resignation of its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Clapham. Major Burd oversaw the finishing stages of the fort’s construction as well as the completion of a Provincial Road between the fort and Tulpehocken (present-day Reading). He also demonstrated prescience by fitting his troops in green uniforms, to camouflage them in the forest, rather than the traditional red uniforms of the British army.

Because of his successes, Burd was promoted to lieutenant colonel in January 1757. He began inspecting and constructing forts across the Pennsylvania frontier, including Fort Morris in Shippensburg. On February 16, 1758, Burd embarked on General John Forbes’s expedition to Fort Duquesne, located at the Forks of the Ohio River (present-day Pittsburgh). He joined Colonel Henry Bouquet’s column with four hundred of his men from Fort Augusta. When they reached Loyalhanna Creek, Burd assisted in constructing a stockade and fortifications known as Fort Ligonier. He oversaw the defense of the garrison when French and Delaware Native American forces attacked it on October 12, 1758. General Forbes, Colonel Bouquet, and Mayor Edward Shippen praised Burd for his performance in the Battle of Fort Ligonier.

Forbes captured Fort Duquesne two months later, in November 1758. With the Ohio Country firmly in British hands, Burd traveled north to Erie to oversee the construction of fortifications and roads. He returned from the Great Lakes to spearhead construction of Fort Burd (also known as Redstone Fort) along the Nemacolin Trail. He chose to erect the fort on a high bluff overlooking the Monongahela River—the future site of Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Fort Burd served as a major trading post and river depot for troops occupying Fort Duquesne, now rechristened Fort Pitt by the British. It later served settlers and pioneers as a stop on their westward journeys.

Burd returned to command Fort Augusta in the upper Susquehanna Valley in 1760, where he remained until the mustering out of his regiment. In 1764, Lieutenant Governor John Penn commissioned him as a Justice of Lancaster County, a position he held for six years. In 1766, he purchased five hundred acres of land along the Susquehanna River near Middletown, Pennsylvania (then in Lancaster County, now in Dauphin County), where he built an estate called Tinian.

As tensions grew between Great Britain and the American colonies, Burd professed his loyalty to the Patriot cause. Much like other British officers who cut their teeth in the Seven Years War, including George Washington and Horatio Gates, Burd likely felt loyal to the colonies rather than the British Crown itself. In 1774, before the Revolutionary War broke out, he helped organize militia companies as a member of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety. He also helped draft the Middletown Resolutions, also called the Middletown Resolves, that voiced collective opposition to Parliament’s restrictive policies. This document essentially served as a precursor to the Declaration of Independence by two years. Though the Middletown Resolves did not declare separation from Great Britain, it attempted to “procure redress for American grievances” and advocated for a “closer union” among the colonies as well as professed allegiance to the Continental Congress, which met for the first time in 1774. By 1776, though, Burd resigned his commission in the Pennsylvania militia over a dispute regarding his loyalty to the fledgling United States. His in-laws, the Shippen family, remained staunch loyalists, and many of Burd’s comrades suspected he was, too.

After the war ended, Burd retired from the military and served as a Lancaster County judge for the remainder of his life. He died at Tinian on October 5, 1793, and is buried in the Old Presbyterian Cemetery (now Middletown Cemetery) in Dauphin County.