American diplomat Anson Burlingame (1820-1870) served as U.S. minister to China and later as a Chinese envoy to the United States.

Anson Burlingame was born on Nov. 14, 1820, in New Berlin, N.Y., a descendant of Roger Burlingame, who had emigrated from England in 1654 and helped settle Providence, R.I. Anson's father, a farmer and Methodist lay preacher, moved his family westward in 1823 to Seneca Country, Ohio, to Detroit in 1833, and in 1835 to a farm at Branch, Mich.

Educated in common schools and at the Detroit branch of the newly formed University of Michigan, Burlingame graduated from Harvard Law School in 1846. He began to practice law in Boston with the son of the governor of Massachusetts. A gifted and popular public speaker, he soon became active in politics. In 1848 he toured Massachusetts on behalf of the third-party Free Soil ticket, Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams. He...