Vincent Godfrey Burns photograph collection

Vincent Godfrey Burns (1893-1979) was a Congregationalist minister and Poet Laureate of Maryland. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., he earned degrees at Penn State (1916), Harvard University (1917), and Union Theological Seminary (1922) and did post-graduate work at Columbia University (1922-1924). He served in World War I as a Staff Officer in the Field Artillery in France. After ordination in 1920, Burns worked as a minister in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, marrying Edna Rodenberger in 1924, and having one daughter. He broke with the church on theological issues at some time in the 1930s, and was unsuccessful in attempts in 1941 to be fully restored to the ministry in order to join the Army Chaplains Reserve Corps. In 1945, he married Katherine H. Barker, having two sons; that marriage ended in 1967.

While Burns is sometimes credited with writing the 1932 prison epic I am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! which was made into a movie, his brother Robert Elliot Burns is actually the author; Vincent Godfrey Burns did write the 1942 sequel, Out of these Chains. He wrote other novels, as well as several plays and volumes of poetry in the 1930s and 1940s. Moving to Anne Arundel Co., Md. in 1951, Burns continued writing, being appointed in 1962 by Governor Tawes as second Poet Laureate of Maryland. His poetry was extremely patriotic and religious in tone, making his appointment controversial.