Jabez Burton was born at Sawtry, Huntingdonshire, in 1839. He was third eldest of seven children. He was educated privately by an old Church of England minister and later worked  in his family's Drapers and Grocers business on High Street, opposite the Green. His father William, set up the Drapers business in his twenties, having taken it over from Sarah Prior who run it until her death, the widow of the previous owner Thomas Prior. Jabez's father William died quite young in his forties. His mother continued to run the business for several years in which Jabez worked as an apprentice. In 1860 he went out to Victoria. In the following year Mr. Burton settled in Otago and the same year, 1861,  his elder brother John took over the running of Burtons drapers in Sawtry.  Jabez became engaged in gold mining for several years ans was a director of the Excelsior Gold Dredging Company. As the gold finds petered out he then commenced a business as a butcher at Roxburgh in 1870, but relinquished that calling for that of an auctioneer, commission agent and registered mining agent, which he carried on up to his death.  Mr. Burton served as a member of the local school committee, and was also a senior Justice of the Peace in Roxburgh district, having been appointed in 1881. He was married, in 1872, to a daughter of the late Mr. Jones, of Shrewsbury, and a niece of the late Mr. E. Menlove, of Windsor Park, near Oamaru, and had three sons and one daughter.