Robert T. Burnam

ROBERT T. BURNAM
Sketch of a Texas Pioneer Who Grew Up With the State
(Marble Falls Messenger.)

The subject of our sketch was born November 9, 1826, at the little settlement of Matagorda, in the county of the same name, in Texas and while he was yet quite a small boy his parents moved to Fayette county, where he resided till the "runaway" in '36.

They followed Houston's army in the retreat before the Mexicans.  After the battle of San Jacinto they returned home, where they found everything utterly destroyed.  Mr. Burnam lived there till '52, when he moved to Burnet County and settled about four miles south of Marble Falls, where he lived up to two years ago, when he moved to town to spend the last days of his life.

In November, 1857, he was married to Miss S. C. Alexander, a native of Tennessee.  They had eight children.  One at the age of 15 months was drowned in the spring near their old country home, and Mrs. Tedie Yett, died three years since; the other six  four daughters -- Mesdames T. T. Hubbard, W. H. Andrews, Fannie Burnam, and Annett Burnam, -- and two sons, Robert A. and John H. Burnam, are still living, and are prominent citizens of our town.

When Father Burnam came to Burnet county the country was so thinly settled that his nearest postoffice was Fredericksburg.  Once every month some of the settlers would go for the mail, and from his ranch house it would be distributed, but a few years later, in 1857, a postoffice was created at Double Horn, thereby giving them better mail facilities.

In the family circle is still kept and very much prized by all, his old leather trunk and dozens of old letters, some of which date back many years prior to the civil war, and some of them bear the old confederate postage stamps and seal.

Mr. Burnam was the seventh child of a family of eight boys and eight girls, and it is remarkable he has been the only child living for the past twenty-seven years.  When quite young he fell a victim to a severe spell of fever that left him a cripple for life, but with this one exception he had no recollection of ever being sick a single day in his life till his 71st birthday, when he had his meals brought to his bed.  Two weeks previous to his 73d birthday he was taken sick, and on November 13 of the present year passed from time to eternity.