Burial Site of David G. Burnet

Burnet's Galveston years were the lonely end of a hard life. His wife Hannah died in 1858, and their only surviving child, William, was killed fighting for the Confederacy at Spanish Fort, Alabama, in 1865. The Texas legislature named him a United States senator in 1866, but he was never seated. To pay his room and board he hired out the people he enslaved and rented his farm. He burned his manuscript on the republic shortly before he died without money in December 1870. Friends buried him, and his remains were moved twice before reaching this cemetery.

What the plaque says

Burial Site of David G. Burnet (1788-1870) Provisional President of Texas (March 16, 1836 - Oct. 22, 1836). A man of strong principle who carried a gun in one pocket and a Bible in the other, Burnet acted as a cohesive force in the chaotic days of early Texas independence, though his dour, quick-tempered disposition kept him from ever winning wide popularity. As an idealistic youth, he took part in the Miranda Expeditions (1806 and 1808) to free Venezuela from Spain, almost losing his life to yellow fever. He bought a trading post, 1817, in Louisiana, but had to sell it after developing tuberculosis. Though weak from the disease, he rode to west Texas, where he fell into the hands of unusually friendly Comanches. He lived with them for 18 months, thus becoming an expert on the pre-settlement days of these Indians. Burnet began his statesman's career in 1833 when Texas was beginning her fight for independence from Mexico. In 1836, he ran as a compromise candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Texas and won by 6 votes. His interim government was mainly concerned with winning military victory and escaping, sometimes only by minutes, Mexican troops. In later years, he held various offices under the Republic and State of Texas. He married Hannah Este in 1830 and they had four children. Recorded - 1967

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 0.6 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• Moody Mansion — 2.6 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 2.7 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 3.1 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• The Rev. Henry P. Young — steps away
• William Tennant Austin — steps away
• Peter Leroy Colombo — 0.2 mi
• The Original Galveston Seawall — 0.6 mi