Matthew Burnett Homesite

The plaque ends with the Burnetts' tavern years; the deed records show how the family's land left them. In August 1853, a year after Sarah Burnett's death, Alexander Burnett sold fifty acres of the Burnett grant to Frederick Knigge. The next month he sold nearly all the rest of the league to John F. Crawford, holding back Knigge's piece, the family homestead and the Burnett burying ground. Where that burying ground lies is now uncertain: the deeds point to today's Knigge family cemetery, the Borgstedt Cemetery sits on the old Burnett site, and some favor a third graveyard nearby.

What the plaque says

Matthew Burnett Homesite Texas army camp - April 16, 1836. Matthew Burnett (1795-1842) and his wife, Sarah (Simmons) (1797-1852), came to Texas from Arkansas in 1831 and settled south of here on Cypress Creek. Their home was near the "Harrisburg Road" which stretched 15 miles northwest to a crossroads at the home of their closest neighbor, Abram Roberts, and, in the other direction, 25 miles southeast to Harrisburg. The interim government of the Republic of Texas stayed here briefly on March 22, 1836, while enroute to establish the Republic's new capital at Harrisburg. The Texas army, 1100 men under the command of Sam Houston, stopped here about dusk on April 16, 1836, after turning southeast at the Robert's crossroads earlier in the day. During their overnight stay they consumed most of Burnett's livestock and grains, and burned fence rails for fuel. The next morning the Texas army departed for Harrisburg. Four days later, on April 21, they routed the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto, winning Texas independence from Mexico. Having fled the area in the episode known as the "Runaway Scrape," the Burnetts returned after learning of the victory at San Jacinto. In the late 1830s and 1840s their home became a prominent landmark and well-known tavern on the road to the city of Houston. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 21 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 21 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 21 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 22 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• St. John Lutheran Church — 2.1 mi
• Cypress — 3.2 mi
• The Sikh Center of the Gulf Coast Area, Inc. — 7.8 mi
• Catherine Wunderlich — 8.0 mi