James Butler Bonham was born February 20, 1807 in South Carolina, studied at South Carolina College from 1825 to 1827, served on the staff of the Governor of South Carolina during the Nullification Controversy from 1832 to 1833, and practiced law at Pendleton, South Carolina, and Montgomery, Alabama. At the call of his boyhood friend William Barret Travis, he came to Texas in 1835 and took part in the War for Independence as Travis's aide and messenger. He remained faithful unto death at the Alamo on March the sixth 1836.