North Carolina native Joseph Bird became a pioneer settler of this area and for more than 50 years contributed greatly to the development of Blanco County as a frontier Baptist minister, postmaster, Civil War soldier, county judge, rancher, and community leader. He married Eliza L. Doriss in Arkansas in 1844, and about 1854 they and their six children settled on land between Cypress Creek and the Pedernales River. They built a log cabin near this site about 1858, and their family eventually grew to 12 children. The pioneer settlement, called Birdtown in his honor, had been renamed Round Mountain by the time a post office was established there in 1857. Bird served as postmaster from 1859 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1874. For Baptist churches he helped found in the area, he served as an itinerant pastor and performed marriages, baptisms, and funeral services. In 1862 he enlisted in the Confederate Army as a first lieutenant and was stationed at Camp Groce in Waller County, Texas. While serving two terms as Blanco County judge in the early 1890s, he moved to Johnson City. Eliza Bird died in 1896, and in 1900 Joseph Bird married Martha A. Gill. He was buried in the Round Mountain Cemetery.