Texas patriot Jesse Burnam, also spelled Burnham, was born in Madison County, Kentucky, the youngest of seven children. In 1812 he married Temperance Null Baker in Shelbyville, Tennessee. He served as a private in the Mounted Volunteers of Tennessee during the War of 1812 from Sep. 1814 to Apr. 1815, including at the Battle of New Orleans. In 1821 Jesse, Temperance, and their family arrived in Texas and settled at Pecan Point in Red River County. By 1823 they were among Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred, where they built a home, a fortified trading post, and a ferry service on the Colorado River frontier. Austin commissioned Burnam as a captain of militia in May 1824. After Temperance died in 1833, leaving Jesse with nine children, he married Nancy Ross, and they had seven more children. Jesse served as a delegate to the Conventions of 1832 and 1833 and the Consultation of 1835. During the Texas Revolution he aided Col. James W. Fannin in gathering volunteers and supplies, and on March 17, 1836, Gen. Sam Houston arrived at Burnam’s Crossing and ordered the ferry, homestead, and store burned ahead of the advancing Mexican army. Jesse later served as a Representative in the Republic of Texas provisional government and its first congress. In 1855 Jesse and Nancy moved their family to Burnet County, where his land southeast of present-day Marble Falls on Double Horn Creek became the site of one of the area’s first sheep-raising operations and a large wheat farm. The Burnam homestead, now in the family’s fifth generation, includes a log cabin, a two-story home, a spring house, and a family cemetery where Jesse, Nancy, and others are buried.