Stephen F. Austin devoted himself to the settlement of Texas and to its role as a republic. While working long hours, sometimes into the damp night, as the republic's secretary of state, he caught a cold that became pneumonia. Speaking final words of his beloved Texas, he died at the home of his friend Judge George B. McKinstry in Columbia on December 27, 1836, at the age of forty-three. After his body lay in state at the capitol building for two days, Texas dignitaries escorted his coffin to Bell's Landing, and it was carried down the Brazos on the Yellowstone, a 120 foot side-wheeler steamboat, a few miles downstream to his sister's Peach Point Plantation, where it was interred with military honors. On hearing of his death, Secretary of War William S. Fisher said, "The Father of Texas is no more. The first pioneer of the wilderness has departed."