DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker on Robert Barr tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Now, some men leave a mark so clean and so certain that you don't need to dress it up. Robert Barr is one of those men.
He was born in Urbana, Ohio, in 1802. And somehow, the way things had a habit of happening in that era, he found his way to Texas — to the fight at San Jacinto, to the very moment when the Republic itself was decided. He stood in that number.
He was a San Jacinto veteran. And when the shooting was done and the Republic needed building, Robert Barr kept right on working. He served as Postmaster General under not one president, but two — Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar.
Two very different men, mind you, with very different visions for what Texas ought to be. But Barr served under both. That tells you something about the man, even if the marker doesn't spell it out.
Then came October of 1839. Yellow fever. Houston, Texas.
At nine o'clock in the morning on the eleventh day of that month, Robert Barr died. Nine in the morning. The marker gives you the hour.
I don't know if that detail makes it feel more real or more final, but there it sits — nine a.m., October 11, 1839. He was buried under the auspices of the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges and the Milam Guards. Three organizations came together to see him home.
A veteran. A postmaster general. A man the Republic mourned.
That's the whole of it — and somehow, it's enough.
What the marker says
San Jacinto veteran. Postmaster general of the Republic under Houston and Lamar. Born in Urbana, Ohio in 1802. Died in Houston, Texas at 9 a.m. October 11, 1839, of yellow fever. Buried under the auspices of the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges and the Milam Guards.