Pioneer, Politician: Born into poverty in Kentucky, his father passed away soon after his birth, and Mrs. Burnam moved her family of seven boys to Tennessee. Jesse served in the Tennessee Militia, and later Captain Burnam was among Austin's Old Three Hundred who originally settled in Texas Territory in 1821. Jesse led his own, and nine other families, to a settlement at Pecan Point on the Red River. They remained there for a number of months before traveling farther into the Texas wilderness, where Jesse settled on the Colorado River in Fayette County. He established a trading post and ferry, known as Burnam's Crossing. It was the most northerly settlement on the Colorado, where he was under consistent attack by the Karankawa Indians. He participated in numerous raids on the Indians, as well as an expedition against the Comanches. He represented what later became Colorado County at the Convention of 1832 and the Consultation of 1835, as well as being a member of the General Council of the provisional government of the Republic. In 1833 his first wife died, leaving him with nine children. He soon remarried, however, and had seven more children. In 1855 the Burnam family moved to Burnet County where they established a large wheat farm, as well as one of the first sheep-raising operations in the area, where his thirteen slaves worked. In 1864 he retired from public life, and passed away nearly two decades later at the age of ninety-one. He is laid to rest in a small cemetery located in a pasture on the Burnam Ranch off Spicewood Road, about eight miles southeast of Marble Falls.
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All of Jesse's children, in birth order, are:
William Owen
Mary "Polly" TOWNSEND
John Hickerson
Minerva J., died in childhood
Nancy HOLMAN
Amanda ALEXANDER-HOLMAN
Robert Thompson
James H., died in childhood
Jesse Bennett
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Emily Mariah HUNTER-HOLMAN
Henry T., died in childhood
Sarah Ellen PHARIS
Waddy Thompson, Sr.
Gideon Linsecum
Adelia Lee RUSSELL
Alice, died in infancy