BARR, ROBERT (1802-1839). Robert Barr, soldier and first postmaster general of the Republic of Texas, was born in Ohio in 1802 and arrived in Texas before December 5, 1833. At the battle of San Jacinto he served as a private in Capt. William H. Patton's Fourth Company of Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers. On December 22, 1836, Sam Houston appointed Barr postmaster general. Mirabeau B. Lamar reappointed him, but Barr died in Houston on October 11, 1839, soon after the Lamar administration was inaugurated, and was buried with Masonic and Odd Fellows honors. Three of his sons were living in 1878.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compiled Index to Elected and Appointed Officials of the Republic of Texas, 1835-1846 (Austin: State Archives, Texas State Library, 1981). Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Muster Rolls of the Texas Revolution (Austin, 1986). Sam Houston Dixon and Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto (Houston: Anson Jones, 1932). Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813-1863 (8 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938-43; rpt., Austin and New York: Pemberton Press, 1970).
