Crook County WY Archives Biographies.....Burns, Hugh 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 June 9, 2009, 6:06 am

Author: Bowen & Co. (1903)

HUGH BURNS.

   Hugh Burns, of Inyankara, Crook county, Wyoming, was born in County Donegal,
Ireland, on February 24, 1830, the son of John and Mary (Carr) Burns, whose
forefathers had lived in the Emerald Isle for many generations, tilling the soil
and bearing the burdens of their lot with patience, fidelity and cheerfulness
and doing what they could in their unostentatious way to advance the interests
of the community. In 1842, when he was twelve years old, Hugh Burns was brought
to America by his parents who settled in Greene county, N. Y., and there in the
midst of the picturesque and historic Catskill Mountains they pursued the
peaceful vocation of their fathers until death ended their labors. Their son
Hugh began his education in his native land and completed it in his new home,
where he remained until he was twenty-four years old aiding in the work on the
farm. In 1864 he sought a new country for his hopes and aspirations, and
removing to Leavenworth, Kan., engaged in freighting operations between that
city and Fort Laramie, Wyo. He conducted his operations to various cities and
camps in Wyoming until 1867, and then halted at Cheyenne, then only the promise
of a town and mainly composed of tents. From there he went to Fort Saunders and
was there when Laramie was founded. He worked on ranches and at other
occupations in that neighborhood until 1883 when he removed to his present ranch
in Crook county, seventeen miles south of Sundance, where he was one of the
first settlers and saw much of the real hardship and privation of pioneer life,
his very ranch being part of a battlefield on which whites and Indians had
fought desperately for the mastery and civilization had triumphed over barbarism
in 1875. Since then nature has covered the wounds of that struggle with her
greenest tapestry, and skillful husbandry has transformed the wilds into
fruitful fields periodically white with the harvests of systematic industry, so
that now what was at Mr. Burns' settlement an almost unbroken wilderness is one
of the thickly populated and highly cultivated sections of a great and growing,
although still youthful state, and it owes its development and progress largely
to his thrift, enterprise and influential spirit of advancement. He and his two
sons, who have ranches adjoining his, have as fine a body of land as the county
contains, and carry on one of the most active and profitable stock industries in
this portion of the state. In all the affairs of his locality Mr. Burns has
taken a great interest and a leading part. He is the postmaster at Inyankara and
is looked up to as a man of commanding influence in all lines of civil and
commercial life in the community. On January 1, 1878, at Laramie, he was united
in marriage with Miss Mary J. McCall, a native of Ireland, where her parents,
Terence and Jane McCall, were also born of ancestry that had been resident there
from time immemorial. Her father was a prosperous shoe merchant in Ireland, and
both of her parents have died and been buried there. Mr. and Mrs. Burns have two
children, both sons, Charles and John. All the family are members of the
Catholic church, and it is but just to say of the sons that they are exemplars
of the business thrift and energy, the sterling worth and all the amenities of
life for which their parents have been distinguished from their youth.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

PROGRESSIVE MEN OF THE STATE OF WYOMING

ILLUSTRATED

A people who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors, will
never achieve anything worthy to he remembered with pride by remote
generations.—.MACAULAY.

CHICAGO, ILL.
A. W. BOWEN & CO.
PUBLISHERS AND ENGRAVERS
1903


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