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 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.
