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Photo of Richard Fenner Burges |
Richard Fenner Burges, legislator and
conservationist, the son of Bettie (Rust) and William H.
Burges, was born in Seguin, Texas, on January 7, 1873.
He attended the Agricultural and Mechanical College of
Texas (now Texas A&M University) for one year, read law
in the offices of his father in El Paso and J. D. Guinn
in New Braunfels, and was admitted to the bar in 1894.
He made his home at El Paso after 1892. In 1898 he
married Ethel Petrie Shelton; they had a daughter.
Burges took part in a so-called "clean up" of El Paso in
1904, was city attorney, and in 1907 wrote the charter
for the establishment of commission city government in
El Paso. In 1908 he represented Texas at President
Theodore Roosevelt's conference of governors. |
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As a member of the House
in the Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth legislatures,
1913-15, he wrote or influenced the passing of the Texas
Irrigation Code, the royalty mining act, a forestry act,
a married women's property act, and a
compulsory-education act.
In June 1917 Burges organized Company B, Texas National
Guard, which was incorporated into the Thirty-sixth
Infantry Division as Company A, 141st Infantry. He
commanded his battalion in the battle of the Argonne and
was awarded the Croix de Guerre for distinguished
service.
He was associate counsel for the United States in the
arbitration on the Chamizal Dispute with Mexico in
1910-11. He was president of the International
Irrigation Congress, 1915-16, and was general counsel
for the El Paso County Water Improvement District. In
1923 he was attorney for Texas interests in negotiation
with New Mexico on the division of waters of the Pecos
River. Burges was also special counsel for the Texas-Rio
Grande Compact Commission and from 1935 to 1940 was a
special attorney for the United States Department of
Justice in the negotiations with Mexico for the Rio
Grande rectification project. From 1921 to 1923 he was
president of the Texas Forestry Association. He belonged
to the American Forestry Association and helped promote
the development of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico as a
national park. A member of the board of the El Paso
Public Library, of the Texas State Historical
Association, and of the Texas History and Library
Commission, he was a noted bibliophile of the Southwest
and had a Texas history collection of 5,000 items.
Burges died at El Paso on January 13, 1945.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Richard Fenner Burges Papers, Barker Texas
History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Buckley
B. Paddock, History of Texas: Fort Worth and the Texas
Northwest Edition (4 vols., Chicago: Lewis, 1922).
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Texas Collection,
April 1945. Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center,
University of Texas at Austin. Owen P. White, Out of the
Desert: The Historical Romance of El Paso (El Paso:
McMath, 1924). Who's Who in America, 1944-45.
Handbook of Texas Online
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/fbu28.html
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