A Note About Mary

The story of the library's namesake, Mary Couts Burnett, is at once tragic, poignant and heroic. Born in 1856, she was one of five daughters of Colonel James Robertson Couts, a prominent banker and rancher in Parker County. The Colonel is known to have been an admirer of Addison Clark who, with his brother Randolph, founded in Thorp Spring the school which would eventually become Texas Christian University.

Raised in Weatherford, Mary first married Claude Barradel and was widowed. After Barradel's untimely death she was wooed and won by wealthy cattleman S. Burk Burnett, himself a widower. The one child born to the couple, S. Burk Burnett, Jr., died as a young man.

By 1920 the relationship between husband and wife had grown tense and Mrs. Burnett expressed fears that her husband was trying to kill her. Burnett claimed in court that his wife was suffering from "hallucinations" and won a sanity judgement against her. He was further successful in having her committed to a limited asylum in a private Weatherford home where she was kept virtually a prisoner until she engineered her own release on the very day, in 1923, of Burk Burnett's death. With the aid of her physician she then set about to free herself and to obtain her "widow's half" -- Texas being a community property state -- of the estate which Burnett had actually willed almost entirely to his granddaughter, Anne Burnett. She succeeded in both these efforts.

Then, in December of 1923, she surprised and shocked TCU by informing the University it would receive nearly her entire estate in trust -- something over 3 million (equivalent to about 36 million in 1991 dollars). Before this moment, Mrs. Burnett had no known ties with or interest in the University. One story has it that Burk Burnett, a notoriously rough-edged character, had plainly expressed that no church or school would ever get any of his money so that Mary's gesture may have been one of defiance towards her late husband.

Though she did not live to see it fully completed before her death, she was driven past the Library building which would bear her name when construction was well advanced in 1924.

This note is largely taken from the book WALKING TCU: A HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE by Joan Hewatt Swaim. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1992.

Mary Couts Burnett Library | Texas Christian University | TCU Box 298400, Fort Worth, TX 76129 | +1 817-257-7117 | Fax: (817) 257-7282