Robert Ross McBurney was born of Scotch-Irish parentage at Castle-Blayney, Ulster, Ireland. His father, a prominent anti-Catholic leader, was a physician and surgeon: his mother, née Ross, was an ardent Methodist and the first of Dr. McBurney's three wives. She died when Robert was six years old.
Early religious training gave him a relish for church singing and hymnody and a zest for Christian service.
Robert Ross came to America in his eighteenth year (1854), a poor immigrant, and found employment as a clerk in a hat-establishment, which position he held until the business failed at the beginning of the Civil War. McBurney early interested himself in religious work for young men and boys in New York City, becoming, in 1856, a leader of noon prayer meetings at the North Dutch Church on Fulton Street. In 1852 an organization similar to the Young Men's Christian Association founded in London by George Williams in 1844 was organized in New York City, and after it had passed through a decade of volunteer leadership, McBurney was elected in 1862 as its employed officer at a salary of five dollars a week. He had a genius for friendship as well as sagacity and high intelligence, and succeeded in enlisting many prominent New Yorkers in the work of the Association. Leaving it for a brief period in business in 1864, he was called back in April of the following year. After attending his first International Convention in Philadelphia, in 1865, McBurney realized the extent of the work of the Young Men's Christian Association throughout the United States and Europe, and the scope and variety of its activities. A survey was made of the needs of young men in New York and, as a result, a building was erected at a cost of $487, 000, with adequate equipment for games, gymnasium, library, and meeting rooms, and with a central control which made the secretaryship an important office. The erection of this building, with its unified activities, marked an epoch in Young Men's Christian Association history.
By the year 1868 there were five hundred Associations in the United States, all looking increasingly for leadership to the New York branch. Here for twenty-five years McBurney's study, "The Tower Room, " heard every tale of human joy and tragedy, and in it he laid the plans which have been creative in the life of the Association. From 1887 to 1898 McBurney was metropolitan secretary in New York City. Owing to his energy the railroad branch was established in 1887; the Bowery building purchased, athletic grounds and a boat house leased, and the Harlem building completed in 1888; the French branch opened, and student work organized in 1889; the Mott Haven railroad rooms and the Washington Heights branch opened in 1891; the Madison Avenue railroad building in 1893; the Lexington Avenue student building in 1894; the West Side building in 1896; and the East Side building partially erected in 1896. The membership had grown in thirty-six years from 151 to 8, 328, with a daily attendance of 5, 670. McBurney died on December 27, 1898 at Clifton Springs, N. Y.
McBurney's outstanding contributions to the Association movement were the conviction that the work should be carried forward by young men for young men; the creation of a varied program, including games, gymnasium, libraries, education, trade classes, as well as evangelism; the development of specialized foreign work; the organization of the International Convention; the development of national supervisory agencies of help and counsel; training for leadership; the creation of the physical directorship; assistance in the founding of the training school for Young Men's Christian Association workers at Springfield, Massachussets, but greatest of all, the creation and development of the general secretaryship. The formative influence exercised by him upon the subsequent development of the Association in North America and throughout the world was profound, exceeding that of any other man.
McBurney was never married.
