Green-Batte House
Cameron, Milam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Now enclosed, original cabin on site was built of logs and bricks both made nearby, 1847. Owner was George Green (1813-1885), prominent early surveyor and soldier in Battle of San Jacinto. Home was among Cameron's first. Boards were added in 1850s. About 1900, R. L. Batte, Sr., an oil mill owner, law officer, and capitalist, purchased home. Over years, both owners added rooms. Batte reared his children and many orphans in this house. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1969
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1847 of logs and locally made brick, this was among Cameron's earliest homes, raised by George Green, a surveyor who had fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in Texas's 1836 fight for independence. As the frontier town matured, board siding went up in the 1850s and later owner R. L. Batte, Sr. added rooms while raising his own children and many orphans under its roof. The now-enclosed cabin survives as a layered record of two families and a young Texas.
Why it matters
The house links the founding generation of Anglo Texas — a San Jacinto veteran and surveyor — to the settling of the Milam County frontier, preserving the physical fabric of one of Cameron's first homes.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Green-Batte House was raised in 1847, when the town of Cameron and the surrounding Milam County frontier were brand new. Texas had only just joined the United States, and much of this country was still being surveyed, claimed, and built for the first time. A home from 1847 isn't just old — it dates to the founding moment of the community around it.
You can read that frontier reality in how the house was made. Its original cabin was built of logs and of bricks both produced nearby, because a settler in 1847 used what the land itself could provide. There were no distant suppliers to lean on; a house was assembled from local timber and local clay, by hand, close to where it stood.
The decades that followed were decades of maturing. Board siding went up in the 1850s, softening the rough cabin into something more like a settled town house, and later still the property passed to a new era's kind of owner. The building's changing skin tracks the community's own passage from raw frontier to established town.
People & events
The home's first owner was George Green, and his résumé reads like a founding citizen's. He was a prominent early surveyor — one of the people who literally drew the lines that turned wilderness into property — and, before that, a soldier at the Battle of San Jacinto. His house was among the very first in Cameron, which makes Green not just a resident but one of the town's originators.
Green and later owners kept adding to the place over the years, and around 1900 it changed hands to R. L. Batte, Sr. Batte was a figure of a very different age: an oil mill owner, a law officer, and, as the marker puts it, a capitalist — a man of the turning-of-the-century economy rather than the frontier. He too added rooms, layering his era onto the old cabin's bones.
The most human detail belongs to Batte. Under this roof he reared not only his own children but many orphans as well. That single line turns a landmark of surveyors and soldiers into something warmer — a house that sheltered children who had nowhere else to go. The building was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1969.
Its place in the American story
This house is a physical timeline of how Anglo-American Texas took shape. Its first owner had fought at San Jacinto — the decisive 1836 battle that won Texas its independence — and then went to work as a surveyor, and those two roles together capture the founding generation exactly: first they secured the land, then they measured and settled it.
The way the building itself grew mirrors the national story of frontier towns everywhere. A one-room cabin of local logs and brick becomes a sided house, then gains rooms under a prosperous new owner in a new century. You can practically watch a rough settlement become a town of oil mills and businessmen in the fabric of a single structure.
And Batte's decision to raise orphans alongside his own children speaks to something deeply American in small-town life: the private, informal safety net of a community that took care of its own before public institutions did. Preserving the actual house where all of this happened keeps that layered history tangible rather than merely remembered.
If you visit
You'll find the Green-Batte House in Cameron, the seat of Milam County, and its charm is in its layers. The original cabin is now enclosed within the larger house, so as you look at it, try to read the building like tree rings — the log-and-brick core of 1847, the 1850s boards, and the rooms added by later owners all folded into one home.
Remember as you stand there that this was one of the first houses in town, built by a man who had fought for Texas's independence and then helped survey the land around you. That combination — a San Jacinto veteran's cabin, still standing at the heart of a county seat — is what earns this spot its place on any history-minded route.
Cameron makes a natural anchor for exploring Milam County's early days, and this landmark is a fine first stop. Take a moment for the quieter story too: the children and orphans a later family raised here. It's the kind of detail that turns an old house from a monument into a home.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · George Green
- · R. L. Batte, Sr.
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ben Milam
Cameron, TX
Kentucky-born Benjamin Rush Milam fought in the War of 1812, traded with the Comanche, and became an empresario recruiting settlers to Mexican Texas before joining the fight for independence. In late 1835 he rallied hesitant Texian volunteers with the cry 'Who will follow Old Ben Milam into San Antonio?' and led the assault that took the town—though he was killed by a sniper on December 7 before it fell. The State of Texas raised this monument in 1936 for the independence centennial.
George Green
Cameron, TX
George Green fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. Beyond the battlefield he served as a ranger and surveyor, helping map and secure the young republic's frontier, and became an honored citizen of Milam County. The State of Texas erected this marker to his memory in 1962.
John Hobson
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Born in Nashville, Tennessee, John Hobson came to Texas in 1835 and was received as a colonist in Sterling Robertson's colony, earning a league of land. When the Texas Revolution broke out he enlisted under Captain Jesse Billingsley and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, then served on as a Texas Ranger. Rewarded with further land grants, he became one of Milam County's largest landowners, one of its first commissioners in 1846, and helped choose Cameron as the county seat.
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Dr. John Herndon Graves settled this Milam County area in 1858, and in 1880 his daughter and son-in-law deeded land for Lilac Baptist Church and its burial ground. The earliest marked grave, from 1870, belongs to Calvin McCormick, while Dr. Graves himself was the earliest-born of those interred. Among the graves lie veterans reaching from the Civil War and Spanish-American War through World War I and beyond, marking the community's service across generations.