Milam County
Cameron, Milam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A part of Robertson's colony in 1834. A part of the municipality of Viesca, 1835. Named changed to Milam, December 27, 1835 in honor of Benjamin Rush Milam, 1788-1835, who fell at San Antonio. After Burleson and Robertson counties were cut off Nashville became the county seat in 1837. The later creation of Williamson, Bell, McLennan and Falls, reduced Milam County to its present size. Cameron, the county seat since 1846.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from Robertson's colony and the Mexican municipality of Viesca, this land was renamed Milam County in December 1835 to honor Benjamin Rush Milam, killed leading Texian forces at San Antonio. Once a sprawling district, it was whittled down as Burleson, Robertson, Williamson, Bell, McLennan, and Falls counties were cut from it. Cameron has served as the county seat since 1846.
Why it matters
The county's shifting boundaries trace how the Republic and early state of Texas organized frontier land into the counties that still structure its government today.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Rush Milam
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Milam County Courthouse
Cameron, TX
The fourth building to serve as Milam County's seat of justice, this courthouse rose in 1891 with its cornerstone laid by the local Masonic lodge on Independence Day. Designed by Austin architect A.O. Watson, it once wore a fashionable Second Empire roof and a four-faced clock cupola, both lost when the Works Progress Administration remodeled the building in 1938. For more than a century it has stood at the center of county government in Cameron.
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.
Green-Batte House
Cameron, TX
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.
First United Methodist Church of Cameron
Cameron, TX
This congregation grew out of the first wave of Methodist missionary work in Texas, tracing its roots to an 1841 camp meeting in Milam County—just four years after the earliest Methodist preachers reached the young republic. For decades a circuit rider served Cameron until the church earned a full-time pastor in 1885, raising a succession of buildings that culminated in the sanctuary first used in 1923.