Ben Milam

Ben Milam was killed two days into the assault on San Antonio, and his body stayed there. In 1897 the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erected a monument at his gravesite in Milam Park. The stone was moved in 1976, and afterward nobody remembered exactly where the grave lay. In 1993 a burial was unearthed that archaeologists think is probably his. The county around this courthouse lawn carries his name because the Provisional Government renamed Viesca's municipality for him in 1835, in the weeks after his death.

What the plaque says

Ben Milam Benjamin Rush Milam, born in Kentucky 1788. Soldier in the War of 1812. Trader with the Texas Comanche Indians, 1818. Colonel in the Long Expedition in 1820. Empresario from 1826 to 1835. Benjamin Rush Milam participated in the capture of Goliad, October 9, 1835; was killed in San Antonio December 7, 1835 while commanding the Texas forces which later captured the town. Who will follow Old Ben Milam into San Antonio? Erected by the State of Texas 1936 with funds appropriated by the Federal government to commemorate one hundred years of Texas Independence.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — steps away
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Calvert — 20 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 28 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg — steps away
• Milam County — steps away
• First Girl's Tomato Club in Texas — steps away
• First National Bank of Cameron — steps away