Capt. Milton Wesley Damron

The Handbook of Texas follows Milton Damron's service unit by unit. In 1859 he served in the Independent Blues, a ranger company raised against Indian attacks. In January 1862 he raised a cavalry company, mustered at Dallas as Company D of the Eighteenth Texas Cavalry and sent to Arkansas and northern Louisiana. He was on furlough when the regiment was captured at Arkansas Post. In late 1863 he took command of a new company, partly Ellis County recruits, in the Seventeenth Texas Cavalry and served in Louisiana to the war's end.

What the plaque says

Capt. Milton Wesley Damron Milton Wesley Damron (1825-1887), an early settler and Salado public servant, was born in Tennessee and came to Texas as part of the Mercer Colony. He arrived in the 1840s and shortly afterwards married Sarah Pennington. When original settlement plans in the colony failed to materialize, he moved to the Milam District in what is now Bell County. Damron served as the county's first tax assessor and joined the Confederate Army. As a captain, he led a cavalry unit that served in the Indian Territory and Arkansas. He continued to be active in civic affairs after returning to Salado, working as a postmaster. He was also elected as a Legislator, although as a former Confederate he was unable to serve. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 16 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.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 22 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 25 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Hermon and Margaret L. Aiken — steps away
• Dr. Welborn and Louisa Adeline Barton — steps away
• James Lowry Smith — steps away
• Major Archibald Johnson Rose — 0.3 mi