This branch of Milams in America came originally from Wales, probably early in the 1700's. Among them was one Archibald Milam, whose son Moses married Pattie Boyd in Virginia in 1774. Moses and Pattie had several children, among them were sons Archibald, John and Benjamin Rush. Archibald's son, Jefferson, was my grandfather's father, one book's author wrote. The Milams had settled first in Virginia and later some of them moved to Kentucky.

One descendent wrote; "About 1825 or 26 Benjamin Rush Milam, the brother of Archibald, and Archibald's son, Jefferson, came on horseback to the Red River settlements of Texas. There was a signer of the American Declaration of Independence by the name of Benjamin Rush. He was a doctor in Philadelphia. I wonder if Uncle Ben could have been named for him.

One historian said Benjamin Rush Milam, born in Frankfort, Kentucky, October 20, 1788, but another said 1891. If however, he was 47 when he died in 1835 as reported, 1788 would have to be correct.

He was six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. Lamar wrote of him, "Milam, though at that time a very young man, almost destitute in education, was nevertheless remarkable for his good sense, sound discretion and dignified sobriety. . . " Colonel Milam was described by William C. McKinney as a noble, great-hearted man, of commanding appearance and fine address.

One of his descendants wrote; "He grew up on the Kentucky frontier and had very little schooling, probably about a sixth grade education. I have seen some of his letters, and while his sentences are good, and his knowledge of affairs must have been above average, his spelling is atrocious."

THE SAILOR

In 1815 he sailed from New Orleans, on his way to South America, as supercargo in a vessel loaded with flour for Maricaibo. The ship's captain and most of the crew died of yellow fever and the inexperienced passengers had to man the vessel, but they were shipwrecked and returned to the United States.

An adventurer and traveler from the time of his youth spent in the Kentucky wilderness, Milam also prided himself on his skill as a seaman. It was he who piloted the Three Sisters, a sloop belonging to the James Long fleet, from the Mississippi to Texas. In 1831, as the colonizer of Pecan point he was credited with being the first to navigate the hazardous Red River beyond the rifts and obstructions of the upper part of the stream.

Colonel Milam resolved, to open Red River to navigation for steam-boats above the famous raft, where nothing but canoes and flat boats had ever been used. He bought a steamboat on the Mississippi and undertook the enterprise, and in 1832 had the honor of passing the first vessel of that kind through the raft and into the upper waters of that wide but fickle stream of the plains. He sailed up as far as the landing for Fort Towson, now in the Choctaw nation. It was said that he had sold in England a half interest in two silver mines in Mexico, and, on arriving at old Jonesboro with his boat, he told me he had the money to pay for the eleven leagues previously surveyed.

THE TRADER

After serving in the war of 1812, he moved to Louisiana, where he entered trading activities with Spanish colonies, including Mexico. As a trader, he was one of the first citizens of the United States to come to Texas in 1818. It was on one of his trading expeditions to the Comanche Indians that he had met David G. Burnet who was to become the first President of Texas. He and Burnet collaborated on mining and land speculations that often took him out of the country to Mexico and abroad.

From the pen of David G. Burnet, the first President of Texas, we learn that during his health seeking sojourn among the Comanches during 1817 and 1818, he and Milam slept on the same buffalo robe at the head of the Colorado River in Texas, about the close of 1818. Milam was among the wild people on a trading expedition and found Burnet among them.

WITH LONG

We next find Milam meeting and involved with Dr. James Long and Trespalacios in New Orleans in 1819, when Long occupied Nacogdoches and formed a short lived Republic of Texas after establishing his men in Nacogdoches they went to Galvestion Island, where he and Long were entertained by Jean LaFitte who they recognized as the governor of Galvestion Island under Long's Republic. Milam sailed on down the coast with Trespalacios and Christy, landing in the region of Tampico. A strong Spanish force routed the Americans, ending the new Republic.

As a member of Long's second expedition to Texas in 1821, Ben Milam was captured with Long after they had occupied Goliad and he was a prisoner along with General Long in Mexico city before Long was released and killed by a Mexican soldier. Upon Milam's release and return to Texas, he was a friend and benefactor of Long's attractive widow, Jane Long, [who was called The Mother of Texas] who had settled in San Felipe for a short time.[It almost seems that the historian who reported this fact was trying to imply something here, but I feel it was because of his Masonic duties to help widows and orphans.] Milam served briefly in the army of the new Republic of Mexico, but turned primarily to impresario efforts in Texas with Arthur Wavell and David Burnet.

THE IMPRESARIO

After the downfall of Iturbide in 1823, Milam again visited Mexico and remained a year or two. He was a converted Catholic and a Freemason who became a Mexican citizen in 1824 and devoted the next few years to developing impresario grants. Almost every Mexican official of that era, including President Santa Anna, was also Catholic and Freemason. Citizens had to be Catholic by law and only citizens could buy or own land in Mexico.

Milam joined in partnership with an Englishman, Arthur G. Wavell, who was commissioned to settle 500 families in deep northeast Texas on Red River. He bestowed considerable time and money on the project, to no ultimate purpose. Ben succeeded in locating some families, but ran into a boundary problem with the United States, which claimed his grant lay east and north of Mexican Texas. No premium lands were ever secured, but in the meantime, on the 12th of January, 1826, he received a grant in his own name, between the Guadaluoe and Colorado rivers, and later in the same year, founding a settlement on Red River,

In 1830 he opened a land office for the colony and begin the survey of lands. He had an eleven league tract surveyed opposite the mouth of Little River. He had been naturalized as a Mexican citizen, and from that fact he had a right to buy one of these tracts a right denied to all excepting citizens of Mexico. He had the large tract surveyed and plainly marked. [The title to Milam was never perfected.] He continued the survey of lands and the issue of certificates to settlers to the number of one hundred and sixteen.

When William Barrett Travis arrived in San Felipe, Milam was trying to colonize Pecan Point [Pecan Point was actually north of the Red River in present day Oklahoma]. In fact Williamson, who was Milam's attorney, was instrumental in obtaining a grant for Travis from Milam. Although Travis filed application for "land as a settler" in Austin's colony upon his arrival in May of 1831, as has been indicated, the records show that he did not take out his headright until April of 1835, at which time he received a league of land in Milam's colonization grant.

Milam would have succeeded in fulfilling his colonization contract for Pecan Point except for the impact of the immigration law of April 6, 1830. Although he applied to the Mexican government for an extension of time at the expiration of the six years allotted to him to complete the contract, he was refused.

On account of the uncertainty about securing their land titles, the people of that section held a meeting in the spring of 1835 to consult. All eyes turned to Milam as the man to send to see the Mexican authorities in their behalf. He was every ready to serve his fellow-men and agree to make the trip. With a few biscuits and a little parched coffee, he struck out through the wilderness, to San Felipe and thence via San Antonio, to Monclova, the capital of Coahuila and Texas.

About the time the question became serious as to the boundary line between the United States and Mexico (that is between Arkansas and Texas), on the south side of Red River, a question never settled till the line was run and marked, from latitude 32 degrees on the Sabine due north to Red River by the joint commission of the United States and Texas, in 1840 and 1841. Milam thereupon ceased operations till the question could be settled.

In late 1834 he went to Monclova, the capitol of Coahuila y Texas to obtain titles for himself and his North Texas neighbors and got involved in a controversy growing out of Santa Anna's setting aside the Mexican constitution. He was imprisoned but escaped; on his return in October, 1835, he found the Texans uniting against Santa Anna.

But it was the role of a soldier that suited Ben Milam best. He had assisted Impresario Austin in suppressing the Fredonia Rebellion in 1826. He would go on to aid the Texans in routing the Mexicans from Goliad and to lead the victorious assault against San Antonio.

THE SOLDIER

Ben Milam had acquired his military experience during the war of 1812 and in the army of Mexico during their revolution against Spain. In the spring of 1835 Colonel Ben Milam was in Monclova [Mexico], having gone there, at his own cost and risk, to represent and plead for the rights of the American settlers of Red River, who were not embraced in any colony and whose titles to land grants as settlers, therefore, depended entirely upon the action of the state authorities. But fortunately for those settlers and others like them, and for liberty itself, the power of the venal legislature of the united state over such equitable claims and all subjects of government control, was forever departed and was to be assumed ere the year was out, and thereafter by Texas. Dr. John Cameron was also in Monclova. He and Milam joined Governor Viesca in his attempt to reach Texas, but in a mountain pass between Monclova and the Rio Grande they were captured and immured in prison in Monterey, to be sent to the castle of San Juan de Ullon, at Vera Cruz.

Captain Collensworth so arranged his march as to arrive in the vicinity of Goliad some time after nightfall. Passing along the narrow roadway, three miles east of Goliad, a voice from an adjoining thicket called out in distinct English:

"Who are you?" "American volunteers, bound for Goliad. Who are you?" Promptly answered Colonel Collinsworth.

"I am Ben Milam, escaped from prison in Monterey, trying to reach my countrymen in Texas. Hearing you approach, I thought you were Mexican soldiers and sprang into this thicket; but hearing your voices in my mother tongue, was too much, so I called out to determine who you were."

"God bless you, Colonel Milam. Come out in the road and go with us to capture Goliad. We are your friends, and George Collinsworth is our captain." Such was his greeting from numerous voices.

Milam, who had in 1822 and 1823 been in prison in the city of Mexico and had otherwise passed through many vicissitudes of fortune and danger, wept, on embracing his old friends in the party. He was inexpressible happy in falling into the ranks as a private soldier.

After Milam participated in George Collinsworth's capture of Goliad, he was with the Stephen F. Austin's army as it laid siege to San Antonio. The Texians had won in a few small engagements, but no effort was made to invade the town, which was held by Santa Anna's brother-in-law, General Martin Perfecto de Cos. To help grapple with the new setting, Austin gained the aid of Ben Milam, who joined the command on the 14th after escaping arrest at Saltillo and assisting in the capture of Goliad. Austin assigned Milam to direct a company of scouts in gathering information about the Mexican army at Bexar [San Antonio].

In late November Austin was commissioned to seek assistance in the United States, and on December 4 General Edward Burleson, Austin's successor, ordered a retreat to winter quarters at Gonzales or Goliad to begin the next day. Because of the lack of action only about 500 men remained where there had once been twice that number. Many of the Texians feared that the army would simply dissolve if a withdrawal were made, and they were certain Cos would take advantage of their absence.

Ben Milam was one volunteer in the Texan camp who viewed the plan with acute displeasure. He had been involved in Texas affairs even before Austin. He had done a lot of fighting in his 47 years, and had seen the inside of at least one prison cell after being accused of conspiring to proclaim a republican for of government in Texas. The idea of walking away from the enemy, and a demoralized enemy at that, was particularly offensive to him. Especially after a Mexican deserter and three Americans who had escaped from their imprisonment in San Antonio brought news that confirmed Samuel Mavericks's earlier report [one of the scouts]. He had reported that Mexican morale was cracking, that the defenses were week and San Antonio could be taken easily. Colonel Ben Milam urged, without success, that Burleson order an attack. Then at the suggestion of Colonel Frank Johnson, Milam stepped before the crowd outside Burleson's tent and shouted, "Who will go to Bexar with old Ben Milam?" Another writer stated that; "He drew a line in the dust and shouted: 'Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio? Who will follow old Ben Milam?'" Either way, hundreds of voices roared in response.

"Then fall in line!" Milam shouted. Two hundred men stepped forward. There was nothing Burleson could do but go along. He agreed to hold the rest of the army outside the gates, while Milam's volunteers assaulted San Antonio. Three hundred and one volunteers responded. They assembled at the old mill 800 to 1,000 yards north of town, to storm San Antonio the next morning. Milam had the heart and command of the army, and his part to play in history.

Milam resolutely formed the troops in two divisions as stragglers continued to arrive. He would lead the first division on the right. with Major Robert Moret Morris as second in command. During the battle 169 men and officers served in the six companies command by John Crain, George English, William Landrum, Thomas Llewellyn, William Patton, and John York, with Maverick and Arnold directing their path that morning. Nidland Franks led a small company that would handle the two cannon attached to the division.

Milam adopted the basic concept proposed earlier by Smith and Maverick, who had been in San Antonio. They pointed to some abandoned buildings on the north side of Bexar as possible footholds from which to launch an attack on nearby houses close to the plazas. To distract Mexican guards, Texas artillery would shell the Alamo east of the river while the main advance came west of the stream.

Instead of putting his troops entirely in the presidio, with it's strong fortifications, Cos had divided his command into two divisions. One held the Alamo, east of the San Antonio River. The other was quartered in the town to the west, and strongly entrenched in the two plazas with their stone buildings. Both divisions had artillery.

On December 5, 1835, some 300 Texans in two columns drove into San Antonio, with Milam in Command of one division and Francis W. Johnson the other. Milam's assault begin at three in the morning. His men broke through the Mexican pickets and filtered into San Antonio. Now, house to house, a hot and bloody battle begin. It was small unit fighting, house to house and man to man. It was the kind of warfare that Americans frontiersmen, taught to take cover and shoot to kill, loved best. It was one in which Mexican regulars, who like most Latin troops were better in the assault than defense, were nibbled to death. House after house, plaza after plaza, were cleared by deadly sniping; the Mexicans fell back, and Cos began to panic.

Milam would lead the first division "by the first street running north from the public square," Acequia. Johnson would go by way of the river down Soledad Street. In the meantime colonel James C. Neil, with one cannon, was to cross the river and open fire on the Alamo so that the advance of Milam and Johnson would not be noticed. They fought Cos' troops to the middle of San Antonio and took possession of two sturdily built houses near Military Plaza, the same plaza across from which Moses Austin had walked so long ago and met Bastrop and set his Texas plan in motion.

Milam led his column to seize the de la Garza home, which was "within musket range of the square." one block north of the Main Plaza, a distance of between fifty and a hundred yards. Mexican troops had their first clear shot at the Texas advance as Johnson and his men, closer to the river, rushed toward the mansion of the Veramendis, Jim Bowie's late in-laws. It was across the road to the east of the de la Garza house. Mexican artillery and infantry immediately fired down the street on the Texans, who hugged the walls and leaped for cover behind the rock buildings. Milam ordered his troops to protect the charge of the second division with rifle and cannon fire. When Mexican troops turned some of their guns on the de la Garza home. Johnson and his soldiers entered the Veramendi home to give the Texas their second stone stronghold.

From these strongholds the Texans fought their way from house to house, from street to street, from plaza to plaza under heavy artillery fire. The Mexicans' aim was so poor that their cannonades knocked down more Mexican walls than they hurt Texans.

After the first assault, Milam and Burleson sent a joint dispatch to the provisional government reporting on the state of the Texan volunteers: "They have so far had a fierce contest, the enemy offering a strong and obstinate resistance. It is difficult to determine what injury has been done him; many killed, certainly, but how many cannot be told. On our side, ten or twelve wounded, two killed.

On the third day Milam crossed to the Veramendi home about 3:30 P.M. to confer with Johnson. The Texas leader had identified the Mexican command post between the plazas and the Alamo. To seize Cos and break the deadlock, Milam planned a surprise attack after dark to be led by William Austin. When Milam and Johnson stepped outside to observe the situation from behind the garden walls, a Mexican sharpshooter killed Milam. Although return fire shot the sniper from a tree, Texan morale slumped sharply with the loss of the most experienced and charismatic commander. It was a sad group of soldiers when the Masons in the army, with ceremony, buried Milam's body in the courtyard of the Veramendi house in one of the trenches through the yard. Milam was now immortal, the first in a long pantheon of Texas heroes.

Colonel Johnson wrote of the incident as follows: "...at half past three, as our gallant commander, Colonel Milam had entered the yard of the house occupied by the second division, he received a rifle shot in the head, which caused his instant death. . . When killed, the Masonic fraternity, then took charge of his body, and with a proper detail of troops, he was buried in the yard--east side--of the Veramendi house, with military honors. His remains were subsequently disinterred and deposited in the old burying ground west of the town." Creed Taylor, an eyewitness, wrote about the incident in even more detail: "Milam carried a small field glass. . . whilst standing in the front yard of the building Milam was viewing the Mexicans' stronghold on the plaza. At this moment a shot rang out and Milam fell, the shot piercing his head. . . One of those present in the yard called attention to the fact that at the report of the shot he saw a white puff of smoke rising from the branches of a large cypress tree that stood on the margin of the river. At this announcement all eyes were turned in the direction of that tree, the outline of a man was seen, several rifle shots rang out, and the corpse of the daring sharpshooter crashed down through the branches. . . After the surrender Col. Sanchez told. . . that this sharpshooter, Felix De La Garza, was the best shot in the Mexican army, half-brother of Almonte, [the aid-de-camp of General Santa Anna] and that General Cos was deeply grieved over his death."

Francis Johnson took over Milam's command as well as his own and the Texans, spurred by the loss of the man who had inspired them, fought on like demons.

Thus it would be through the concerted efforts of Milam and Johnson, his second in command, who succeeded him, that Martin Perfecto de Cos would be driven from Texas on the eve of the revolution. Johnson had participated in the Anahuac uprisings. He had held the rank of captain.

THE MEMORY

Ben Milam had became the charismatic figure who crystallized support for an attack at the crucial moment. The assault under his leadership established the foothold from which success might be achieved. His death during the battle created a momentary moral problem but provided the Texans with their first martyr to the revolutionary cause.

The scout Deaf Smith wrote a poem to Ben Milam's memory, which closes with these words, "As bright as thy example, so bright shall be thy fame, And generations yet unborn shall honor Milam's name�

The historian, John Henry Brown wrote, "Among the noble men who were distinguished for enterprise and the highest order of patriotism in the years now being reviewed, none had a stronger hold on the affection and confidence of the pioneers than Colonel Ben R. Milam, a son of Kentucky, whose career had been full of adventure and hazards, and whose name is forever enrolled among the martyrs to Texian liberty."

John J. Linn authored a resolution provided for erection of a monument to Milam at San Antonio. It was adopted by the General Council 19 days after Milam's death, and Governor Henry Smith and Gail Borden were appointed to a committee charged with carrying out that resolution.

John Henry Brown complained later, "Mr. Linn died in Victoria. . . Fifty six years, less two months and two days, had passed since the adoption of his resolution and still there is no monument to Milam! will it forever be thus? God forbid".

President Burnet says of Ben Milam: "The illustrious Marshal Ney was not more entitled to the compliment conferred upon him by the great Napoleon, 'the bravest of the brave,' than our own Milam. I have seen him in perilous surroundings, and have never seen him more cheerful and placid than on such occasions. His temper was naturally calm and serene, and never more so than in the midst of danger. The writer knew this gallant man in Texas as early as 1818; he has camped with him many nights, on the head waters of the Colorado, having the star-spangled heavens for a canopy, and the earth shrouded by a buffalo robe for a couch. His physical developments were of the finest order, in statue and features worthy of the celebrity of his native state. His mind, endowed by nature with the richest elements, displayed it's energies in a passionate fondness for adventure and enterprise. He was by birth, education and deliberate preference a republican."

On January 22, 1993, it was announced on the 6:00 PM news that Ben Milam's remains had been dug up in the Ben Milam Park in San Antonio. The Houston Chronicle, Sunday January 23, 1993 had a story about the incident.

In 1848, 13 years after he was killed, the Alamo Masonic lodge along with military and civic leaders exhumed the body and reburied it a few blocks away in what was then the new City of San Antonio cemetery [one block east of I 10, between E. Houston and E. Commerce]. The city later opened a newer cemetery a few blocks west and the old one was turned into a park dedicated to Milam. This time the remains were exhumed in order for the park to be completely renovated and he will be reburied under the present monument's site.

On the 24th of June 1838, a few years after Ben died, his brother John Milam of Franklin County, Kentucky Gave their nephew Jefferson Milam a Power of Attorney to close out Ben's business in Red River County, Texas and settle the estate.

THE END

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