The History of Milam County, Texas
Excerpt from: The Handbook of Texas Online*: Milam County

^{Robert Leftwich, a representative for the Texas Association of Nashville, Tennessee, obtained a colonization grant from Mexico in 1825 that included the Milam County area.  The grant's boundaries followed the Navasota River, turned southwest along the San Antonio road to the divide between the Brazos and the Colorado rivers, then northwest to the Comanche Trail, and east back to the Navasota.  Sterling Robertson assumed leadership of the colonization effort in 1827, but in 1830, because the company had made no progress in settling the area, the contract was suspended.  The following year Stephen F. Austin and his partner, Samuel May Williams, persuaded the Mexican government to transfer the grant to them.  In 1834, with Austin out of favor with the Mexican government, Robertson regained control of the grant, and actual settlement of the region began.  The colony was known to the Mexican government as the Municipality of Viesca, but in 1835 the legislative body of the Provisional Government of Texas renamed it the Municipality of Milam, in honor of Benjamin Rush Milam.  It was during the first Congress of the Republic of Texas that the municipality came to be called Milam County.  At that time the boundaries of the county were roughly the same as those of the colony granted to Leftwich, comprising one-sixth of the land area of Texas.  In addition to the present Milam County, the counties of Bell, Bosque, Burleson, Coryell, Erath, Falls, Hamilton, Hood, Jones, McLennan, Robertson, Shackelford, Somervell, Stephens, and Williamson were eventually carved out of the original Milam County. Brazos, Brown, Burnet, Callahan, Comanche, Eastland, Haskell, Hill, Johnson, Lampasas, Lee, Limestone, Mills, Palo Pinto, Parker, Stonewall, Throckmorton, and Young counties also received land from Milam County.  By 1850, with the exception of a small area between Williamson and Bell counties, Milam County had been reduced to its present size.}

^{By the time of the Texas Revolution, the only settlements in present-day Milam County were the very thinly populated community of Nashville-on-the-Brazos at the eastern edge of the county and a few families scattered along the upper Brazos and the Little River.  The families above Nashville were forced to leave their homes during the revolution, and when they returned after the battle of San Jacinto, their hold on the area was tenuous at best.  Families continued to trickle into the area, but roaming bands of Kickapoo, Lipan, Kiowa, and other Indians forced them to flee the area frequently.  A fort was established in Milam County at Bryant's Station in 1840 to help protect settlers from Indian raids.  Gradually, the frontier was pushed to the north and west of Milam County, and no Indian raids occurred within the present limits of the county after 1846. From 1836 to 1846 Nashville, and briefly Caldwell in present Burleson County, served as the temporary location of the Milam county government.  In 1846 the site for a permanent county seat was selected, and Cameron was established. Milam County had a total population of 2,907 in 1850.}

^*  The Texas State Historical Association is the originator and chief sponsor of the New Handbook of Texas.