Milam family

Soldier, colonizer and entrepreneur Benjamin Rush Milam was born in Frankfort, Kentucky on October 20, 1788, the fifth of six children of Moses and Elizabeth Pattie Boyd Milam. He began a life of traveling after serving with the Kentucky state militia in the War of 1812. In New Orleans in 1819, Milam joined an expeditionary force to help the Mexican revolutionaries gain independence from Spain. He served as a colonel and was twice imprisoned and twice released.

In 1824 Milam was granted Mexican citizenship and made a colonel in the Mexican army. That year he also met English entrepreneur and Mexican army general Arthur G. Wavell, with whom he became a partner in a silver mine in Nuevo Leon and a licensed empresario for Texas colonies. Milam managed the Wavell Colony, located in what is now Lamar, Red River, and Bowie counties, as well as portions of Fannin and Hunt counties in Texas, and Miller County in Arkansas. Milam's duty of drawing settlers from the United States was hampered by Mexican hostility to slavery, massive log jams on the Red River, and disputes between the United States and Mexico over the eastern boundary of the colony.

...