Benjamin Rush Milam was born 1788 in Kentucky. He enlisted in the Kentucky militia and fought for several months in the War of 1812. In New Orleans in 1819 Milam met José Félix Trespalacios and James Long, who were planning an expedition to help the revolutionaries in Mexico and Texas gain independence from Spain. Milam joined Trespalacios and was commissioned a colonel. While they sailed to Veracruz, Long marched to La Bahía, which he easily captured, only to discover that the people and soldiers there were revolutionaries, not Royalists. They gave him a hostile reception, and he moved on to San Antonio. In Veracruz and Mexico City, Trespalacios and Milam met with the same reception that Long had received and were imprisoned. Ultimately, with General Long, they were able to legitimatize their purposes and intentions to the new revolutionary government which, in turn, accepted and treated them with respect and generosity. Long was shot and killed by a guard under circumstances that convinced Milam that the killing was plotted by Trespalacios. Milam and several friends then planned to kill Trespalacios. The plot was discovered, however, and Milam and his friends were imprisoned in Mexico City. Through the influence of Joel R. Poinsett, United States minister, all were released.

By the spring of 1824 Milam returned to Mexico, which now had adopted the Constitution of 1824 and had a republican form of government. In Mexico City he met Arthur G. Wavell, an Englishman who had become a general in the Mexican army. Trespalacios, now prominent in the new government also, made overtures to Milam to renew their friendship, and Milam accepted. He was granted Mexican citizenship and commissioned a colonel in the Mexican army in 1824.

In April 1830 the Mexican Congress passed a law prohibiting further immigration of United States citizens into Texas. This was one reason why Milam, as Wavell’s agent for his Red River colony, and Robert M. Williamson, as agent for Milam’s colony, were not able to introduce the required number of settlers specified in their empresario contracts, which were due to expire in 1832.

In 1835 Milam went to Monclova, the capital of Coahuila and Texas, to urge the new governor, Agustín Viesca, to send a land commissioner to Texas to provide the settlers with land titles. Viesca agreed to do this. However, before Milam could leave the city, word came that Antonio López de Santa Anna had overthrown the representative government of Mexico, had established a dictatorship, and was en route to Texas with an army. Viesca fled with Milam, but both were captured and imprisoned at Monterrey. Milam eventually escaped and headed for the Texas border, which he reached in October 1835. By accident he encountered a company of soldiers commanded by George Collinsworth, from whom he heard of the movement in Texas for independence. Milam joined them, helped capture Goliad, and then marched with them to join the main army to capture San Antonio. While returning from a scouting mission in the southwest on December 4, 1835, Milam learned that a majority of the army had decided not to attack San Antonio as planned but to go into winter quarters. Convinced that this decision would be a disaster for the cause of independence, Milam then made his famous, impassioned plea: “Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?” Three hundred volunteered, and the attack, which began at dawn on December 5, ended on December 9 with the surrender of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos and the Mexican army (the Siege of Béxar). Milam did not survive to witness the victory, however. On December 7 he was shot in the head by a sniper and died instantly. In 1897 the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erected a monument at Milam’s gravesite in Milam Park, San Antonio. The marker was moved in 1976, and the location of the grave was forgotten until 1993, when a burial was unearthed that archeologists think is probably Milam’s.

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Ben Fort Smith was born 1796 in Kentucky. He and his father and older brother served in the Natchez expedition and in the Creek campaign. As a member of Andrew Jackson’s staff he fought at the battle of New Orleans and was promoted to major before he was nineteen. He took part in making treaties with the Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians in 1818 and 1820. On July 25, 1823, he was appointed United States agent to the Chickasaw Indians; he resigned on December 16, 1829, because of friction with the Colberts, chiefs of the Chickasaw nation. In the spring of 1832 he fought in the Black Hawk War.

During the Texas revolution Smith commanded a company of volunteers in the early activities fought at Gonzales and relieved J. M. Collinsworthqv at Goliad; he was with Austin in the Siege of Béxar. In November 1835 he set out for Mississippi to recruit troops for the Revolutionary Army. His recruiting work and the settlement of his father’s estate delayed his return to Texas until February. He re-entered the army as a private on March 13, 1836, but the company he had recruited did not arrive until late in March. During the retreat from Gonzales he served as quartermaster and as acting adjutant to Sam Houston. Although enlisted in the company of William H. Patton, Smith was transferred before the battle of San Jacinto to the cavalry company of Henry W. Karnes. He served after May 6 as adjutant general under Thomas J. Rusk and remained in the army until August 5. After the signing of the treaty of May 14, 1836, Smith and Henry Teal served as commissioners to overtake Vicente Filisola’s retreating army and secured Filisola’s ratification of the treaties of Velasco at the Mexican camp west of Goliad on May 26.

In the fall of 1839 he served on a six-week expedition up the Brazos River against the Indians. He died at the home of a brother, Shelby Smith, at White Sulphur Springs on July 10, 1841.

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John S. Roberts signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, was born 1796 in Virginia. At age sixteen he enlisted in the Tennessee Militia for service in the War of 1812. He participated in the Battle of New Orleans as a member of Col. John Coffee’s regiment. In 1822, he joined the Ayish Bayou forces that took part in the Fredonian Rebellion, led by Haden and Benjamin W. Edwards against the Mexican government of Texas. Roberts was a major in the Fredonian forces and served as a judge at the impeachment trial of Samuel Norris, alcalde of the Nacogdoches District, and José Antonio Sepúlveda, captain of the Nacogdoches Militia. Roberts enlisted in the Nacogdoches Independent Volunteers on October 4, 1835, as a first lieutenant and was later promoted to captain under Capt. Thomas J. Rusk and saw distinguished service in the Siege of Béxar. He died August 9, 1871. His body was interred in the old Oak Grove Cemetery in Nacogdoches.

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Francis White “Frank” Johnson was born 1799 in Virginia. In 1826 Stephen F. Austin sent him and two others to Nacogdoches to try to prevent the Fredonian Rebellion. The hot-tempered Johnson was considered a “firebrand” in favor of war with Mexico. In 1835 he was indicted for treason but was never arrested. He was captain of his company at the battle of Anahuac in 1832. At the Convention of 1832 he was a delegate from San Felipe and served as chairman of the Central Standing Committee of the state.

In 1835 Johnson and Moseley Baker were sent to East Texas to appraise the political feelings of colonists and to stir up support for the war cause. Johnson was appointed adjutant and inspector general under Stephen F. Austin and Edward Burleson. At the Siege of Béxar he led a column of Texans into San Antonio, and after Benjamin R. Milam’s death he was in command at the Mexicans’ capitulation.

In January 1836 Johnson and Dr. James Grant started to lay plans to invade Mexico at Matamoros, despite opposition from Sam Houston and Governor Henry Smith, who were powerless to intervene because the General Council had already ratified the plan. Johnson and a detachment of fifty men were surprised by the Mexicans under José de Urrea at San Patricio on February 27, 1836, and all except Johnson and four of his companions were killed or captured. Hearing of Houston’s retreat, Johnson returned home, quitting the revolution in disgust.

From 1873 to the end of his life he was founding president of the Texas Veterans Association. He spent much time researching Texas history, particularly the Texas Revolution. He died in a hotel in Aguascalientes, Mexico, about April 8, 1884.

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Philip Allen Sublett was born 1802 in Kentucky. He participated in the battle of Nacogdoches in 1832 and was chosen as the delegate from Ayish Bayou (the San Augustine community) to the conventions of 1832 and 1833. On November 1, 1834, Sublett was elected second judge of the San Augustine municipality. He was represented as being of “good character” with a “knowledge of law of state and republic”. In 1835 Sublett was elected chairman of the San Augustine Committee of Safety and Correspondence.

On October 6, 1835 he submitted a resolution appointing Sam Houston commander in chief of the forces of San Augustine and Nacogdoches districts until the Consultation should meet and make other arrangements. On October 19 Sublett led “seventy and upward well mounted men, and all well armed,” from San Augustine into Nacogdoches en route to the Texas army besieging San Antonio. When Sublett’s men arrived in Gonzales from Washington-on-the-Brazos on November 3, they found almost all of the men away in Stephen F. Austin’s army, and they perpetrated a number of outrages. According to John Fisher, secretary of the municipality’s committee of public safety, the men from Ayish Bayou “entered private houses, compelled women to leave their house[es] with their children and seek protection from their neighbors, broke open doors, robbed of money, clothing, and everything they could lay their hands on, and dragged Dr. [Launcelot] Smither from his bed and would have murdered him but for the interference of someone of the company who possessed some more of the milk of human kindness than the balance”. Sublett was commissioned lieutenant colonel October 23, and on November 24 he was appointed as an appraiser to place a value on the horses and equipment of the volunteers. He was later named assistant adjutant general of the army. He served until December 14, 1835, and was present at the Siege of Béxar, December 5–10, 1835, and although he opposed the plan to storm the city, he acted “with great bravery & coolness encouraging the men at every point” during the battle of Concepcion, according to Edward Burleson. On December 18, pleading the press of “private affairs,” he declined the command of the First Regiment, Texas Volunteers, in favor of Edward Burleson. Sublett died at his San Augustine home on February 25, 1850.

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