DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
The official marker's got the story, and here's how I tell it. Way out in DeWitt County, there's a spot that almost became something great. In June of 1846, this very site was chosen as the first county seat of DeWitt County.
They named it Cameron, after Captain Ewen Cameron, born in 1811, killed in 1843 as a prisoner of the Mier Expedition. That's the kind of name you put on a place when you want it to mean something. And for a little while, it seemed like it just might.
A man named Joseph Tumlinson donated a hundred-acre tract, and somebody went ahead and platted a town right on it. Streets, lots, the whole vision. Now here's where the story gets a little thin on the ground, and I do mean that literally.
Of all that grand plan, only two buildings ever went up. A log courthouse. And a county clerk's office.
That was it. The rest of Cameron existed mostly on paper. Then came the reckoning.
Four elections. Four court decisions. Four chances for Cameron to hold on to what it had.
And after all four of those fights, the nearby town of Clinton walked away with the title of county seat. By 1850, it was settled. Cameron was done.
The county offices eventually moved again, this time to Cuero, in 1876. So what's left of Cameron today is this site, a name borrowed from a man who didn't survive to see it, and the quiet reminder that some towns get platted, and some towns get built, and sometimes those are two very different things.
What the marker says
This site was chosen in June 1846 as the first seat of DeWitt County and named for Capt. Ewen Cameron (1811-43), slain prisoner of the Mier Expedition. Although a town was platted on the 100-acre tract donated by Joseph Tumlinson, a log courthouse and a county clerk's office were the only buildings erected. In 1850, after four elections and four court decisions, Cameron lost the title of county seat to the nearby town of Clinton. County offices moved to Cuero in 1876.