DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I tell it back to you. Fall of 1835. Somebody's out there swinging a surveyor's chain through the Texas wilderness, marking off the boundaries of a brand new capital city.
Not just any city — the capital of Robertson's Colony, one of the great land enterprises of its day. The man behind the colony, Sterling C. Robertson, had come down from Nashville, Tennessee, and a whole lot of his colonists had come right along with him.
So when it came time to name this fresh-cut capital, well, they looked back over their shoulders at the place they'd left behind and called it Nashville. Nashville, Texas. Now, the town didn't waste any time making itself useful.
By 1836 it was serving as the seat of justice for Milam municipality — that's what they called this stretch of country before the formal county lines settled in. Then 1837 rolls around, Milam County gets organized proper, and Nashville is still the seat. Still the heart of things.
But here's where the story gets something extra. Among the first people to plant roots in Nashville, Texas, was a man named George C. Childress.
And if that name means something to you, it should. Childress was the chairman of the committee that drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence. The man who helped put those words together — the words that told the world Texas was standing on its own — called this surveyed-out little capital town his first home in Texas.
Nashville is gone now. Just a site, just a marker. But for a brief, consequential season, this ground was where a colony found its center, a county found its courthouse, and a man found his home before he helped a whole republic find its voice.
What the marker says
Surveyed in the fall of 1835 as the capital of Robertson's colony. Named for Nashville, Tennessee where Sterling C. Robertson and many of his colonists had formerly lived. Seat of justice Milam municipality, 1836; Milam County, 1837. First home in Texas of George C. Childress, chairman of the committee who drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence.