The Fearless Fifty-Nine, Sterling Clack Robertson

Sterling Clack Robertson was the 50 year old Milam representative. Robertson served as deputy quartermaster general under William Carroll in the battle of New Orleans from Nov. 1814 to May 1815. By 1816, he owned a plantation in Tennessee. He was one of seventy stockholders of the Texas Association in 1822 that asked for permission to settle Texas. He originally set out to Texas in 1825 as part Dr. Felix Roberton’s party. In August 1826 he returned to Tennessee to tour the state and Kentucky in an attempt to recruit settlers for Texas. By the spring of 1830, he and his partner, Alexander Thomson, signed a subcontract with the Texas Association to introduce 200 families. Robertson served as empresario of Robertson’s colony in 1834 and 1835. He is responsible for settling more than 600 families in Texas. When he was elected to the Convention, he was serving as caption of a company of Texas Rangers. During the battle of San Jacinto, he was stationed at Harrisburg to guard army equipment. After the war, he served as a senator in the Texas Congress from 1836 to 1838. Robertson then retired to his home in Robertson County where he became the earliest known breeder of Arabian horses in Texas.