The city and county of Hamilton were created in 1858 by the Seventh Texas Legislature, which specified that both the county and county seat would be named for General James Hamilton. Hamilton was a former congressman and governor of South Carolina who took an interest in Texas during the 1836 war for independence, and loaned the new republic $216,000 to help finance its struggle. After Texas became independent, he invested heavily in Texas land, and although he never set foot in Hamilton County, he owned several sections of land in the county that would bear his name. He also worked to obtain favorable treaties of commerce for Texas with England and the Netherlands.

On a voyage to Texas in 1857, his ship was wrecked, and Hamilton drowned after giving his life preserver to a woman with a small child. His friends in Texas wanted to honor his memory, and named the new county after him the next year.

Of course, there were a few pioneers in the area before it ever became a county. The first permanent settlers arrived in the early 1850s, and a small group of families settled at the site of the present town in 1855. Among these were the families of James M. Rice, Henry Standefer and Ezekiel Manning. The log cabin of the Manning family was the first home built in Hamilton; Rice and Standefer (who had been to California for the gold rush in 1849, but had come back to Texas) built the first store (on what would later become the southeast corner of the Hamilton square) later that year. The two storekeepers were part of a committee to find a county seat when the state required a site within five miles of the county’s geographic center; the committee chose the present site because its location on Pecan Creek provided plenty of water, and Hamilton remained the county seat despite several efforts over the next few years to have it moved.

Isaac Skelton Standefer was a former Texas Ranger who came to the Hamilton area in 1857. He and John A. Baughn carried th ...

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