On April 19, 1836, General Sam Houston appropriated the flooring of Isaac Batterson's house to build rafts to ferry his army across rain-swollen Buffalo Bayou, an action remembered as part of the campaign that won the war for Texas Independence. Although 248 soldiers, most of them ill, remained at the Batterson place, Houston's army was victorious in the Battle of San Jacinto two days later. The land, originally part of the Ezekiel Thomas estate, was purchased by Batterson in 1835, and the settlement he started, now Galena Park, was named Clinton for his former home in New York.