De Witt County was included in the colonial grant made in 1825 to Texas empresario Green De Witt and was settled until 1840 largely by Anglo Americans. It was created as a county of the state of Texas on March 24, 1846, from parts of Gonzales, Victoria and Goliad counties, and was organized on July 13, 1846, with Cameron as the county seat. Named for Green De Witt, who lived from 1787 to 1835, the county had a population that was half German-born by 1860. Clinton served as county seat from 1849 to 1877, and Cuero, incorporated on April 23, 1873, became county seat in 1877. Among early people associated with the county were Arthur Burns, first settler in 1826; Columbus Burns, first Anglo-American child born there in 1829; George Washington Davis, a delegate to the second convention of Texas in 1833, a participant in the Battle of Gonzales in 1835, and a delegate to the Consultation in 1835; Captain John York, Captain David Murphree, James M. Bell, Albrecht von Roeder, Louis von Roeder, Squire Burns, and John F. Pettus, who took part in the capture of San Antonio in 1835; Thomas R. Miller and William Dearduff, martyrs of the Alamo in 1836; J.L. Allen, a messenger from the Alamo in 1836; O.H. Perry Davis of Fannin’s command, who escaped the Refugio Massacre in 1836; Captain David Murphree, John F. Pettus, James Bell, Joseph Kent, Berry Doolittle, Allen Caruthers, Robert J. Kleburg, John McCrabb, James J. Tumlinson, and Louis von Roeder, identified as heroes of San Jacinto; Creed Taylor, Squire Burns, Josiah Taylor, Chas. A. Ogsbury, and George W. Davis, soldiers in the Texas Army in 1836; James Norman Smith, first school teacher in De Witt County in 1840; Captain Daniel B. Friar, Miles S. Bennet, James J. Tumlinson, Josiah Taylor, and Creed Taylor, who participated in the Battle of Salado Creek in Bexar County in 1842; George Lord and Alfred A. Allee, members of the Mier Expedition in 1842; and other pioneers of the Republic of Texas who resided in De Witt County before or after the revolution.