Leon County's American Revolutionary War Soldiers
Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida
Marker Inscription
Between 1832 and 1833 the following men applied in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida, for federal pensions granted for their military service during the American War for Independence Zachariah Gherkins (1757-1845) Served as a Private with North Carolina… transcription continues on the marker
This transcription may be incomplete
Our source stores marker text in a field capped at 255 characters, and this inscription appears to have been cut off. We won’t guess at the missing words — the inscription is the primary source, and inventing it would be worse than leaving it short.
Have you stood in front of this marker? Send us the full text or a photo of the sign and we’ll complete the record.
The Story
This marker honors the Revolutionary War veterans who, by the 1830s, had settled in and around Tallahassee in Florida's frontier territory. In 1832 and 1833 these aging men — like Zachariah Gherkins, who had served as a private with North Carolina forces — came forward to apply for the federal pensions Congress granted for their service in the War for Independence. Their applications, filed a half-century after the war, quietly document how the Revolution's soldiers dispersed across a growing nation into its newest frontiers.
Why it matters
The Revolutionary pensions of the 1830s are a poignant record of a founding generation in its last years, and they trace how the men who won independence carried their nation's memory into distant new territories like Florida.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1830s, the American Revolution had passed out of living memory for most citizens and into the realm of national legend. The men who had actually shouldered muskets in the War for Independence were, by then, white-haired and few—a founding generation entering its final years.
Meanwhile, the nation was on the move. Florida had only recently become a United States territory, and Tallahassee was a raw frontier capital, freshly carved from the pinewoods. The country's population was flowing outward, and old soldiers, like everyone else, followed opportunity and family into new lands far from where they had once fought.
Congress had by this period established federal pensions to reward Revolutionary service, and claiming one meant coming forward, swearing to your record, and putting your history on the public account. In frontier Florida, that meant aging veterans stepping into a Tallahassee office to formally attach their names to a war that had ended a lifetime before.
People & events
This marker gathers the names of Leon County men who, in 1832 and 1833, applied in Tallahassee for the federal pensions granted for their service in the Revolution. Among them is Zachariah Gherkins, who lived from 1757 to 1845 and, as the marker records, served as a private with North Carolina forces.
Consider the arithmetic of a life like his. A man born in the 1750s would have come of age exactly as the colonies broke with Britain, served in his prime, and then lived on for decades into a country he had helped bring into being. By the time he applied for his pension, he was an old man in a territory that had not even existed when he enlisted.
The act of applying is quietly moving. These were not generals or famous names but privates and ordinary soldiers, filing paperwork to be counted. Each application is a small, sworn autobiography—proof offered by men who wanted the record to show, before it was too late, that they had been there.
Its place in the American story
The Revolutionary pensions of the 1830s form one of the great human archives of the founding era. They capture the founders' generation not in marble but in old age—scattered, ordinary, and finally being acknowledged by the republic they had created.
This marker also traces a national pattern in miniature. The soldiers of the Revolution did not stay put; they dispersed across the growing country, carrying the memory of the war into its newest corners. Finding them in territorial Florida shows how far and how thoroughly that founding generation spread.
There is a poignancy in the timing, too. To honor these men is to catch the last of them—veterans in their seventies and eighties, stepping forward on a distant frontier to make sure their service would not be forgotten once they were gone.
If you visit
This is a marker that rewards reading rather than sightseeing. Stand with it and take in the names; each one represents a full life that bridged the birth of the nation and the frontier decades that followed. Let the dates do their work—do the subtraction and feel how much history a single lifespan here contains.
Tallahassee wears its layers, and this memorial adds an unexpected one: the presence of Revolutionary soldiers in a place most people associate with a much later era. It's a small correction to how we picture the map of the founding generation.
Make it a thoughtful stop on a walk through the city's historic core. There are no grand ruins to see—just a list of ordinary men who once did something extraordinary, and who came here to be remembered. Give them a few unhurried minutes.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Zachariah Gherkins
Related events
- · American Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Flame of Freedom
Valdosta, GA
In the years after World War II, Korea, and amid Vietnam, American Legion posts across the country raised memorials to honor those who had served, and Valdosta's Post No. 13 was no exception. Dedicated on Veterans Day in 1969 as a gift to the city and Lowndes County, the Flame of Freedom stands not for a single battle but for the veterans of every American war. Its eternal-flame motif — popular in mid-century civic memorials — was meant as a perpetual reminder of sacrifice, a fixture of small-town South Georgia's public square.
Army Helicopter
Cairo, GA
This retired U.S. Army helicopter stands as a static-display memorial in Cairo, Georgia, dedicated simply 'in honor of our troops.' Aircraft like it were mounted in parks and town squares across the country to honor local men and women who served. With no single war named, it speaks to military service broadly rather than to one campaign.
Willoughby Ryan Marks
Apalachicola, FL
This Apalachicola memorial honors Lieutenant Willoughby Ryan Marks, an infantry officer who gave his life in the Meuse-Argonne offensive of World War I. In October 1918, in the tangled forests of the Argonne, he died attempting to save a fellow soldier. His sacrifice came in the vast final Allied push that helped bring the war to an end.
Chapman Botanical Garden
Apalachicola, FL
This Apalachicola garden preserves the memory of Dr. Chapman, a physician and self-taught botanist who lived in the little Gulf Coast town for much of the 19th century. From this remote outpost he catalogued the plant life of the American South, producing a landmark flora that earned him recognition well beyond Florida. His careful fieldwork made a small port town an unlikely center of botanical science.