Search Markers

Washington, DC

Francis Preston Blair (1791–1876) was one of the most influential political journalists of the Jacksonian era. As founder and editor of The Globe, he gave voice to Andrew Jackson's Democratic agenda and served in the president's informal circle of advisers, the 'Kitchen Cabinet.' His Washington home stood at the center of the era's partisan press and political intrigue.

Silverton, TX

Francis School was organized in 1898 to serve the families of southwest Briscoe County, taking its name from J.L. Francis, who donated the land and shouldered much of the building cost. Around 1915 it moved to a more central spot and grew to include added classrooms and a teacherage, becoming a lively community gathering place. By 1934 two teachers taught an average of 32 students across eight grades in one of the county's ten rural schools.

Luling, TX

Tulane-trained Dr. Sidney Joseph Francis settled in the railroad town of Luling in 1889 and built this corner home by 1896, enlarging it into a two-story dwelling with a full-length porch and porte cochere in 1916. A physician, businessman, and World War I veteran, Francis saw the house pass to his daughter and her husband, H. Miller Ainsworth, who served in both World Wars and rose to General in the National Guard. It remained in the family until deeded to the city in 1989.

Nacogdoches, TX

Franciscan missionaries were central to Spain's effort to hold Tejas. In 1690, Father Damian Massanet and Captain Alonso de Leon led an entrada that raised the region's first mission, San Francisco de los Tejas, but disease, harsh weather, and deteriorating relations with the Caddo forced its abandonment by 1693. A second expedition under Espinosa and Ramon in 1716 built a presidio and six missions, only to be abandoned in 1719 amid French harassment; a final effort under the Marquis de Aguayo resettled the missions with 500 in tow. Though the friars never truly converted the Caddo, their expeditions legitimized Spanish presence in East Texas.

Francitas, TX

When the railroad reached this corner of Jackson County in 1906, Nebraska promoters John G. Maher and William F. Schwind saw opportunity, founding a land company to sell the new town of Francitas—"Little France." A trainload of Nebraskans stepped off the day before the grand opening on December 10, 1910, into a town already boasting an inn, a canning factory, an artesian well, and a newspaper. Francitas swelled to 450 people within a year before its fortunes later faded.

Weatherford, TX

Built around 1870, this two-story brick storefront was the beating heart of Weatherford's money and politics as the frontier gave way to the railroad age. It housed the first bank west of Dallas, opened by cattle-fortune banker James Couts, and later the law offices of Samuel Willis Tucker Lanham, who would become governor of Texas. In the 1890s it served the troubled Franco-Texan Land Company, which speculated on the vast stretch of country the Texas and Pacific Railway opened between Weatherford and El Paso.

Rockport, TX

Early settlers called this low coastal island "Nine Mile Point," and a meatpacking company first worked it commercially in the late 1860s. When the company left in 1878, Austrian immigrant Franz Joseph Frandolig, a horseman who had driven cattle to its plant, homesteaded the land and built a livelihood there—a large fig orchard, a vineyard that yielded wine sold by the barrel, and a salt works, with produce sold in Rockport and Fulton. The family sold the property early in the 1900s, and the devastating hurricane of 1919 returned the island to a wild, uninhabited state.

Westphalia, TX

This house stands in the Falls County community of Westphalia, where the Bockholt family had put down roots by 1881. Frank Bockholt, who inherited part of the family estate and served 52 years as organist at the Church of the Visitation, and his wife Julia enlarged an existing two-room dwelling in 1912 and raised a large family here. Its American Foursquare form, blending Craftsman and late Victorian details, still carries its original character.

Tyler, TX

Frank and Sarah (Swann) Bell, descended from 1850s East Texas pioneers, built this classical revival house in Tyler in 1900, raising eight children while Frank ran a store and a farm. One son, Frank M. Bell, served as Tyler's postmaster from 1942 to 1966, and banker-civic leader Henry Marsh Bell inherited the home. Threatened with demolition, it was moved and restored in 1974.

La Marque, TX

Frank Bell, Jr. (1893–1963), son of early La Marque settlers, overcame limited schooling to become one of the most influential figures in his community. A World War I Army veteran who later worked in the Texas City oil industry, he turned to real estate in 1938 and helped develop numerous residential subdivisions serving La Marque's African American families. Known for fairness and quiet influence, he served on the county's Negro Chamber of Commerce and was called the town's unofficial African American mayor.

New York, NY

This small triangle of pavement in Queens is one of hundreds of "squares" that New York City has quietly dedicated to hometown servicemen, turning ordinary street corners into places of remembrance. It honors Frank C. Prokop and bears the name of Glenridge Post 34 of the Catholic War Veterans (C.W.V.), a national organization of Catholic servicemen founded in the 1930s that established local posts across the boroughs. Such memorial squares were typically dedicated by neighbors and veterans' groups to keep the memory of a local man's service and sacrifice alive on the streets where he once lived.

Bellville, TX

Friedrich "Fritz" Frank, born in Germany in 1818, sailed to Galveston in 1852 and settled in Austin County, where he put the brewing skills he had learned in the old country to work. The Frank Brewery operated for decades in this heavily German community, later run by his son Herman, who even added a racetrack to promote the product, until Prohibition closed it in 1918. Fritz and his wife Marie lie in this small family cemetery alongside three generations of Franks.

Wilkinsburg, PA · est. 1990

In a Wilkinsburg garage around 1919 and 1920, Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad tinkered with an amateur wireless station, 8XK, and began sending out music and talk to fellow hobbyists. Those experiments proved there was a public eager to listen, and they led directly to the launch of KDKA and the birth of commercial broadcasting. Over a 37-year career Conrad amassed more than 200 patents.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2004

Frank E. Bolden was one of the first two African American war correspondents accredited by the U.S. Army during World War II. Reporting from India, Burma, and China, he chronicled the service of the "Buffalo Soldiers" and the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen for readers back home. He later became city editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation's most influential Black newspapers.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012

Born in Philadelphia in 1839, Frank Furness became one of the most original architects of Gilded Age America, designing muscular, unmistakable buildings that reveled in the raw industrial materials of his age. His masterpieces include the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania library. Trained under Richard Morris Hunt and serving as mentor to a young Louis Sullivan, Furness helped forge a lineage that led toward a genuinely American modern architecture.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2002

Frank Gasparro, born and trained in classical art in Philadelphia, joined the U.S. Mint as a junior engraver in 1942 and rose to become its 10th Chief Engraver in 1965. His designs are among the most widely handled art in America: the reverse of the Lincoln penny, and, with Gilroy Roberts, the Kennedy half-dollar. He also shaped the Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollars, among many other coins and medals.

Wichita Falls, TX

Native Texan Frank Kell (1859–1941) and his brother-in-law Joseph A. Kemp built fortunes in grain, banking, real estate, and railroads that helped turn Wichita Falls into the commercial hub of North Texas. In 1909 Kell commissioned this classical revival house from the firm of Jones and Orlopp, and his descendants kept it in the family for more than seventy years.

Crockett, TX

Frank M. Gossett (1892-1974), a Houston County native and grandson of Crockett townsite donor Andrew E. Gossett, devoted his life to preserving Texas history. In 1922 he helped found the Sons of the Republic of Texas, which later named him a Knight of San Jacinto, and he served with the San Jacinto Memorial Association that raised money for the monument and museum on the battlefield. His work helped ensure the Texas Revolution would be commemorated for later generations.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2010

Frank N. Piasecki was an aviation pioneer who flew the second successful helicopter in the United States and invented the world's first tandem-rotor helicopter, making rotorcraft genuinely practical in the 1940s. The Philadelphia company he founded here evolved into a division of Boeing and a world leader in helicopter production, while his later firm kept pushing the frontier of advanced rotorcraft. He received the National Medal of Technology in 1986.

Pennsburg, PA · est. 1991

Frank N.D. Buchman was born in this Montgomery County town and ordained a Lutheran minister in 1902 before turning to a life of moral and spiritual crusading. In 1921 he founded the Oxford Group, and in 1938 he launched Moral Re-Armament, a worldwide movement urging personal change as the path to peace among nations. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he was honored by governments around the globe.

Corsicana, TX

A Navarro County native, Frank Neal Drane rose from his father's hardware store to become president of City National Bank and, in 1901, founder of the Corsicana Power and Light Company. A city alderman and church leader, he wanted to share his prosperity with his neighbors. In 1938 he established the Navarro Community Foundation, whose grants have since supported causes across the county, including Navarro College.

New York, NY

While living here in 1957–59, the poet, critic, and museum curator Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) wrote a monograph on the painter Jackson Pollock. His breezy, urban poems shared the spontaneous, expressionist energy of Pollock's action paintings, and he became a central voice of the New York School that fused poetry and postwar abstract art.

Brownsville, TX

Born in 1866 to Texas ranching pioneers, Frank Rabb settled with his wife Lillian on the twenty-thousand-acre San Tomas estate near the Rio Grande. He built one of the area's first irrigation systems, helped charter the Chatfield Irrigation Co., and lobbied to bring the railroad that by 1904 turned Valley land into booming farmland. A leader in the south Texas Progressive Democrat machine and a figure in the turbulent Mexican Revolution, he also offered the government a sabal palm grove in 1917 that decades later became a wildlife sanctuary.

Dallas, TX

Frank Reaugh moved from Illinois to Kaufman County in 1876 and, sketching the cattle around him, became the artist who immortalized the Texas longhorn. Trained in St. Louis and Europe, he returned to the prairie for inspiration and settled in Dallas by 1890, where his teaching made him a force in Texas art. His pastels of frontier cattle, prized by historians, hang in museums across the state, and he built his studio-home 'El Sibil' in 1928.

Terrell, TX

Frank Reaugh (1860–1945) fell in love with wild range cattle as a boy on his family's Kaufman County cotton farm, where trail herds passed close by in the 1870s. Working his way through art study in St. Louis and Europe, he settled in Dallas in 1890 and became the great pastel chronicler of the Texas Longhorn, the western trails, and the open range just as they were vanishing. His paintings now hang in Austin, Dallas, and beyond.

Llano, TX

Trained under master sculptors in his native Germany, Frank Teich came to the United States in 1878 and by 1883 had established himself in San Antonio as a skilled stonemason and artist. His work on the State Capitol led to courthouses and a great many Confederate memorials and monuments across the South, and in 1901 he founded Teich Monument Works near Llano. That enterprise helped launch the region's granite industry, and Teich is buried in the Llano Cemetery.

Mobeetie, TX

Indiana-born Frank Willis, Sr. came to Texas seeking opportunity and became the first judge of the 35th District, which then covered the entire Panhandle. From 1881 to 1890 his honesty, sharp wit, and sizable frame made him a local legend, and both his sons followed him onto the bench. He helped bring the rule of law to a vast, thinly settled frontier region.

Frankel City, TX

When the Fullerton Oil Company struck oil near here in 1941, the boom drew a flood of workers, and by 1945 more than a hundred rigs were pumping. The town of Fullerton sprang up with churches, cafes, filling stations, and shops, renamed Frankel City when its post office opened in 1948 and serving as many as 500 families at its peak. But as the field played out by 1976, workers were laid off or transferred, businesses closed, and the town emptied — leaving the old Prairie Schooner Cafe as its last standing remnant.

Dallas, TX

Frankford grew up around Indian Springs after the McKamy family arrived in 1852 and began selling firewood and water to settlers moving along Preston Road. At its height the little town had a grist mill, cotton gin, stores, three churches, and a Masonic lodge that served as its social heart. When the railroad ran through Addison instead, Frankford withered — the lodge moved away in 1907 and only the church and cemetery remain.

Dallas, TX

Frankford Cemetery began as a resting place for pioneers along the old Preston Road cattle-drive route, its first burial dating to 1862. Among those interred is John T. Coit, a South Carolina lawyer who raised a Dallas-area regiment and served as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, later reinterred here. The burial ground has been tied since the 1870s to the White Rock Masonic Lodge, whose hall doubled as church and school.

Frankford, TX

The White Rock Masonic Lodge Hall did triple duty for early Frankford as lodge, school, and church, and among its worshipers was a Methodist congregation organized on a circuit in 1885. In the 1890s Captain William McKamy and his neighbors built this frame church, which the Methodists used until 1924; Episcopal services followed in the 1960s. It is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Frankfort, KY

Soon after Kentucky achieved statehood, five commissioners were appointed in June 1792 to select a seat of government. A number of towns competed, but Frankfort prevailed—thanks to persistence and a generous package that reportedly included Andrew Holmes' log house for use as a capitol, town lots, hardware, glass, nails, and gold. The commissioners gave their recommendation to the legislature in December 1792.

Frankfort, KY

In 1860 Governor Magoffin signed a bill creating the Kentucky Institution for the Education and Training of Feeble-Minded Children, one of the era's new state institutions for people with disabilities. Renamed several times over the following century, it became badly overcrowded—built for 616 residents but holding as many as 1,129—and many residents spent their entire lives here, laboring unpaid to maintain the facility until it closed in 1972. More than 411 people lie in this cemetery, most graves marked only "unknown."

Frankfort, KY

Surveyed in 1773 and founded by General James Wilkinson, Frankfort rose on a bend of the Kentucky River as settlers pressed west across the mountains. Virginia's legislature chartered the town in 1786, and in December 1792 the young state of Kentucky chose it as capital. From a frontier river crossing it became the seat of a brand-new commonwealth.

Frankfort, KY

Surveyed in 1773 and founded by General James Wilkinson, Frankfort grew on the Kentucky River as pioneers streamed into the Bluegrass. Chartered by Virginia in 1786 and named Kentucky's capital in December 1792, the little river town won out over larger rivals to become the permanent seat of government. It has anchored the commonwealth's public life ever since.

Franklin, TX

Founded in 1872 along the International Railway right-of-way, this town was first called Morgan for a railroad official and quickly gained a depot and stores. By 1879 it had drawn the county seat away from Calvert, and when its post-office name conflicted with another Morgan, it was renamed Franklin. A stone courthouse rose in 1882, and hotels, churches, banks, mineral springs, and a Carnegie library soon made it a thriving county town.

Littlefield, TX

Franklin A. Loyd, born in Montague County, took office as sheriff of Lamb County on the South Plains in 1935 and was mortally wounded in the line of duty. In a striking arrangement for the era, his widow, Grace Owen Loyd, was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term. He left behind eight children.

El Paso, TX

The Franklin Canal grew out of centuries of irrigation along the Rio Grande, from Spanish colonial ditches to the modern system begun by the El Paso Irrigation Company in 1890. Completed in 1912, it ran from the international dam five miles through downtown El Paso, carrying water thirty miles into the valley. A 1906 U.S.-Mexico treaty even obligated the canal to deliver 60,000 acre-feet of water annually to Mexico, making it a fixture of cross-border water diplomacy.

Franklin, TX

Franklin kept a 1,000-volume library in its City Hall before Mayor R. M. Cole applied to the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1913 for a purpose-built home. A $7,500 grant funded this brick building with classical details and a pressed-metal tile roof, completed in 1914 by an architect named Patterson. Though it served as a library only through 1918, it hosted school classes and public activities into 1984.

Franklin, TX

The town began in 1872 as Morgan, named for a railway official, but a naming conflict soon led residents to adopt 'Franklin' instead. Robertson County was deeded five acres here in 1880 as an inducement to bring the courthouse to town, though burials had already begun — the earliest recorded is Elizabeth Calvert in 1869. Among more than 1,300 graves rest a War of 1812 veteran, officials, legislators, and soldiers from every American war through Vietnam.

Grapeland, TX

Franklin Columbus Woodard was one of those restless nineteenth-century figures who wore many hats in a single lifetime. An Alabama boy who came to the Texas piney woods around 1850, he trained first as a teacher, then earned a medical degree in 1887, and a decade later added the pulpit to his résumé as an ordained Baptist minister. In Grapeland he tended patients, preached, and led the town as mayor and school board president—raising fifteen children along the way.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1982

Formed from Cumberland County in 1784 and named for Benjamin Franklin, this county grew up in the Cumberland Valley along the routes leading south and west. Its seat, Chambersburg, was laid out in 1764, and the limestone waters of Falling Spring made it a noted trout stream. The county is also the birthplace of James Buchanan, the nation's fifteenth president.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Franklin County was carved from Titus County and organized in the spring of 1875, with Mt. Vernon as its seat. It honors Benjamin C. Franklin (1805-1873), a hero of the Battle of San Jacinto who went on to serve as a district judge under the Republic of Texas and as a legislator.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Mt. Vernon was platted in 1849 and chosen county seat when Franklin County was created in 1875, progressing from a wooden courthouse to a brick one by 1878. A fight over financing a new courthouse without a public vote climbed all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, which in 1911 upheld the county's method — and within days commissioners awarded the contract for this building, completed in 1912.

Frankfort, KY

Franklin County was formed in 1795 from parts of Woodford, Mercer, and Shelby counties, three years after Kentucky became a state with Frankfort as its capital. The legislature had already met in the area, and in 1795 Frankfort was made the county seat. The county honors Benjamin Franklin, one of the architects of American independence.

San Antonio, TX

This memorial in San Antonio honors Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose "Good Neighbor" policy sought friendlier relations with Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s. Dedicated also to those who, like him, gave their lives in the cause of freedom, it ties the wartime president to the sacrifice of a generation shaped by the Second World War. Roosevelt died in April 1945, just as the war he led the nation through drew to its close.

New York, NY

This New York City memorial honors Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), the four-term president who steered the United States through its two greatest 20th-century trials — the Great Depression and World War II. His New Deal redefined the role of the federal government, and his wartime leadership helped guide the Allies toward victory before his death in April 1945.

Greenville, SC

This memorial in Greenville honors Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, who guided the nation through its two greatest twentieth-century trials: the Great Depression and the Second World War. Elected to an unprecedented four terms, Roosevelt dramatically expanded the role of the federal government before dying in office at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945 — just months before the war's end. His long tenure reshaped the American presidency and the country's sense of what government could do.

West Brookfield, MA

This weathered stone is a Franklin milestone, one of the numbered markers set along New England's colonial post roads to measure the miles between towns. Tradition ties such stones to Benjamin Franklin, who as deputy postmaster general had the post roads surveyed and marked so mail — and travelers — could reckon their progress. Reading "68 Miles From Boston, 29 to Springfield," it once told riders on the Boston–Springfield road exactly where they stood.

Warren, MA

This weathered stone is a colonial milestone, one of the plain markers that once counted off the distance along the great post roads radiating out of Boston. In the mid-1700s, as Benjamin Franklin reorganized the American postal service, riders and surveyors measured these routes and set stones like this one to tell travelers exactly how far they had come. Standing 72 miles out in the Worcester County countryside, it marked a full day's hard journey from the city for anyone on horseback or in a wagon.

Franklin, TX

The oldest marked stone here dates to 1867, before the town of Franklin even existed, and the grounds became a resting place for members of Robertson County's African American community — among them early leaders, citizens, and veterans. A 1908 deed formally set the land aside. After years of decline, a community association formed in 1982 to restore and enlarge the cemetery.

Baltimore, MD

Franklin P. Mall was a pioneering anatomist and embryologist and one of the principal architects of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Working around the turn of the twentieth century, he helped build a rigorous, research-driven model of medical training. His influence helped make Baltimore a center of modern American medicine.

Tilden, TX

Ralph "Rafe" Franklin came to McMullen County as a boy in the early 1860s and around 1870 began building a ranch that grew to some 40,000 acres, among the largest in the region. He raised a large family at the San Miguel Creek headquarters, briefly ran sheep and goats, then committed to cattle—introducing one of the area's first black Angus herds in 1902. The old San Antonio–Laredo Stage Road crossed the property, a route that had carried Confederate cotton toward Mexico during the Civil War.

Galveston, TX

Built in 1886 to replace a home lost in a great Strand fire, this Italianate house belonged to attorney and judge Robert M. Franklin, son of San Jacinto veteran Benjamin C. Franklin, for whom Franklin County was named. Robert had fought in the Civil War Battle of Galveston as a Confederate "horse Marine" aboard a cotton-clad gunboat and later helped plan the city's protective seawall. In 1931 the house passed to John F. Wandless, a Boer War and World War I veteran who served as a Gulf Coast intelligence officer for Britain during World War II while his wife ran a local British sailors' club.

Frankston, TX

When the Texas & New Orleans Railroad laid track through Anderson County in 1900, it platted a townsite on land owned by Frankie Miller, who donated this square for a public park. By 1908 a post office and the town's earliest businesses had gathered around it, and a gazebo built about 1920 replaced an older bandstand as the stage for local festivals and gatherings. The square has remained the social and commercial heart of Frankston ever since.

Frankston, TX

When the Texas & New Orleans Railroad platted Frankston in 1900, the station was first called Frankport and the post office Ayres before both took the name Frankston in 1902, honoring Frankie Miller, who had given land for a city park. The frame depot built in 1906 connected local farmers to distant markets and carried passengers from 1903 until 1964. Restored as a museum in 1976, it preserves the building that once tied the town to the wider world.

Frankstown Township, PA · est. 1947

Long before European towns rose here, this was the site of Assunepachla, a Delaware and Shawnee village standing before 1748. By 1734 the trader Frank Stevens had established a fur post at the spot, drawing on the Indian trade that laced the region. The Kittanning Path, a major Indian route across the Allegheny ridges, ran through here, making Frankstown a crossroads of trade and travel.

Morris Township, PA · est. 1949

Long before roads followed these valleys, Native travelers laid out the Frankstown Path, a major overland route threading the ridges of central Pennsylvania along the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River. Where it met the older Warriors Path near Water Street, the very bed of the river served as a natural gateway through Tussey Mountain. These trails were the interstate highways of their day, carrying people, goods, and diplomacy across the Appalachian barrier.

Washoe County, NV

Orson Hyde, a probate judge in Utah Territory, founded Franktown in the Washoe Valley in 1855, and after the Comstock silver strike of 1859 its sawmill and a sixty-stamp quartz mill became vital suppliers of timber and ore processing for the booming mines. Hundreds of workers labored at the mill amid a district of fertile farms. When a railroad linked Carson City directly to Virginia City in 1869, Franktown's milling business quickly lost its purpose and the once-prosperous town declined.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2001

Born in the coal city of Wilkes-Barre, Franz Kline became a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism, the movement that made New York the center of the postwar art world. He is best known for his large black-and-white canvases of the 1950s, whose slashing, architectural strokes he tied to the stark industrial landscape of his native anthracite region, naming works "Lehigh," "Luzerne," and "Pittston." Through such paintings Kline helped win international recognition for a distinctly American style of abstraction.