Search Markers

Franklin, TX

Walter Washington Williams was reputed to be the last surviving soldier of the Civil War, said to have served as a forage master for the celebrated Hood's Texas Brigade. Born in Mississippi in 1842, he moved to Texas soon after the war and farmed near here, living quietly until extreme old age brought him fame as one of the last living veterans. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave him the honorary rank of general and proclaimed national mourning at his death in 1959. He rests in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, one of the oldest burial grounds in Robertson County, within the colony planted in the 1820s by pioneer Sterling C. Robertson.

Fort Worth, TX

William Jenkins Worth of Hudson, New York, made a soldier's career that spanned the early republic's wars: badly wounded at Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812, he later commanded cadets at West Point, campaigned against the Sac and Fox and the Florida Seminoles, took part in Cherokee removal, and won a Sword of Honor from Congress for his conduct in the Mexican War. He died of cholera at San Antonio in 1849 while commanding the Texas and New Mexico military districts. Though he never saw this ground, the frontier post of Fort Worth was named in his memory.

Dunlay, TX

During the Mexican counter-invasions of 1842, General Adrián Woll marched an army north to seize San Antonio from the young Republic of Texas—and had a fresh road cut through the brush country so his column could approach undetected. Woll took the city by surprise that September, held it a week, and clashed with Texian volunteers at Salado Creek before retreating along the same secret road. The route long outlived the campaign, serving settlers and freight haulers for decades.

Castroville, TX

In 1846, as the United States went to war with Mexico, General John Ellis Wool gathered 3,400 troops in San Antonio for an intended march on Chihuahua, crossing the Medina River and passing through Castroville before orders redirected him to reinforce General Zachary Taylor. The path his army traced—echoing an earlier Mexican retreat—hardened into the Chihuahua Road, a vital artery of westward trade. Castroville's central position and reliable water made it a thriving stop for travelers and freighters.

New York, NY

This granite obelisk at the crossing of Fifth Avenue and Broadway honors William Jenkins Worth, a soldier from Hudson, New York, whose career traced the young republic's expanding military ambitions. He earned his commission in the War of 1812, spent the 1820s shaping the officer corps as Commandant of Cadets at West Point, and won his greatest fame in the hard-fought campaigns of the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. When he died in 1849, the city he served brought him home, and the monument that rose over his grave became one of the very few burial sites in Manhattan marked by a public memorial.

Sarita, TX

On March 15, 1846, General Zachary Taylor camped beneath a tree at this spot as he marched his "Army of Occupation" south from Corpus Christi toward the Rio Grande. Within weeks the clash of his troops with Mexican forces along that river would ignite the Mexican-American War. Taylor's popularity as a wartime commander soon carried him to the White House.

Geneva, TX

On land first granted in 1794, the community that became Geneva took shape in the 1820s as settlers pushed in from the east, passing through names like Shawnee Village and Jimtown before settling on Geneva. Levi T. Allen deeded ground for a church and cemetery in 1879, and the Geneva Myrtle Springs Cemetery became the resting place of the area's pioneer families. Its stones honor veterans stretching from the Civil War through both World Wars, Korea, and Iraq.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 2000

Genevieve Blatt broke barrier after barrier in 20th-century Pennsylvania politics, becoming the first woman elected to statewide office as Secretary of Internal Affairs and the first woman a major party nominated for a U.S. Senate seat in the state. Elected to the Commonwealth Court in 1973, she authored the 1975 opinion that opened school sports to girls on equal terms. She made her home at 115 North Street in Harrisburg for a quarter century.

Houston, TX

In 1894 fourteen people gathered in the township of Genoa under the Rev. J.R. Murray to organize the community's first Methodist congregation, chartered the next year with thirty-three members. A sawmill owner's gift of two pine trees supplied lumber for their first church in 1898, and the congregation grew through new buildings in 1937 and 1957. When Houston annexed Genoa in the mid-1960s, the church anchored local identity with picnics, a rodeo arena, scouting, and community outreach.

Maydelle, TX

Perched atop Gent Mountain between two creeks, the village of Gent was settled in the 1850s by families from Alabama and Tennessee seeking good farmland. They quickly raised churches and schools, and by 1900 the village supported stores, mills, and cotton gins. But when the Texas State Railroad bypassed it and the town of Maydelle was founded nearby in 1910, business drained away, and today not a single structure of Gent remains.

Stephenville, TX

Built in 1873, this limestone commercial block was the first stone building on Stephenville's courthouse square, raised by merchants James Shelton — a Confederate veteran and former deputy — and George Gentry. Over the years it housed everything from a mercantile store and county offices to a tire shop and saloon, its basement reputedly serving as the county jail before the courthouse was finished.

Mineral, TX

Born on a nearby ranch, Gentry Dugat became a colorful Bee County historian, orator, and journalist who earned a law degree and worked on seven Texas newspapers, editing the Cotton Ginners Journal and writing a biography of the post–Civil War editor Henry W. Grady. A World War I veteran and avid collector of rare books, newspapers, and artifacts, he organized and chaired the Bee County Historical Commission in 1958. The county honored his memory with this marker.

Osborne, KS

This marker points toward a bronze plate on a ranch southeast of Osborne known to surveyors as the Geodetic Center of North America. The nearby Meades Ranch station served as the reference point for the North American Datum of 1927, the mathematical foundation from which nearly all maps and surveys of the continent were once calculated. For much of the twentieth century, this quiet Kansas prairie was the literal starting point for measuring the map of a continent.

Brady vicinity, TX

Five miles northwest lies the geographic center of Texas, an imaginary point balancing the state into four equal areas. The marker fans out from there into a portrait of Texas's sheer scale — some 267,339 square miles, a 4,137-mile border, elevations from sea level to Guadalupe Peak's 8,751 feet, and rainfall ranging from Miami-like abundance in the east to Phoenix-like scarcity in the far west. It notes that fifteen states could fit inside the whole.

Rutland, MA

Rutland sits in the rolling hill country at the very middle of Massachusetts, and this marker stakes that claim to the ground: the surveyed geographical center of the commonwealth falls within the town. Settled in the early 1700s and incorporated as a town in the early 1720s, Rutland began as an interior outpost far from the coastal settlements, its high, central ground eventually earning it this quiet cartographic distinction. The point itself is invisible on the landscape—just farmland and forest—but the marker fixes an abstract line from the surveyor's map onto a spot you can actually stand.

Hilliar Township, OH

Laid out in 1834 as settlers were filling in the newly surveyed lands of central Ohio, the village of Centerburg took both its name and its identity from a happy accident of geography: it sits at (or very near) the calculated geographical center of the state. Towns across America have long staked such claims, planting markers where the mathematical middle of a state or county falls, and Centerburg embraced the distinction as a point of civic pride. The marker ties the community's founding date to that central location, a small monument to how early-republic Ohioans measured and mapped the land they were settling.

Dumas, TX

The land around Dumas has been prized for its geology far longer than any oil derrick suggests. Prehistoric peoples mined flint from quarries along the Canadian River — an early Texas "industry" whose tools turn up across the western United States — and built sturdy, insulated homes from local dolomite slabs, an unusually advanced technique for the era. Centuries later, modern Moore County tapped a different underground treasure, oil and gas, to support dozens of industries.

San Antonio, TX

Georg Heinrich Buchsenschutz, a veteran of the Mexican War, came to Texas in 1850 and by 1860 had bought more than 200 acres of farmland here, marrying Friederike Schulmeier the same year and raising ten children. When their eldest daughter died at fifteen in 1881, she was buried on the homestead, and her father joined her in 1895; a dozen more family members followed over the next half-century. The small family cemetery, recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001, remains open to descendants.

Grand Junction, CO

This monument honors George A. Crawford (1827-1891), the town founder who laid out Grand Junction on Colorado's Western Slope in 1881, just as the Ute people were being removed from the region. A promoter and civic booster, Crawford helped transform the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers into a settled agricultural and railroad town. His grave and memory anchor the city's founding story.

Austin, TX

Built around 1904 for grocery and feed merchant George A. Peterson, this late Victorian T-plan home stands out for its clip-cornered front bay, an unusual variation for East Austin. Its one-over-one sash windows and porch trimmed with spindled balusters, elaborate brackets, and a spindled canopy display the ornate craftsmanship of the period. The house survives as a fine example of a once-common architectural style in the neighborhood.

Flat Rock, NC

George A. Trenholm was a Charleston cotton broker and financier who served as the Confederate Secretary of the Treasury in the war's final year, 1864–65, struggling to sustain a collapsing wartime economy. A South Carolina legislator and one of the South's wealthiest men, he summered at "Solitude," an estate that once stood near this marker in the cool mountain air of Flat Rock. He is often cited as a possible model for the character Rhett Butler.

Orange, TX

A War of 1812 veteran born in Georgia in 1796, George Alexander Pattillo migrated to southeast Texas in the early 1830s and threw himself into the region's revolutionary politics, serving on a Committee of Correspondence and the provisional government's General Council. He aided the Texas Army during the 1836 revolution, arriving at San Jacinto the day after the battle, and was tasked by President David G. Burnet with organizing Jefferson County. He later served in the Republic of Texas Congress, championed annexation, and became Orange County's first judge in 1852.

West Brandywine Township, PA · est. 2021

On this Chester County farm at the turn of the 20th century, George A. Spratt pursued the science of flight, running aeronautical experiments during the years when human flight was still a dream. His insight helped Wilbur and Orville Wright diagnose a flaw in their 1901 glider, and his idea of measuring lift and drift forces together informed the wing design of the 1903 Wright Flyer. The Wright brothers thought enough of him to visit here in December 1906.

Houston, TX

Born in New York in 1812, George Allen came to Texas in the 1830s and fought in the war for independence, later joining the Somervell Expedition. In 1838 he settled in Houston to help his brothers Augustus and John Kirby Allen establish the new city, and in 1839 became the first committeeman charged with improving Buffalo Bayou, its vital shipping artery. His work helped set Houston on its course as a commercial port.

Wichita Falls, TX

George Alonzo Soule ran freight and stage lines in Jacksboro and Fort Griffin before following the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad to Wichita Falls in 1883. From this site near the business district he hauled passengers and goods across North Texas and into Oklahoma—occasionally at the mercy of highwaymen—until rail traffic finally overtook the stagecoach and he shifted to running livery barns.

Sulphur Springs, TX

Soon after they married in 1881, George and Myra Wilson set about transforming Sulphur Springs from a small town into a city. George and his brother ran a brick plant and built many of its landmarks—the City National Bank, First Baptist Church, and several county courthouses—while Myra led the Ladies' Cemetery Society for 43 years, helped found the public library, and raised money for a cemetery chapel. Together they typified the civic energy that reshaped a once-frontier Texas town.

Omaha, NE

At the turn of the 20th century, Omaha was booming on the strength of railroads, meatpacking, and print, and George Joslyn had made a fortune building a national newspaper-supply empire. On the five-acre grounds he and Sarah purchased, architect John McDonald designed a thirty-four-room stone mansion — complete with an interior conservatory — that was finished in 1903 and stands today as one of the Midwest's great Gilded Age homes.

Romney, WV

Romney sits in Hampshire County among the oldest settlements in what is now West Virginia, a community whose roots reach back to the mid-18th-century frontier of colonial Virginia's Allegheny backcountry. Markers like this one identify a surviving residence by the family name it long carried, preserving the memory of the households that gave an old town its texture. Named house markers are a quiet but common form of local commemoration, pointing passersby to a building whose walls outlasted the people who first filled them.

Pampa, TX

Long before he became a household name, young West Point engineer George B. McClellan crossed this country in 1852 as part of Randolph Marcy's expedition exploring the Texas Panhandle, leaving his name on a nearby creek and, later, a lake. He went on to design the army saddle still bearing his name, lead the Union Army as a general, and run against Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1864 before serving as governor of New Jersey. This marker ties a familiar Civil War figure to his little-known early days surveying the West.

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth merchant George B. Monnig and his wife Lura acquired this property in 1905, only to lose their first frame house to a neighborhood fire in 1909. They rebuilt in 1910 with this durable brick home, its corbelled brickwork, milled wood, and cut limestone blending Bungalow and Arts-and-Crafts fashions. The family held the house until 1947, leaving behind a fine example of early-twentieth-century Texas domestic architecture.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2026

George B. Vashon, who grew up near this Pittsburgh site, was a lawyer, poet, educator, and abolitionist who broke barriers throughout his life. In 1844 he became Oberlin College's first Black graduate and its valedictorian; denied admission to the Pennsylvania bar because of his race, he became the first Black lawyer in New York in 1848. He went on to help found and teach at Howard University and to serve as president of Avery College.

Spring Valley, OH

In 1853, after fire claimed his home, an Ohio farmer named George Barrett rebuilt not with the usual brick or timber but with cement — following a construction method he'd picked up from his own reading. It was a resourceful, self-taught choice in an era when concrete building was still a novelty in rural America, and it proved both cheaper and quicker than conventional masonry. The house he raised in Greene County's Spring Valley stood durable enough that, more than a century later in 1986, it earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places.

Magnolia, TX

In the mid-1840s a young Englishman, George Bell Madeley, left the outskirts of Birmingham for the raw new Republic-turned-state of Texas, married another English emigrant, and built a nearly self-sufficient plantation in the community then called Egypt. His farm knit together orchards, vineyards, a cotton gin, and both grist and sugar mills, and the family cemetery began in 1848 with the burial of his brother-in-law. Tended today by descendants, the grounds hold the Madeleys and the neighbors who shared their frontier world.

Franklin, PA · est. 2002

In 1854, attorney George Bissell and his partner J.G. Eveleth purchased the Hibbard Farm in northwestern Pennsylvania — land that would soon hold the famous Drake Well — and organized the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, the first oil corporation in America. Their gamble that "rock oil" could be drilled and refined at scale helped launch an entirely new industry just years before petroleum transformed the world's economy. Bissell went on to develop Petroleum Centre and other holdings around booming Oil City.

College Station, TX

This marker commemorates George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States, noting his World War II service as a young Navy lieutenant junior grade — he was among the nation's youngest naval aviators. After a long career in public service he settled in College Station, Texas, home to the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University, where he and his wife are memorialized. The listing of his naval rank and service number echoes the plain style of a military honor marker.

Midland, TX

In 1948 a young Navy veteran named George H. W. Bush moved his family to West Texas to break into the oil business, and by the early 1950s they had settled in Midland. From this home on West Ohio Avenue, bought as his oil ventures succeeded, the family lived through both joy and heartbreak — son Jeb was born here, while daughter Robin died of leukemia in 1953. Two future presidents and two future first ladies were tied to this Midland ground.

Berkeley, CA

This tribute honors George Cunning Edwards, a member of the very first class of the University of California and a faculty member from his graduation until his death in 1930. Remembered as a patron of sport and a model of sportsmanship, he helped shape student life at a young university finding its identity in the decades after its 1868 founding. The plaque preserves the memory of an educator who bridged Berkeley's pioneering first generation and the modern campus.

Uniontown, PA · est. 1981

On this Uniontown site in 1880 was born George Catlett Marshall, who would become one of the towering figures of the American century. As Army Chief of Staff he directed the vast mobilization that won the Second World War, then as Secretary of State lent his name to the Marshall Plan that rebuilt a shattered Europe. The soldier who organized victory became the statesman who organized peace, an achievement crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mineola, TX

A Georgia native, George C. Reeves reached the brand-new railroad town of Mineola soon after its 1873 founding and served as city marshal. Through his friendship with county attorney and future governor Jim Hogg, he became a transfer agent for the state penitentiary system while building ventures in cattle, lumber, and real estate. A tireless booster, he promoted Wood County's farms with exhibits at the State Fair of Texas and led the Agricultural Exhibitors Association.

Duluth, MN

Erected in 1905 by Clara B. Blood in memory of her father, George C. Stone, this monument reflects the Gilded-Age custom of families honoring their forebears in stone. It stands in Duluth, a Lake Superior port then booming on the iron, timber, and shipping trades that drew ambitious men to the head of the lakes. The memorial preserves one family's tie to that rising city.

Galveston, TX

Born to a prominent Nashville family, George Campbell Childress trained as a lawyer and editor before following his uncle, the empresario Sterling Robertson, to Texas. Elected a delegate to the Convention of 1836, he is regarded as the primary author of the Texas Declaration of Independence, adopted on March 2, 1836. His later efforts to win recognition and build a law practice failed, and, despondent, he took his own life in Galveston in 1841; Childress County was named in his honor.

Galveston, TX

George Campbell Childress, born in Nashville in 1804, is remembered as the principal author and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. This state marker honors his role in the founding of the Republic of Texas. He died in Galveston in 1841.

Washington, TX

Born in Nashville in 1804, George Campbell Childress came to Texas in 1835 after helping raise funds and volunteers for the Texas cause. As a delegate to the 1836 Constitutional Convention held at Washington-on-the-Brazos, he chaired the Committee of Five that drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and he was soon dispatched to Washington to seek U.S. recognition of the new republic. He died in Galveston in 1841.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1947

In 1796 the boy who would become America's great chronicler of Native peoples was born in this corner of the Wyoming Valley, of Connecticut stock. George Catlin trained and practiced law here before abandoning the bar around 1823 for the paintbrush, and within a few years he set out to record the faces and lives of Indian nations across the young republic. His hundreds of portraits and scenes remain among the fullest visual records of Native America before it was transformed.

Hampden Township, PA · est. 2021

Around 1740 the Irish immigrant George Croghan set up a trading post on this ground and built it into one of the most far-reaching British trade networks in colonial America. Reaching west into the French-contested Ohio Country, he learned Native American languages and customs to secure the furs that Europe craved. For three decades he was among Britain's most important go-betweens at treaty conferences with Indian nations.

Galveston, TX

An English-born immigrant who settled in Galveston in 1870 with his wife and nine children, George Dealey was a devout man who turned his faith toward charity. In 1878 he opened the Island City Protestant Orphans Asylum in a rented house, and with clergy support and citizen donations the home grew, moved, and was chartered as it settled on this site. Renamed the Galveston Orphans' Home, it long kept the admittance standards its founder set. Two of his sons went on to lead the Dallas Morning News.

New Bern, NC

George E. Badger, born near this spot, rose to become United States Secretary of the Navy in 1841 and a U.S. Senator from 1846 to 1855. A superior court judge and staunch nationalist, he was one of antebellum North Carolina's most prominent statesmen. His career spanned the courtroom, the cabinet, and the Senate in the decades before the Civil War.

Prospect, PA · est. 2003

In baseball's raucous early decades, few players loomed larger — on the mound or in the public imagination — than Rube Waddell. Pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics, he led the American League in strikeouts six straight years and topped twenty wins in each of his first four seasons, finishing with 193 career victories. Raised in Prospect, his blazing talent was matched by an eccentric, crowd-pleasing personality that made him one of the game's first true stars.

Edna, TX

George F. Horton built this house in 1876 in Old Texana, a once-promising Jackson County town, and when its fortunes faded he simply dismantled the home and moved it to nearby Edna in 1882. A Confederate veteran who became a businessman and postmaster, Horton belonged to the generation rebuilding civilian lives across Texas after the Civil War. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Galveston, TX

Shortly after the Civil War, George Fox joined his father's Galveston bakery, an establishment dating to 1837, and built himself into a successful merchant by the turn of the century. Around 1903 he built this Queen Anne home with classical revival detailing for his wife Elizabeth and their family, probably replacing an earlier house destroyed in the catastrophic 1900 hurricane. Fox family members lived here until 1955.

Kingsbury, TX

George Francis fought in the 1836 Texas War for Independence, then brought his family to Texas and built this house on York's Creek in 1849, near a crossing used by the San Antonio-to-Bastrop mail route. A generation later, all six of his sons marched from this home to serve the Confederacy in the Civil War. Several never returned — one killed at Chickamauga, another dying in service at Galveston, and a third falling at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield.

Crockett, TX

A New York native and War of 1812 officer, George G. Alford came to Texas in 1836 and served as quartermaster general under Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution. Captured by Mexican forces on a later supply mission for the young Republic, he won his release through the intervention of President Andrew Jackson, then settled into life as a plantation owner and county judge.

New York, NY

Between 1929 and 1933, composer George Gershwin lived here with his brother and lyricist Ira Gershwin, a creative partnership that produced some of the era's most enduring Broadway music. During these years they wrote the hit Girl Crazy and the political satires Of Thee I Sing and Let 'Em Eat Cake. Of Thee I Sing became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Columbus, TX

Born into slavery in 1850 and raised on a Colorado County ranch, George Glenn trained as a cowhand and trail cook and stayed on the Johnson Ranch as a free man after Emancipation. On an 1870 cattle drive to Abilene his employer, Bob Johnson, died; after the herd was sold, Glenn disinterred the body and drove it nearly 800 miles home by wagon over six weeks for reburial. Honored decades later at Old Trail Drivers reunions and interviewed by folklorist J. Frank Dobie, he became one of the few Black members remembered by name from the great cattle-drive era.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1999

George Gordon Meade rose from Army engineer to major general, taking command of the Army of the Potomac just days before it turned back Robert E. Lee's invasion at Gettysburg in July 1863 — the campaign that broke the Confederacy's northward push. Philadelphia was his family's city, and a grateful nation gave him a house here, where he lived until his death in 1872. The marker stands near that home, tying the Union's most consequential victory to the ordinary streets of the general who won it.

Owensboro, KY

In 1852, George Graham Vest helped establish Owensboro's second newspaper, The Gazette, before going on to serve as a U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1879 to 1903. He is best remembered for his "Tribute to a Dog," a spontaneous courtroom oration in defense of a backwoodsman's slain hound, "Old Drum." The eloquent plea won the case and brought Vest lasting fame.

Cameron, TX

George Green fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. Beyond the battlefield he served as a ranger and surveyor, helping map and secure the young republic's frontier, and became an honored citizen of Milam County. The State of Texas erected this marker to his memory in 1962.

Radnor Township, PA · est. 2018

George H. Earle III, born and raised in Radnor, served as governor of Pennsylvania from 1935 to 1939 and led a state-level answer to the Depression known as the "Little New Deal." His administration created more than 200,000 jobs, launched the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, and enacted labor, civil rights, and unemployment-compensation laws. A decorated veteran of both World Wars, Earle later served Franklin Roosevelt as American minister to Austria and then Bulgaria on the eve of the Second World War.

Galveston, TX

George H. Nicholls arrived in Galveston as a mariner and found his fortune in the warehouse trade, starting as the first employee of Geo. M. Steirer & Co. In 1888 he and a partner bought out their employer to form Wiley & Nicholls, a warehousing and freight-transfer firm at 19th Street and the Strand. As the business prospered, Nicholls built this home in 1893—the first house on 24th Street—living here until moving to a larger residence in 1899.

Robstown, TX

Robstown sprang up in 1903 where two rail lines crossed, and boomed after land developer George H. Paul assembled some 300,000 acres of former ranch land and carved it into cotton farms, running special trains to recruit buyers from the East and Midwest. The two-story brick Paul Building, raised here in 1908, was the town's hub — general store, first school, church meeting room, and later the bank whose stability carried it through the Great Depression. The building came down in 1972, replaced by a modern bank on the same ground.