Search Markers

Weatherford, TX

This Queen Anne home in Weatherford dates to the late 1890s, most likely built by retired railroad man Robert Lowe as he opened a hardware business nearby, though an 1874 courthouse fire erased the earliest records and old Sanborn maps hint an earlier structure was enlarged. Its original transoms and a stained-glass panel over the front door still survive. In 1940 it passed to James Claude Wright, who built a business selling street signs to small towns and promoting national trade days, and the city bought the house in 2009 to save it from demolition.

Potter Township, PA

In the 1920s and '30s, air mail pilots flew fragile open-cockpit planes through fog, storms, and mountain passes to carry the nation's mail by the fastest routes yet known — often at the cost of their lives. This marker remembers Jimmy Cleveland, an air mail pilot who died when his plane went down here on May 24, 1931. His crash was one of many that made early air mail among the most dangerous jobs in America.

Corsicana, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1790, James Clinton Neill joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1831 and threw himself into the Texas Revolution as an artillery officer, commanding the guns at the Siege of Bexar. Appointed to lead San Antonio and the Alamo, he left that post in February 1836 to tend to family illness — handing command to William B. Travis and narrowly missing the fall of the Alamo. He was wounded serving Sam Houston's army the day before San Jacinto, and later helped found the seat of Navarro County.

Houston, TX

James Collinsworth (1806–1838), Tennessee-born, packed an extraordinary public career into a few short years of the Texas Republic. A delegate to the 1835 Consultation and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, he "bore himself as a chief" at San Jacinto, then served as Secretary of State, senator, and the first Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. After he drowned at Galveston in 1838, his remains were carried up Buffalo Bayou for the first Masonic funeral held in Texas.

Gonzales, TX

Born December 7, 1811, James D. Owens volunteered in the Texas army during the war for independence and served in the San Jacinto campaign that secured the Republic of Texas. He died August 14, 1843, and this Star-and-Wreath grave marker was erected in his honor by the State of Texas in 1962. Such markers commemorate the ordinary volunteer soldiers who filled the ranks of Sam Houston's revolutionary army.

Corpus Christi, TX

English-born and Boston-raised, James Downing enlisted in the Massachusetts heavy artillery in 1862, survived combat at Petersburg, and escaped while being taken to the notorious Andersonville prison, making his way back to rejoin his regiment. After the war he was commissioned an officer in the 36th U.S. Colored Troops and posted to Corpus Christi, where he married into the local von Blücher family and built a long civic career—brickyard owner, voter registrar, fire chief, alderman, and city marshal. He died in Corpus Christi in 1891.

Fort Worth, TX

When Fort Worth organized its public schools in 1882, Black children were first taught in churches before the city built segregated schoolhouses. James Elvis Guinn, the son of formerly enslaved parents who prized the education they never had, rose to become a chemistry professor at Prairie View before returning home to lead the South Side Colored School. The grand three-story brick school begun in 1917 was named in his honor days after his death, and it grew into the largest Black school in the city.

Halifax County, NC

James E. O'Hara (1844–1905) was an African American political leader who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1883 to 1887 and practiced law in nearby Enfield. He was among the last generation of Black congressmen from the South before disenfranchisement closed that door for decades. He lived a short distance to the south.

Durham, NC

James E. Shepard was a leading Black educational and religious figure in early-twentieth-century North Carolina. In 1910 he founded the Durham college that became North Carolina Central University, guiding it as president until 1947 through the hardest decades of segregated education.

Crockett, TX

Born in 1845 to Houston County pioneers, James Elbert Downes came of age in time to serve in the Civil War and remained active in the local Confederate veterans association for the rest of his life. A prominent business and civic leader devoted to the Methodist Church, he built a family home on 7th Street that still stands as a local landmark.

Corsicana, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1851, James Emerson Whiteselle came to Texas in 1870 to work in his uncle's lumber business and by 1875 had joined the Corsicana lumber company he would eventually own, later expanding into brick manufacturing. A prominent businessman and banker, he served as mayor of Corsicana from 1894 to 1898 — the very years oil was discovered there — and helped guide the field's early development. He died on his birthday in 1915.

Houston County, TX

A Tennessean who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the 1835 siege of Bexar and served as a militia commissioner during the Texas Revolution. For that service the Republic granted him land in Houston County, where he and his wife Mary Lucinda settled around 1842. Part of that property became this family cemetery.

Webberville, TX

An Arkansas native, James Euwin Edmiston came to Texas with his family in 1835 and settled near present-day Webberville just as the fight for independence began. He served as a Texas Ranger during the revolution, took part in frontier battles, and was caught up in the Woll Expedition and the Archive War of 1842. He later rode with Travis County ranger companies before joining the rush to California in 1849, and earned a Republic of Texas pension for his service.

Cuero, TX

James F. Blair's life traced the arc of frontier Texas through its wars and lawlessness. Born in Tennessee, he fought in the Mexican War and then rose from the Confederate ranks to captain a company of the 36th Texas Cavalry, before turning to keeping the peace as a Texas Ranger and, in 1866, as the governor-appointed sheriff of DeWitt County. That county would soon become notorious for the Sutton-Taylor feud, and Blair belonged to the generation of veterans-turned-lawmen who tried to hold order on a violent frontier.

Hallsville, TX

Chartered in 1856 in the town of Ash Springs, this Masonic lodge honored James F. Taylor, a leading citizen, state legislator, and Mason. When the railroad bypassed Ash Springs in the late 1860s, the lodge relocated to the new town of Hallsville and built a two-story hall, housing a school on the first floor and the lodge room above. The Masons ran the town's only school until 1915, making the lodge a cornerstone of local civic and educational life.

Uniontown, PA · est. 2008

In 1808, Uniontown's James Finley secured the first U.S. patent for a suspension bridge, and his rigid chain span over nearby Jacob's Creek proved the concept in iron and stone. Bridges built to his design soon appeared in several states, marking him as a pioneer of the modern suspension bridge. Beyond engineering, Finley served his community as a judge and a member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1990

James Forten rose from a Philadelphia sailmaker's apprentice to a wealthy businessman whose loft employed craftsmen of every race. A towering leader of the city's free Black community, he poured his fortune into the era's great reform causes, above all the fight against slavery. In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized in his home here, binding this address to the birth of the militant abolitionist movement.

Bailey, TX

James Fowler Biggers was part of the great postwar migration that reshaped Texas: born in South Carolina and raised in Mississippi, he brought his family west by wagon train in 1869 to settle the black-land prairies of Fannin County. Like many frontier settlers of the Reconstruction era, he wove together the institutions a new community needed — a Primitive Baptist congregation he helped found and served as lay preacher, a school housed in that same church, and a community cemetery. His life traces how faith, education, and settlement advanced hand in hand on the North Texas frontier.

Robert Lee, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1844, James Franklin Byrd came west and enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at Gonzales in 1862, riding through hard-fought engagements at Holly Springs, Harrisburg, and Fort Pillow. Captured and held as a prisoner of war on Mississippi's Ship Island, he talked his way free by volunteering to load a boat and slipping in among prisoners bound for exchange. He came home to Texas, married, and settled for good near Hayrick Mountain in the Coke County ranch country.

Jones Creek, TX

A Pennsylvania-born merchant who made his fortune in Missouri's frontier trade, James Franklin Perry married Emily Austin and, urged on by her brother Stephen F. Austin, moved his family to Texas in 1831. He built mercantile and farming interests and settled at Peach Point Plantation on the Brazos River. As an active supporter of the Republic of Texas and executor of Stephen F. Austin's estate, his careful stewardship of Austin's maps, land papers, and reports preserved records now central to the Texas archives.

Hemphill, TX

James Frederick Gomer and his wife Ana came to Sabine County from Giles County, Tennessee, in 1836, receiving acreage in 1838 and building up a large farm. By the early 1870s both had died and were buried on the family land alongside a child who died young. Because the farm sat along a well-traveled route, tradition holds that others — including Native people and enslaved individuals — were buried just outside the family plot.

West Brownsville, PA · est. 1947

James G. Blaine was born on this site in 1830 to a family of Pennsylvania pioneer stock and took his degree at nearby Washington College. Moving to Maine in 1854, he rose to become one of the towering political figures of the Gilded Age — a powerful member of Congress, a party leader, and twice secretary of state. He came within a hair of the presidency in one of the era's most bitterly fought campaigns.

Honey Grove, TX

James G. Gilmer moved from Kentucky in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth and their children, part of the wave of Anglo-American settlers pushing into North Texas; his son James P. is said to have been the first such child born at present-day Honey Grove. Gilmer died only months after settling, and his burial founded the local cemetery, while the town later rose on the land grant he left to his wife.

Austin, TX

Kentucky-born James G. Wilkinson served in Capt. William W. Hill's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. He died in Lee County in 1848, and his wife Amanda lies beside him. The State of Texas marked the grave in 1936 during the centennial of the revolution.

Washington Township, NJ

The sandy, acidic soil of New Jersey's Pinelands was long considered too poor for conventional farming, yet it proved perfect for a fruit that had only ever grown wild: the blueberry. In the early twentieth century, growers in this corner of Burlington County helped turn the untamed native berry into a dependable cultivated crop, launching an industry that would spread across the country. This monument marks a site where that pioneering work took root, honoring James Garfield Alloway's part in establishing one of the world's first blueberry farms.

Wells, TX

James H. Bowman served in the army of the Republic of Texas during the 1836 fight for independence from Mexico, part of the volunteer force that secured the breakaway republic. Born in 1820, he lived out his life in the East Texas piney woods, dying in 1886. His grave marker anchors the memory of one of the revolution's many rank-and-file soldiers.

Raleigh, NC

James H. Harris was a leading Black political voice in Reconstruction-era North Carolina, serving as a legislator and orator and sitting in the pivotal 1868 constitutional convention. He helped found the state's Republican Party and Union League. His home stood a block west of this marker.

Belton, TX

Tennessee-born James H. Isbell fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. He died in 1858 at age forty-four; his wife Amanda outlived him by more than two decades. Their marker records the resting place of a veteran of the revolution that created the Republic of Texas.

El Paso, TX

Born in Virginia in 1847, James Harrison White served with the Confederacy before coming to El Paso around 1869, then spent the following decades in an extraordinary run of frontier service — in the Mexican and U.S. armies and as a U.S. Marshal at Las Cruces. As sheriff, tax collector, police chief, and railway official, he helped steer El Paso through its transformation from a rough border settlement into a modern city before his death in 1907. His life traced the closing of one frontier era and the rise of the Southwestern metropolis that followed.

Raleigh, NC

James H. Young commanded a Black North Carolina regiment in the Spanish-American War and served as a state legislator while editing the Raleigh Gazette. He was among the most prominent Black leaders in the state at the close of the 19th century. His home stood just feet west of this marker.

Marshall, TX

Connecticut-born physician James Harper Starr came to Texas in 1837 and served the Republic as Secretary of the Treasury and army surgeon. During the Civil War he took on the daunting job of Postmaster General for the Confederacy's western states after federal control of the Mississippi split the South in two—improvising mail routes by pony express, wagon, blockade-runner, and courier to keep soldiers and families connected across enemy lines. After the war he examined East Texas oil showings and founded Marshall's first bank.

Abilene, TX

James Harrison Parramore came west after the Civil War with a Confederate record behind him and cattle on his mind. From a hundred rented acres near Gonzales he built, with his brother-in-law Hugh Lewis and partner C. W. Merchant, the San Simon Cattle and Canal Company — stocking vast Arizona and New Mexico ranges with Texas longhorns for two decades. Settling his large family in Abilene in 1881, he became a fixture of the cattle business and a benefactor of Simmons College, and the grand French Second Empire home he built survived until 1960.

Millard County, UT

This spot lies within the Topaz War Relocation Center, one of ten camps where the United States confined Japanese Americans after Executive Order 9066. On April 11, 1943, James Hatsuki Wakasa, an elderly resident of the camp, was shot and killed by a sentry near the perimeter fence. His death became a rallying point for the incarcerated community and a lasting symbol of the injustice they endured.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1958

Born on this square in 1853, James Hay Reed rose to become one of Pittsburgh's most influential lawyers in the age when the city forged the steel, coke, and rail empires that powered American industry. As a trusted counselor to the business titans who built those great corporations, Reed helped shape the legal scaffolding of the Gilded Age industrial economy. His career reflects the quieter professional class behind Pittsburgh's smokestacks.

Combes, TX

Orphaned at six when his father died in the Civil War, James Henry Dishman grew up fast in East Texas and turned himself into a successful cattleman. In 1893 he gambled on remote, undeveloped school land in northern Cameron County, building a working ranch and earning a reputation for hard work and open-handed generosity — even surviving a near-fatal shooting by a rustler. His land gifts for a railroad right-of-way, a church, a cemetery, and a school literally created the town of Combes around him.

Gonzales, TX

James Hodges, Sr. arrived at Gonzales in April 1835 and quickly bought four leagues of land at the forks of the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers, paying three thousand dollars in silver. That autumn the townspeople elected him a delegate to the Consultation of 1835, the convention that created a provisional government and placed Sam Houston over a new Texas army. He supplied the army in 1836, fled with his family during the Runaway Scrape, and later returned to serve on the county's land commission and raise his family on the rivers.

Granbury, TX

James Hogan Doyle, born in South Carolina in 1846, served the Confederacy in the Civil War before making his way to Texas around 1870. Settling in Granbury, he became a prominent merchant, banker, and civic leader who served several terms as Hood County treasurer. He and his wife, Mary Kate Stringfellow, built their home on this site about 1880 and raised three children there; the property stayed in the family until 1939.

Hillsborough, NC

James Hogg left his native Scotland in 1774 and made a new life as a merchant in the North Carolina backcountry, arriving on the eve of the Revolution. He became a partner in the Transylvania Company, one of the era's bold speculative ventures to claim and settle vast western lands, and later served as a trustee of the new state university. His story braids immigration, frontier ambition, and the founding of public institutions.

Burton, TX

James Holt came to Texas around 1836, in the very first years of the Republic, and in 1838 received a substantial 1,280-acre grant along Mill Creek. Like many frontier settlers he wore several hats, serving as a Texas Ranger and later as postmaster of Vine Grove. When he died his widow Mary stepped into the postmaster's role — a common frontier arrangement that quietly kept mail and community running.

Boerne, TX

This two-story limestone house was built around 1880 by Ives Brown for the Kingsbury family and, in 1925, was bought by Maria James — the pioneer surveyor and community leader who had platted the town of Boerne back in 1852. She named the home "Puccoon" for her ancestral place in Hanover County, Virginia, and it stayed in her family after her death in 1940. Her career surveying and laying out a town was a striking achievement for a woman of her era.

Guilford County, NC

James Hunter was a leader of the Regulators, backcountry farmers who rose in the 1760s and early 1770s against corrupt local officials and unfair taxes. After the movement was crushed at the Battle of Alamance in 1771, Hunter was declared an outlaw, and Governor William Tryon's troops burned a nearby house in the reprisals that followed.

Edenton, NC

James Iredell, Jr. (1788–1853) served North Carolina as governor in 1827–28, as a U.S. senator, and as a state legislator, the son of a U.S. Supreme Court justice of the same name. Among his lasting contributions was compiling a revisal of the state's laws, an essential task in an era when scattered statutes had to be gathered into usable form. His home stood two blocks south of this marker, with his grave at nearby Hayes plantation.

Edenton, NC

James Iredell rose from colonial official to become one of the intellectual architects of the new nation's legal order. He served as North Carolina's attorney general during the Revolution and championed ratification of the Constitution, and in 1790 President Washington named him to the first U.S. Supreme Court, where he sat until his death in 1799. His Edenton home still stands nearby.

Flemingsburg, KY

James J. Andrews lived here from 1859 to 1862 before undertaking one of the Civil War's most daring exploits. Leading a small party of Union soldiers deep into Georgia, he seized the locomotive "The General" and tried to wreck the railroad between Marietta and Chattanooga in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase. The raid ended in a dramatic pursuit and the raiders' capture, and Andrews paid for it with his life.

Carson City, NV

On St. Patrick's Day 1897, Carson City hosted Nevada's first world heavyweight championship prizefight, staged in a purpose-built arena after the state legislature legalized the sport. Over fourteen rounds, challenger Robert Fitzsimmons dethroned the reigning champion, 'Gentleman Jim' Corbett, before thousands of fans. Promoter Dan Stuart ran a clean, well-managed show despite fierce criticism from pulpits and newspapers elsewhere.

La Grange, TX

James Jeffres Ross came to Stephen F. Austin's colony as one of the "Old Three Hundred," the first legally settled Anglo-American families in Mexican Texas. A militia captain, convention delegate, and successful trader, he helped win Austin's release from a Mexican prison and left his name on Ross Prairie and Ross Creek. In 1835 he was killed by neighbors enraged that he had sheltered Indians in his home.

Lampasas, TX

Illinois-born James Jackson Beeman came to Texas in 1840 and became one of the first settlers of Dallas and Weatherford. He helped cut the first road through the Trinity bottoms, took part in platting the future city of Dallas in 1842, and guided President Sam Houston to an Indian council in 1843. His restless frontier life carried him to the California Gold Rush and into the 1860 recovery of the long-captive Cynthia Ann Parker before he returned to Dallas.

Conroe, TX

Born in Ireland around 1790, James Jordan came to Texas in 1826 as part of José Vehlein's colony and built this cabin about 1830 on land granted by the Mexican government. Its hand-hewn pine logs were joined with half-dovetail notching and its chimney fashioned of mud and sticks; the Tharp family moved and restored the house in 1976.

East Brandywine Township, PA · est. 2022

In a farmhouse in the Chester County countryside, singer-songwriter Jim Croce wrote many of the songs that would define early-1970s American radio. Hits like "Time in a Bottle," "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," and "Operator" married storytelling about everyday people to warm, upbeat melodies, propelling the two-time Grammy nominee to national fame. His career was cut tragically short in 1973 when he died in a plane crash at the height of his success.

Houston, TX

Built in 1912 and remodeled in 1924 by noted architect Birdsall P. Briscoe, this classical revival house was home to businessman and ornithologist James Judson Carroll and his wife Lena, from a prominent lumber family. Its colossal two-story columns, fine balustrade, and interior carvings by artist Peter Mansbendel reflect the confident wealth of early-twentieth-century Houston. The residence remains a showcase of period craftsmanship.

Dallas, TX

Trained as a lawyer in Tennessee, J. K. P. Record became Dallas's district attorney in 1860 before leaving office to serve in the Confederate Army. Returning after the Civil War, he won election as a state senator and sat as a delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1866, one of the fraught gatherings that tried to reshape the defeated South. He later practiced law in Dallas and was active in the Masons and Odd Fellows.

Kerrville, TX

James Kerr, a Kentucky-born veteran of the War of 1812 and former Missouri legislator, came to Texas in 1825 as surveyor general of Green DeWitt's colony and a member of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred." He selected the site of Gonzales and named it for the governor of Coahuila, endured the deaths of his first wife and children, and spent decades as a surveyor, Texas Ranger major, and delegate to the conventions that steered Texas toward independence. In 1856 pioneer Joshua Brown gave land here so that Kerr County would bear his old friend's name.

Houston, TX

James L. Autry came to Corsicana in 1876 and studied law just as Texas's first oil discoveries were transforming the state's economy. As chief counsel for the Texas Company—later Texaco—he helped invent the new field of petroleum law. In 1912 he commissioned the noted firm Sanguinet and Staats to build this Neoclassical home, distinguished by its double galleries, fluted Doric columns, and tile roof.

Corsicana, TX

James L. Collins entered the oil business at fourteen in West Virginia and followed Texas's new discoveries to Corsicana around 1923, forming the Wheelock & Collins Oil Co. He became a force in developing the Corsicana and East Texas fields and rose to leadership in national petroleum associations. A lifelong bachelor, he left his $13 million estate to charities, a Catholic school built at this site, and scholarships for Corsicana graduates.

Austin, TX

As a boy in the 1920s, James L. Farmer, Jr. lived here while his father taught at Samuel Huston College. In 1942 he founded the Congress of Racial Equality, which trained activists in Gandhian nonviolent protest, and in 1961 he led the Freedom Riders who braved violence to desegregate interstate travel across the Deep South. Farmer later served in the federal government and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Marshall, TX

Born in Marshall, where his father taught at Wiley College, James Leonard Farmer, Jr., entered college at fourteen and honed his ideas on Melvin Tolson's famed debate team before studying nonviolence under Howard Thurman at Howard University. In 1942 he co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality, organized early restaurant sit-ins, led the 1961 Freedom Rides into the Deep South, and helped drive passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; President Clinton awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Hillsboro, TX

James Lindell Harris was born on a farm near Hillsboro in 1916 and entered the Army in 1941, training at Fort Sam Houston before joining the 756th Tank Battalion. He led his men through North Africa and Europe, and at Vagney, France, though mortally wounded, kept directing his unit and refused aid until a wounded crewman was carried to safety. For that courage he received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

San Marcos, TX

Built in 1891–92 for James and Eliza Malone, parents of sixteen children, this Victorian Queen Anne home anchored the Stringtown settlement east of San Marcos, where the Malones were among the earliest pioneer families. A 1926 remodel gave it a Classical Revival face, and a 1996 renovation restored its exuberant original details — the two-story porch, chamfered columns, jigsawn brackets, and turned balusters.

Marshall, TX

James Leonard Farmer, Sr. earned a doctorate from Boston University in 1918 and became a Methodist minister and scholar of philosophy and religion, teaching at Wiley College and other historically Black institutions across the South. A popular speaker and author, he pastored churches in Marshall, Texarkana, and Galveston. His son, James Farmer, Jr., grew up to found the Congress of Racial Equality and lead the civil rights movement.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1947

James Lick was born in the Pennsylvania German community of Fredericksburg in 1796 and left to seek his fortune far to the west, eventually amassing one of the great California fortunes of the Gold Rush era. A piano-maker turned land speculator, he poured his wealth into public gifts, most famously endowing the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton—for a time home to the world's largest refracting telescope. The family monuments in the local cemetery mark the humble Lebanon County roots of a man remembered on the far coast.