Search Markers

Hawkins, TX

One of the first one-teacher schools in Wood County, Macedonia School served the county's earliest community — Macedonia, renamed Redland in 1900. W. M. McCarroll donated the land in 1885, and W. M. Harris was among its first teachers. In 1944 the little school consolidated with the Hawkins Independent District.

Jefferson, TX

After the Civil War and emancipation, freedpeople in western Marion County gathered under the leadership of Henry Smith and, on land belonging to a white settler named Leigh High, organized Macedonia Methodist Episcopal Church in April 1872. Within two years the congregation founded its own school, and over the following decades it built and rebuilt sanctuaries as fire, growth, and hard times demanded. A 1968 merger renewed the congregation, which endures as Macedonia United Methodist Church.

Bellville, TX

Michael Machemehl was one of the German "Forty-Eighters"—emigrants who left in the wake of the failed 1848 revolutions—arriving in America from Saxony in 1849 with his wife and son. The family bought 800 acres in Austin County and divided it between father and son. The cemetery began in 1850 with the death of a daughter-in-law, and a central limestone monument now records eight family members buried here.

Fort Hancock, TX

Benito Martinez grew up in the tiny border town of Fort Hancock, graduating from its high school in 1951 before shipping out to Korea. On September 6, 1952, near Satae-Ri, the young corporal made a lone six-hour stand, refusing offers of rescue so his unit could regain vital ground—an act of valor that cost him his life. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration.

Lufkin, TX

These machines powered the vast lumber operations that reshaped the East Texas Piney Woods in the early twentieth century. Steam locomotive No. 3 and a 1906 wood-burning steam loader were bought by the Carter-Kelley Lumber Company to build and supply its sawmill at Manning, hauling logs, freight, and passengers over shifting 'portable' logging railroads whose cables could drag timber hundreds of feet to the tracks. The equipment served until the 1950s, after the company had merged with W.T. Carter & Brother.

Athens, TX

In 1882 local planter H. M. Morrison started Athens's first factory to make building brick, equipped with nothing more than this hand-operated press and a mule-drawn plunger that mixed clay dug on site. C. H. Coleman bought into the firm in 1891 and became sole owner after Morrison's death, and the plant kept turning out "Coleman brick" for decades. Harbison-Walker Refractories acquired the business in 1940 and ran it until 1968.

Lincoln County, NC

Established as a Presbyterian burial ground in 1801, Machpelah Cemetery holds the graves of several figures central to the region's Revolutionary and early national history, among them Alexander Brevard and General Joseph Graham. It reflects the Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlement of the Carolina Piedmont.

Granger, TX

Czech immigrants Pavel and Rozina Machu settled in Williamson County in 1878 and helped build up its farming community. The cemetery on their land began in 1883 when Pavel offered to bury a stranger who had died on his journey, and it grew to hold family descendants, veterans, and neighbors. Threatened by construction of the Laneport Dam, the entire cemetery was carefully relocated to this site in 1976 and is still tended by the Machu family.

Storey County, NV

This elegant 1860s mansion was both the home of John Mackay and the office of the Gould & Curry Mining Company on the Comstock Lode. Mackay, an Irish immigrant, rose to become the richest man the Comstock ever produced, and the house served as headquarters for the "Silver Kings"—Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien—whose fortunes came from the fabulous Big Bonanza. The building famously survived Virginia City's Great Fire of 1875.

Gilmer County, GA

This memorial honors Benton MacKaye (1879–1975), the forester and regional planner whose vision gave rise to the Appalachian Trail. In the early 1920s MacKaye proposed a continuous footpath along the crest of the eastern mountains as a refuge from industrial life, an idea that volunteers spent decades turning into reality. The finished trail runs some 2,000 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia—near where this marker stands at the southern gateway—to Mount Katahdin in Maine. His insistence that each stretch be carefully maintained and left wild still guides the trail today.

Lubbock, TX

In the early 1870s the U.S. Army cut this scouting route across the West Texas plains, part of the campaigns that opened the Llano Estacado to outside travel. After the soldiers came the buffalo hunters of the late 1870s, and then the cattlemen who drove herds across the open range until barbed wire fenced it in. The granite block itself carries a poignant twist: it was taken from the graveyard wall of a South Carolina woman, Nancy Anderson, and set here by her descendants in the D.A.R.

Rocksprings, TX

When the U.S. Army built Forts Clark and McKavett in 1852, this rough frontier trail linked the two posts; after Fort Concho was founded in 1867 it was extended north toward present San Angelo. It later took the name of Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, the 1873 commander of Fort Clark, who rode it during his campaigns against Native peoples of the region. Along the way, Mackenzie Lake watered soldiers, cattle drives, settlers, and Texas Rangers patrolling the frontier.

Floresville, TX

Nelson Mackey was born into a Hudson Valley family where the name was practically a byword for brickmaking, and after ventures in Iowa and Illinois he brought that trade to the San Antonio area in the late 1870s. By 1887 he and partners held land near Calaveras with clay pits and vast woodlots to fire the kilns, a company town with worker housing, tokens, and a store, and a rail spur to carry the buff-colored bricks across south Texas. Mackey bricks built downtown San Antonio landmarks and, in 1891, the state lunatic asylum with seven million of them, before fierce competition sent the business into decline by the time of his death in 1898.

Edenton, NC

Established in 1735 across the broad waters of Albemarle Sound, Mackeys Ferry carried travelers, goods, and mail where no bridge could reach, succeeding the earlier Bells Ferry. For more than two centuries it remained a vital link in the region's road network before it was finally discontinued in 1938. Its northern landing lay four blocks south of here.

Washington County, NC

Established in 1735, Mackeys Ferry carried travelers and goods across the broad waters of Albemarle Sound, taking over a route first opened by the earlier Bells Ferry. For two centuries it stitched together the isolated communities of northeastern North Carolina, running until bridges and modern roads finally retired it in 1938. Its southern landing lay about three miles to the northwest.

Frankfort, KY

This brick townhouse, built around 1850 in Frankfort's Corner of Celebrities district, became the home of George B. Macklin, a prominent landowner and coal dealer who arrived from the Forks of Elkhorn area in 1867. Macklin ran his coal yard near the Louisville & Nashville Railroad bridge, tapping the rail traffic that made coal a booming Gilded Age business. Behind the house stand a rare two-story brick carriage house and the site of a blacksmith shop, remnants of a self-contained 19th-century urban household.

Carlinville, IL

The Macoupin County Jail stands in Carlinville, the central-Illinois county seat famous for its extravagant Gilded Age courthouse. Built in the era when growing Midwestern counties raised ambitious public buildings, the jail reflects the civic ambitions of a prairie town settled in the decades after Illinois statehood. It remains a landmark of nineteenth-century county government architecture.

San Augustine, TX

Nathaniel Hunt and his family had settled here by the time Texas became a republic in 1836, and his home doubled as a mail stop on the San Augustine–to–Houston route. The burial ground began as the Hunt Cemetery with John Neely's death in 1845, later taking the name Macune to honor Farmers' Alliance leader Charles Macune when the community's post office opened in 1888. Among its graves are Edwin Oswald LeGrand, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the War of 1812.

New York, NY · est. 2002

Founded on 14th Street in 1858, Macy's led the northward march of New York's retail trade when it opened its monumental Herald Square store in 1902. Designed by DeLemos and Cordes and billed as 'The World's Largest Store,' the building became an anchor of a new shopping district. Critics have long counted it among the architectural jewels of turn-of-the-century New York.

Village of Irvington, NY

V. Everit Macy (1871–1930) belonged to the wealthy Macy family and became one of Westchester County's most influential public figures during the Gilded Age and early Progressive era. Rather than simply enjoying his inherited fortune, he poured his time into public service, serving in county government and championing social welfare, parks, and civic improvement across the region. This monument honors that blend of private generosity and personal commitment to the common good that the inscription so plainly celebrates.

New Orleans, LA

Known as 'Madame John's Legacy,' this French colonial home was built in 1788 for the Spanish army captain Don Manuel Lanzos, on a site occupied since about 1725. It was the birthplace of Renato Beluche (1781–1860), a Baratarian associate of Jean Lafitte who fought in the Battle of New Orleans and later became an admiral in the Venezuelan navy. The earlier house here belonged to Jean Pascal, a sailor killed in the 1729 Natchez uprising, and the property took its literary nickname from a George W. Cable story before passing to the Louisiana State Museum.

Hempstead, TX

Escaping slavery in Alabama, Madison "Matt" Kilpatrick reached Waller County before the Civil War and built a remarkable life in freedom. A gifted blacksmith who improved farm implements, he became a landowner and a leader among freedmen, serving as Waller County's first treasurer from 1873 to 1876. His public office during Reconstruction placed him among the first generation of Black Texans to hold local power.

Elizabethtown, IN · est. 1999

Authorized under Indiana's ambitious 1836 Internal Improvement Act, the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad began at the Ohio River in 1836 and reached the state capital by 1847. The line's arrival gave rise to Elizabethtown, platted in 1845 as a direct result of the tracks. It was among the first railroads to link the river trade to Indiana's interior.

Madisonville, TX

Carved from Grimes, Walker, and Leon counties, Madison County was created and organized in 1853 as Texas filled in the political map of its settled interior. It honors James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" and fourth president of the United States, with Madisonville as its county seat. The naming reflects the young state's habit of tying its new institutions to the founders of the nation it had joined.

Edwardsville, IL

This monument was dedicated on September 16, 1912 to mark the 100th anniversary of Madison County, Illinois, organized in 1812. Governor Charles Deneen, an Edwardsville native, dedicated it to the county's early settlers, and it was designed by the noted sculptor Charles Mulligan. The centennial fell during Illinois's own approach to its 1918 statehood centennial.

Orange, TX

Leading citizens including Mexican War veteran Col. Hugh Ochiltree and Republic of Texas congressman George A. Pattillo organized Madison Lodge No. 126 in 1853, taking the name by which the town of Orange was then known. Beyond its Masonic work, the lodge sponsored the town's first public school from 1854 to 1879 and hosted church services on its ground floor. Successive hurricanes and rebuildings carried the lodge from its 1853 origins to the substantial hall completed in 1926.

Cumberland Township, PA

This War Department tablet records the service of the Madison (Mississippi) Light Artillery, Ward's Battery, on July 3, 1863. Its Napoleon guns took part in the tremendous cannonade that preceded Longstreet's assault — the charge remembered as Pickett's Charge — before withdrawing to a position nearby. The marker notes that the battery's howitzer was held in the rear and saw no action that day.

San Antonio, TX

Presbyterian missionary William Buchanan arrived in San Antonio in 1881 and, drawing on the city's military and northern-born community, organized Madison Square Presbyterian Church in early 1882 in what was then the outlying "Upper San Antonio." A rusticated Gothic Revival stone church rose in 1883, was wrecked by an 1886 windstorm, and was rebuilt by 1895. In 1942 the congregation helped bring Trinity University to San Antonio.

Madisonville, LA

First called "Cokie" for the shells heaped along its shores, this Tchefuncte-River town was renamed about 1811 to honor President James Madison. It hosted a U.S. Navy yard in the early 1800s, and tradition holds that Andrew Jackson paused here in November 1814 on his way to defend New Orleans. The settlement grew as a shipbuilding and maritime community on Lake Pontchartrain's north shore.

Madisonville, LA

In use from 1800 to the present, Madisonville Cemetery holds pre-Louisiana Purchase colonial settlers alongside veterans of the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and many others of local and national note. Its graves span the transformation of the Gulf Coast from French and Spanish colonial ground into an American community. The Daughters of the American Colonists placed the marker in 2015.

Madisonville, TX

Organized in 1858 by Brother Benton Sweeney and nineteen charter members, this congregation took root in the last years before the Civil War. For decades it relied on traveling ministers and moved among several buildings before settling on this site in 1931. Long a fixture of Madisonville civic life, it counted many of the town's leaders among its members.

Madisonville, LA

After Union forces captured Madisonville, soldiers "on fatigue duty" dug these fortifications between January and March 1864 to guard the town against Confederate raids from the countryside. The line was a trench fronted by an abatis — a barrier of felled trees with sharpened points aimed outward — running westward across town. The Union held Madisonville to draw off its timber, lumber, turpentine, tar, and bricks for the Department of the Gulf.

Wheeling, WV

This is one of twelve identical Madonna of the Trail monuments raised across the country in the late 1920s by the Daughters of the American Revolution to honor the women who crossed the continent alongside the men. The Wheeling statue stands near the path of the National Road, the young republic's first federally funded highway, which pushed west from Cumberland, Maryland and turned this Ohio River town into a bustling gateway for wagons, drovers, and emigrant families. The heroic figure—a sunbonneted mother striding forward with a baby in her arms and a child at her skirts—was meant to fix the pioneer woman permanently in the national memory.

Bethesda, MD

This is one of twelve identical "Madonna of the Trail" monuments the Daughters of the American Revolution placed across the country in 1928 and 1929, each a stern pioneer mother in bonnet and shawl striding westward with a child at her side. The DAR raised them to honor the women of the covered-wagon generation and to mark the National Old Trails Road, a coast-to-coast auto route that stitched together older paths of American expansion. As the inscription notes, this ground carried far older traffic too: in the spring of 1755 General Edward Braddock led his ill-fated British and colonial army along this corridor toward Fort Duquesne, in the opening campaign of the French and Indian War.

Bainbridge Island, WA

On this spot on August 11, 1890, the first post office on the north shore of Eagle Harbor opened under the name "Madrone," named for the region's distinctive red-barked evergreen. In the frontier days of Puget Sound settlement, a post office was often the first institution to give a scattering of homesteads and mill workers a recognized name and a place on the map. The U.S. Postal Service placed this commemorative plaque a century later, in 1990.

Galveston, TX

After an 1869 fire swept The Strand, John F. Magale rebuilt on this site in 1870 to house his wholesale liquor business, giving the Victorian structure a cast-iron first-floor facade and ornate window hoods. For much of the next century it served as a well-known paint and hardware store. It stands as part of Galveston's storied commercial district in the island's boom years as a Gulf port.

Abilene, TX

One of Abilene's earliest fine houses, this Colonial Revival home was built in 1903 by Dr. Jefferson Davis Magee, a Mississippi-born physician trained in Louisville who came to Abilene in 1902 and ran both a drugstore and a busy medical practice. Set on an entire city block and framed by lofty Ionic columns of cypress, the oak-lumber house was known for its hospitality. It was restored between 1962 and 1970 and recorded as a Texas Historical Landmark in 1971.

Coupland, TX

Reinhold Mager, born in Brandenburg, Germany, married Franziska Krueger of the nearby Dessau community and donated an acre of their Williamson County farmland for a cemetery and school. The first known burial came in 1900, and many of the tombstones bear German inscriptions, fourteen of them marking the graves of infants. Burials ceased in 1951 with Franziska's own interment.

Holliday, TX

Holliday took shape in 1890 as the Wichita Valley Railway pushed through and a townsite was platted along Holliday Creek. That same year Maggie Holt married H.W. Simpson; four years later he rode off on a cattle drive to Dodge City and vanished forever. Left to raise her son alone, Maggie bought a hotel in 1907 and ran it herself for nearly four decades until her death in 1946.

Burnet, TX

Ringed by a rock wall, this small family graveyard lies on what was the homestead of William H. Magill, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto who brought his family to Burnet County in 1850. He opened the cemetery in 1863 with the burial of his fifteen-year-old son John, and it holds his own grave, his second wife, and his parents, along with at least one unmarked burial.

Magnolia, TX

First known as Mink's Prairie and later just Mink, this Montgomery County settlement got a new name when the railroad arrived in 1902 and dubbed it Melton for landowner Jim Melton. When the Post Office kept confusing it with Milton, residents settled on Magnolia, for the flowering trees along nearby Mill Creek.

Montgomery, TX

Built in 1854 for Peter J. Willis and his wife Caroline, this home was named "Magnolia" for their daughter — the first child born in the house and later the namesake of the Magnolia Petroleum Company. Bought furnished by Ilai and Melissa Davis in 1868, it stayed in their family for generations, who preserved much of the original furniture hauled here by boat and wagon from New York.

Houston, TX

Magnolia Brewery was part of the Houston Ice and Brewing Company, founded in the late 1800s by Hugh Hamilton and known for its Magnolia, Southern Select, and Richelieu beers. This 1912 building, designed by H.C. Cooke and Co., stood within a sprawling complex along Buffalo Bayou, distinguished by a bold cornice, corbelled corner parapet, and stained-glass transoms bearing a magnolia design. The company closed in 1950, but the building endures as a landmark of the city's industrial past.

Houston, TX

Magnolia Cemetery began in 1884 when Henrietta Steiner buried her kin here, and within days members of Houston's First German Methodist Church established it as a burial ground for their congregation. Over the following century it opened to the wider public, ceded land for Allen Parkway, and evolved into a landscaped resting place shaded by the Wortham mausoleum. More than 3,800 people lie here, including veterans of most American wars from the Civil War onward.

Magnolia, TX

In use for decades before Tom J. Goodson and his wife Winnie May deeded it to the Baptist church in 1909, this burial ground later grew through gifts of land from their son and from local sawmill owner C.H. Daniel. Its earliest marked graves belong to the brothers James and William Proctor, who died just days apart in 1878 for reasons now forgotten. Buried here are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—generations of the Magnolia community.

Elkhart, TX

Like many early African American burial grounds, Magnolia Cemetery left little written record, and its story survives largely through oral tradition. Land was reportedly given by farmer E. P. Murray, and its oldest marked grave belongs to Isham Murray, a former slave born in 1805. At least sixteen other African Americans born in slavery rest here, alongside veterans of World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Beaumont, TX

Chartered by the State of Texas in 1887, the Magnolia Cemetery Company bought thirteen acres in Beaumont, and burials began almost at once. Over the years the grounds grew to surround several older burial plots, including Hebrew Rest, an Odd Fellows cemetery, and a plot deeded in 1876, while neighboring Knights of Pythias and St. Michael's Orthodox cemeteries stand apart. Many of Beaumont's early settlers rest here, among them two veterans of the Texas Revolution, beneath markers ranging from simple stones to sculpted angels and family mausoleums.

League City, TX

This cemetery traces its beginnings to the 1855 arrival of the intermarried Perkins, Butler, and Coward families, whose descendants make up most of those buried here, including four Civil War veterans. The first recorded burial came in 1859, and a deed in 1884 formally set aside four acres for graveyard purposes. Long called Butler Cemetery for a prominent local family, it was preserved by agreement with developers in 1982.

Magnolia, TX

Built in 1902 by the International and Great Northern Railroad, the Magnolia depot became a busy shipping point for cotton, sweet potatoes, cattle, and lumber from the surrounding farms and sawmills. After closing in 1963 it was auctioned off and served for years as a barn, until it was recovered in 1993 and moved back to Magnolia and restored within yards of its original site. With its pedimented doors, roof brackets, and clipped gable ends, it remains a fine example of early 20th-century folk Victorian depot architecture.

Marshall, TX

In 1866, as Texas emerged from the Civil War, cotton lawyer John H. Lee built this brick-and-cypress "raised cottage" in the New Orleans style as a wedding gift for his daughter Anna. The gracious home passed to the Pierce family of lawyers and even hosted a small private school on its grounds. Carefully restored a century later, it survives as a proud example of Reconstruction-era Marshall's ambitions.

Beaumont, TX

This congregation began in November 1890 with Christians worshiping in a schoolhouse and in members' homes, then bought land and organized Evergreen Baptist Church under its first pastor, Rev. Dickerson. Renamed Magnolia Baptist Church in 1900, it acquired its present location in 1925 and grew steadily across the 20th century, dedicating new sanctuaries in 1981 and 2011. It took the name Magnolia Missionary Baptist Church in 1995 and has supported missions from Beaumont to Haiti and Africa.

Corsicana, TX

Corsicana is remembered as the birthplace of the Texas oil industry, and in 1898 it gained the state's first commercial oil refinery. Joseph S. Cullinan, a manager lured from Standard Oil in Pennsylvania, built the plant with four great firing stills and fired the first crude on Christmas Day 1898. His company grew into the Magnolia Petroleum Company — later Mobil Oil, famous for its flying red horse — and though the refinery closed in 1941, one original brick-lined still survives.

Houston, TX

Magnolia Park began in 1890 as a sprawling excursion park shaded by the magnolia trees that gave it its name, then was replatted into subdivisions and briefly incorporated as its own city before Houston annexed it in 1926. Though its founders were of European descent, the neighborhood became one of Houston's first Mexican American communities, its population swelling as families fled the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. Its Catholic parishes, schools, and civic groups — including Houston's first LULAC council, formed here in 1934 — have anchored a thriving Hispanic community for more than a century.

Houston, TX

When the young city of Magnolia Park outgrew its scattered temporary offices, its leaders combined city hall and the central fire station in a single brick building, dedicated in 1923 on the tenth anniversary of the town's incorporation. Designed by a Houston architectural firm and built by a local contractor, it housed the mayor, aldermen, and firefighters under one roof. After Houston annexed Magnolia Park in 1926 the building carried on as a fire station, police substation, and even a voting precinct.

Kirbyville, TX

Founded around 1824 as "Pinetucky" by the Wright brothers and renamed Magnolia Springs when its post office opened in 1850, this East Texas community grew up around its churches and this shared burial ground. The earliest known grave dates to 1858, and in 1860 the Fellowship Baptist Church bought land here for worship and burials. In 1902 the graveyard grew when the Black congregation of Springhill Church purchased adjoining acreage, and today more than 900 marked and unmarked graves hold the community's early preachers, physicians, and planters.

El Paso, TX

Kentucky-born trader James Wiley Magoffin began buying land here in 1849, building a home and trading complex that became one of early American El Paso's four population centers. From 1854 to 1868 the U.S. Army post of Fort Bliss stood on his leased ground, and during the Civil War federal forces confiscated and damaged his property. After his 1868 death his family regained land, and his son Joseph became an early El Paso real estate and immigration promoter.

Frackville, PA · est. 2007

To move mountains of anthracite out of the Mahanoy Valley, engineers built an inclined-plane railroad that hauled loaded coal cars up the steep face of Broad Mountain to Frackville. Opened in 1862 within the Reading Railroad system and enlarged in the early 20th century, it grew into an engineering marvel capable of meeting national demand for hard coal. After lifting hundreds of millions of tons, it fell silent in 1932, leaving only partial ruins behind.

Skokie, IL

This monument commemorates Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Indian leader whose campaigns of nonviolent resistance helped end British colonial rule. Standing in a diverse Chicago suburb, it honors his philosophy of truth, love, and justice pursued without violence. Gandhi's example crossed oceans, shaping movements far beyond India.

Bertram, TX

With graves reaching back to the 1850s, this burial ground served the neighboring Sycamore Springs and Mahomet communities before being formally deeded to Mahomet in 1909. Hundreds rest here, including many of Burnet County's earliest settlers and veterans of American wars from the Mexican War through Vietnam. Descendants still tend the active cemetery today.

Bertram, TX

Settlement of this part of Burnet County began in the 1850s with two neighboring communities, Mahomet and Sycamore Springs, some eight miles apart. Sycamore Springs once boasted gins, a store, and churches but has all but vanished, while Mahomet—likely named by its first postmaster for Mahomet, Illinois—hosted a post office and an Austin-Lampasas stage stop. Its Christian church and Masonic lodge still mark the site.