Search Markers

Paint Rock, TX

Rich Coffey drove his family, cattle, and cowboys into the rugged country near present-day Ballinger in 1862 and later founded a settlement where the Colorado and Concho rivers meet. A cattleman, freighter, salt trader, county commissioner, and postmaster, he hired Irish stonemason Jonathan Cook to raise a rock house in 1880–81 — a one-and-a-half-story dogrun of unusually fine masonry, a Georgia-style floor plan rare for stone buildings in West Texas. In 1989 the house was moved to higher ground to escape the rising waters of Lake Ivie.

Houston County, TX

Richard "Dick" King and Rachel Ellis King were both born into slavery in Alabama and brought to East Texas before the Civil War. Married in 1869, they raised nine children to adulthood and became respected members of the Hopewell Community, operating a grist mill, syrup mill, and commissary. Richard served as an early pastor of the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church and sat on the school board.

Valera, TX

Richard A. Pauley fulfilled a boyhood dream when he was elected sheriff of Coleman County in 1923 after years as a rancher. Widely respected as a true gentleman, he often went unarmed, preferring to persuade fugitives that the law was there to protect rather than harm them. His life ended in 1925 when he was shot by two stowaways while investigating a railroad car, leaving his wife Kate and son Russell.

Edinburg, TX

Kentucky native Richard A. Marsh came to the Rio Grande Valley in 1880 to teach the children at Fort Ringgold, and was troubled by the poor schooling available to children of Mexican descent. He spent the rest of his life improving the region's public education, first as a traveling teacher for ranch schools and then, from 1902 to 1914, as Hidalgo County Superintendent of Schools.

Corpus Christi, TX

Built in 1928 on a bluff above Corpus Christi Bay, this brick Italian Renaissance home was raised by Richard King, grandson of the King Ranch's founder, after a 1919 hurricane destroyed his earlier house. A banker, King helped finance the city's new deep-water port and bring the naval air station to town, while Minerva King made the home a hub of civic and musical organizations. Designed to withstand hurricanes, it was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 2016.

Tyler, TX

Richard Bennett Hubbard, a Georgia-born lawyer, settled in Tyler in 1853 and became a leading voice of the Texas Democratic Party. He raised a battalion at the Civil War's outbreak—it became the 22nd Texas Infantry, which fought at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield—then turned to railroad building when Reconstruction hemmed in his law practice. Elected lieutenant governor in 1873, he became governor in 1876 and later served as U.S. minister to Japan.

Henderson, TX

Richard Brown embodied the perilous decade after Texas won its independence, when the young Republic and Mexico still traded raids across a contested border. A Philadelphia doctor's educated son turned frontier soldier, he joined the ill-fated 1842 Mier Expedition, was captured, and famously cheated a firing squad by drawing a white bean in the notorious black-bean lottery—only to endure two years in a Mexican prison. He returned to build a settled life as teacher, surveyor, and farmer, helping found a local church and Masonic lodge.

Albemarle County, VA

Near this spot on September 21, 1933, Richard C. duPont was launched from Afton Mountain in his Bowlus sailplane Albatross. Riding the air for four hours and fifty minutes, he glided 121.6 miles to Frederick, Maryland, nearly doubling the existing United States distance record for motorless flight.

Robert Lee, TX

Richard Coke (1829-1896) was a Virginia-born Texan who backed secession, served as a Confederate captain in the Trans-Mississippi campaigns, and later sat briefly on the state supreme court before Reconstruction authorities removed him. His 1873 defeat of Governor E. J. Davis, and Davis's grudging departure, is often marked as the political end of Reconstruction in Texas. Coke went on to serve nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate; this memorial was erected by the state in 1963 to Texans who served the Confederacy.

Athens, TX

Born in Falls County in 1888, Richard Columbus Fisher trained as a teacher at Prairie View and in 1914 joined the Blackshear Colored School in Athens. Over nearly two decades he built it from a seven-grade school into an accredited twelve-grade high school, and in 1932 the community moved into a new brick building and named it Fisher High School in his honor—the same year he died.

Sabine Pass, TX

On September 8, 1863, Lt. Richard W. Dowling and forty-seven men of the Davis Guards held a small mud fort at Sabine Pass against a Union flotilla and hundreds of federal troops. Firing with cool precision, the tiny Confederate garrison crippled the attacking gunboats and captured hundreds of prisoners without losing a man. The lopsided victory turned Dowling and his largely Irish-immigrant company into enduring Texas legends.

New Braunfels, TX

Richard Kloepper and Ella Sodke married in 1906 and began building this longleaf-pine home the same year. A prominent New Braunfels businessman, Richard helped found both the New Braunfels State Bank and a local savings and loan. The family lived here only a few years before moving on, but the Queen Anne house — with its spindled porch frieze and decorative shingling — has kept much of its original character.

Kountze, TX

Richard E. Jackson grew up in a family mercantile business and made his career on the East Texas railroads, carrying freight to the sawmills and oilfields that were transforming the region in the early twentieth century. Alarmed that logging and oil exploration threatened the wild Big Thicket he loved, he leased more than 18,000 acres and, beginning in 1929, organized the associations and field studies that rallied support for preserving it. Though the Depression and World War II undid his first efforts, his vision led decades later to the creation of a national preserve.

Austin, TX

Richard Ellis brought a Virginia judicial career to the Texas frontier, and in 1836 he presided over the convention that declared Texas independent from Mexico. As president of that constitutional convention and later a senator in the Republic's Congress, he helped lay the legal foundation of the new nation. Ellis County was named in his honor.

Meadville, PA

Born into slavery in Maryland in 1801, Richard Henderson escaped as a boy and made his way to Meadville around 1824, where he built a life as a barber. From his home on Arch Street he became a fixture of the Underground Railroad, and by tradition the house sheltered some 500 freedom-seekers before the Civil War. In the decades before emancipation, small northern towns like Meadville formed vital links in the secret network carrying people north toward freedom.

Rockport, TX

Born in 1846, Richard Henry Wood was among Rockport's earliest settlers, and in 1866 he and partner James Doughty built the harbor's first cattle pens, warehouse, and wharf, infrastructure that made the town a shipping point for Texas cattle. He served as alderman and later mayor, helped initiate the Texas Game and Fish Commission in 1907, and lived in an 1868 Greek Revival home until his death in 1923. The great 1919 hurricane destroyed much of what he had built.

Bastrop, TX

Around 1910, Bastrop merchants Theodore and Mary Hasler hired architect Gus Brieger to build a home for their daughter Annie and her husband — Gus's own brother, Richard. The late Victorian Queen Anne house, home to the Briegers and their five children, became a favorite setting for social gatherings. During World War II it took on a new role, sheltering wives of soldiers stationed at nearby Camp Swift.

Fredericksburg, VA

On the bloody slopes below Marye's Heights, during the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina is remembered for an act of mercy amid carnage. As wounded Union soldiers lay crying out between the lines, Kirkland reportedly gathered canteens and crossed into the open ground to bring them water, exposing himself to fire from both armies. The monument, set near the stone wall and Sunken Road where Federal assaults were repulsed, honors him as the "Angel of Marye's Heights."

Rosslyn Farms, PA · est. 2023

Born and raised in Rosslyn Farms, Dick Thornburgh rose to lead Pennsylvania as its 41st governor and later the nation's Department of Justice as U.S. Attorney General. Just months into his governorship, he steered the state's emergency response to the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the most serious in U.S. commercial history. As Attorney General he pressed prosecutions of white-collar crime and drug trafficking, and he championed the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Mineola, TX

Kentucky-born Richard Malcolm Smith came to Texas in his youth and made his mark first as a newspaperman with the Galveston News before turning to law and politics. Settling in Wood County in 1897, he founded the Winnsboro Free Press and the Wood County News, then served as county judge, district judge, and a member of the Texas Legislature in the early 1930s. His long public life spanned journalism, the bench, and the statehouse.

Quakertown, PA · est. 2019

In the decades before the Civil War, eastern Pennsylvania's Quaker communities formed a dense network of shelter for people escaping slavery. Richard Moore, a Quakertown businessman and man of conscience, turned his own home into a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom seekers moving north through Bucks County. Among those he aided was William Parker, a central figure in the 1851 Christiana Resistance in which a Maryland slaveholder was killed. Over roughly thirty years Moore helped hundreds continue on toward liberty.

Austin, TX

Born in 1906 in the Pleasant Valley community, Richard Overton enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 and served in the segregated 1887th Engineer Aviation Battalion across the Pacific, helping clear the airstrip on Guam that became Andersen Air Force Base. He returned to East Austin, built a home, and worked as a courier, becoming a beloved fixture of his neighborhood. Recognized in his final years as the oldest living American man and the nation's oldest World War II veteran, he was honored at the White House before his death in 2018 at age 112.

Matagorda, TX

Richard Royster Royall, born in Virginia in 1798, became a leading figure in the earliest days of Texas self-government. He served as temporary chairman of the 1835 Consultation and sat on the General Council of the provisional government during the pivotal months of the Texas Revolution. He died in 1840, having helped guide Texas from colony toward independence.

Lometa, TX

Richard S. Stokes came of age in the divided South, enlisting as a Confederate private in 1861 and rising to lieutenant before the war's end. Like thousands of Southerners, he headed west afterward, settling in Lampasas County, Texas, in 1868 to ranch, farm, and raise a large family. His most remarkable moment came in 1911, when at age 73 he pulled three young people from the Colorado River at Chadwick's Mill—an act of courage that earned him a Carnegie Hero Medal.

Louisburg, NC

Born near here around 1777, Richard Warfington served as a corporal on the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806. Entrusted by the captains, he led the crucial return party from the Mandan villages back toward St. Louis, safely delivering specimens, reports, and dispatches gathered in the expedition's first year. His steady leadership helped preserve the Corps of Discovery's early findings.

Jefferson, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1833, Richard Waterhouse served in the U.S. war with Mexico before becoming a Texas businessman and, in the Civil War, colonel of the 19th Texas Confederate Infantry. He was commended for gallantry at Milliken's Bend during the Vicksburg Campaign and fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in the Red River Campaign, rising to brigadier general. He died in 1876.

Richards, TX

Schooling for Richards' African American children began around 1913 in St. Thomas Methodist Episcopal Church, then moved to the Masonic Lodge Hall and later a two-story schoolhouse near the railroad. Fire repeatedly destroyed the buildings between 1920 and 1937, yet the school endured, absorbing nearby communities and offering everything from basketball to spelling bees and county-fair competitions. A new school built in 1938 was renamed in 1962 for longtime principal and coach W. E. Hall, and it closed in 1966 when Richards schools integrated.

Richardson, TX

Richardson grew out of Breckenridge, a community founded in the 1840s by settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee, and other southern states. When the Houston and Texas Central Railroad bypassed Breckenridge in 1873, its citizens simply moved north to the tracks and renamed the town for railroad contractor E. H. Richardson. Facing the rail line, it thrived as a grain and cotton shipping point, incorporated in 1925, and after World War II traded farming for electronics and manufacturing, exploding past 75,000 people by 1990.

Reagor Springs, TX

John I. Richardson, a county surveyor and Mason who rode with the 12th Texas Confederate Cavalry, married Ann Elizabeth Reagor in 1865, both descendants of the family that gave Reagor Springs its name. The graveyard began with the 1879 burial of a Richardson cousin and was formally deeded for use as a cemetery in 1890. Holding about thirty graves, it became the resting place of the Richardsons and other early Ellis County families before the couple left the area near the turn of the century.

Hallettsville, TX

Richardson Chapel grew from formerly enslaved worshippers who had attended Hallettsville's Methodist Episcopal Church before emancipation and, once free, chose to found a church of their own. In 1882 five trustees bought an acre and a half for sixty dollars, and by 1890 a permanent building stood with Reverend Max Henderson as its first minister. Membership climbed from 80 in 1878 toward 250 by 1900, and the congregation later took the name of Rev. L.R. Richardson, honored at its 1911 conference.

Lanevile, TX

Raised in the 1850s in the East Texas piney woods, this Greek Revival residence carries the classical facade and central hallway fashionable in the antebellum South. Its handmade bricks were fired in a kiln right on the property, and its first family was that of pioneer physician and farmer Dr. Peterson T. Richardson. Purchased by the Lowe family in 1919, it was lovingly restored by a grandson in 1973.

Fort Wayne, IN

This memorial honors Richardville (1761–1841), remembered here as a chief of the Miami people who earned that standing through a daring rescue of a captive from death. He lived through the tumultuous decades when the Miami homeland around present-day Fort Wayne stood at the crossroads of empires and the expanding young United States, a period of warfare, treaty-making, and mounting pressure on Native nations. As a leader bridging Miami and American worlds, he negotiated on behalf of his people during an era of relentless change.

Northampton Township, PA · est. 2007

This was one of thirteen Nike missile sites ringing the Philadelphia area during the Cold War, part of a nationwide air-defense shield built to guard American cities against Soviet bombers. From the mid-1950s, radar here guided Ajax anti-aircraft missiles skyward from launch magazines nearby. As missile technology advanced and arms-control agreements took hold, the system was phased out by the early 1970s.

Sulphur Springs, TX

In 1872, as new farming settlements spread across Northeast Texas, a Baptist congregation and a country school took root at Richland, and the burying ground beside them became the community's enduring anchor. Its graves hold the area's early families and more than a dozen Civil War veterans, with reinterments carrying the record back to the early 1870s. The church and school are long gone, but caretakers have tended the cemetery through societies formed in 1922 and 1962.

Mertens, TX

After bringing their family from Georgia to Texas in 1858, Jesse and Mary Ann Thomas settled along Richland Creek and in 1883 deeded three acres for a community burial ground. The oldest documented grave, from that same year, belongs to Mary E. McCleskey. Five generations of the Thomas family rest here alongside area pioneers and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Richland, TX

Richland rose in the 1870s after the Houston & Texas Central Railroad bypassed older villages, drawing settlers like the Patrick family who relocated a store to the new rail town. The community's first burials began in 1895 on an acre donated from the estate of railroad investor William Marsh Rice, and neighbors long tended the grounds through an annual 'All-Day Working.' The cemetery holds veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II alongside Navarro County's founding families.

Pflugerville, TX

In the 1870s, German farming families in northern Travis County set out to school their children, and settler Franz Schmidt gave first his home and then an acre of his rich Blackland soil for the purpose—soil that gave the Richland School its name. A one-room schoolhouse rose in 1878, taught at first by German-speaking minister-teachers until the community pressed the state for a full-time, English-speaking instructor. The school grew across the decades, weathered a 1936 consolidation push, and finally merged into Pflugerville ISD in 1945.

Llano, TX

Mississippi-born R.A. McInnis came to Llano as a young man in the 1870s and made himself a fixture of the growing Hill Country town. He ran the Llano Furniture Company on the square, served as county sheriff in the early 1880s, married Martha Caroline Bozarth in 1882, and later won election as one of the town's first aldermen. As president of the Llano Railroad Commission he pushed to connect the town to rail markets; the 1882 house he owned stayed in his family for 110 years.

New York, NY

In 1899, as the free public library movement swept American cities, Queens resident Ella Flanders — a member of the civic-minded 20th Century Club — launched a free circulating library out of Arcanum Hall on Jamaica Avenue, planting the seed of what became the Richmond Hill Branch of the Queens Borough Public Library. Women's clubs like hers were the quiet engines behind countless early American libraries, raising funds and stocking shelves at a time when tax-supported reading rooms were still a novelty. Among its first trustees was Jacob Riis, the reformer and photojournalist whose exposés of tenement life had made the case that knowledge and opportunity should reach every neighborhood.

Yadkin County, NC

Richmond Pearson served as Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1859 to 1878, guiding the state's highest bench through the turmoil of the Civil War and Reconstruction. At his home, Richmond Hill, he ran a private law school that trained a great many of the state's future lawyers and judges. His influence on North Carolina jurisprudence was profound.

Town of West Point, WI

This memorial park in the Wisconsin countryside honors James and Emma Richmond and the other early settlers who homesteaded the land beginning in 1849, not long after the region was surveyed in 1831. Gilbert and Ruth Richmond donated the ground so future generations could learn from and enjoy the striking rock formations known as the Rocks of Gibraltar. Dedicated in 1929 with the Friends of Our Native Landscape, it joins pioneer memory to the conservation of a natural landmark.

Asheville, NC

Richmond Pearson represented western North Carolina in Congress at the turn of the twentieth century, then took up a diplomatic career as U.S. Minister to Persia and later to Greece and Montenegro. His estate, "Richmond Hill," stood a half mile from this marker on a bluff above the French Broad River. His life bridged the worlds of mountain politics and international diplomacy in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1982

On April 3, 1793, the English equestrian John Bill Ricketts opened America's first purpose-built circus building at 12th and Market Streets and gave the young nation its first complete circus performance. Blending daring horsemanship with acrobatics and clowning, Ricketts introduced a form of popular entertainment that would sweep the country. His shows drew the era's most famous spectator: President George Washington attended later that first season.

Bowling Green, OH

For 127 years, from 1886 to 2013, the Ridge Street School served the children of Bowling Green, Ohio, as a neighborhood schoolhouse where generations learned and played. Founded in the late nineteenth century, it educated families through more than a century of change before finally closing. This marker was dedicated to everyone who taught and learned on the site.

Riesel, TX

After the Civil War, fertile soil, good water, and rail access drew cotton farmers to this stretch of southeastern McLennan County, soon joined by German settlers from Washington County led by the Rev. Friedrich Von Schleumbach. The nearby postal stop of Roddy served the area until William Henry Riesel built a cotton gin here in 1890, giving a town a reason to grow. Von Schleumbach platted the townsite, and Riesel took shape as a local agricultural center.

Columbus, TX

Riesing Cemetery was established in 1872, during the post–Civil War settlement of Colorado County, and was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2005. Though the marker records little beyond its founding date, the burial ground has served the surrounding community for more than 150 years.

Hubbard, TX

This Hubbard home, raised in 1896 by builder Lee Onstott, is a fine local example of the Victorian style then sweeping small-town Texas. Ornamental gables, tile hearths, and ornate glasswork show the decorative ambitions of a prospering Central Texas community at the close of the 19th century. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Pittsburg, TX

The oldest marked grave in this Camp County cemetery dates to 1859, and the surrounding land was acquired by John Riley, Sr., in 1875, giving the burial ground its name. Among those laid to rest here are the Riley family, a Confederate captain who had served in the Georgia legislature, and the family whose name marks the county's highest point. Descendants of these pioneers still live nearby and tend the historic graveyard.

Colleyville, TX

Around 1856 Jonathan Riley brought his family from Kentucky to this part of Tarrant County, receiving a land grant in 1863. Legend holds that the burial ground began when a thief killed nearby was laid to rest here with Riley's permission, after which family and neighbors also used the site; in 1883 Thomas Riley and William Autry formally set aside an acre for a graveyard. Most burials ended before 1897, though Riley's daughter Martha Susan Autry was interred here as late as 1937, among graves now marked only by sandstones or left unmarked.

Fredericksburg, TX

This modest vernacular home went up in 1909 in the German settlement of Fredericksburg, built by Franz Stein for the Riley family. In 1912 it passed to Charles Enderlin, a German immigrant and Civil War veteran who reshaped the house to fit his large family and kept it in Enderlin hands for more than seventy years. Its side-gabled roof, shed-roof porch, and distinctive pair of front doors reflect the plain, practical building traditions of the Texas Hill Country.

New Braunfels, TX

Set in a circa-1895 building that began as the Galloway Saloon, Riley's Tavern claims to be Hunter's oldest business. When Texas voted to repeal Prohibition in 1933, J.C. Riley and his uncle drove a Model T to the state capitol to grab Texas liquor license number 00001, and at the stroke of midnight on September 14 the beer began to flow. Midway between Austin and San Antonio, the tavern drew travelers—and thirsty patrons from surrounding dry counties—for decades under Riley's hand until his death in 1992.

Carson City, NV

Completed in 1876, the Rinckel Mansion is a striking example of High Victorian Italianate architecture, built for merchant Mathias Rinckel by French-schooled designer Charles H. Jones and European craftsmen. Its pressed brick, sandstone foundation from the state prison quarry, and knot-free Tahoe lumber reflect the wealth behind it. Rinckel, a German immigrant, made his first fortune in California's gold country, added to it at Virginia City, and by 1863 had settled in Carson City as a livestock and meat supplier to the mining districts.

Gregory, TX

In the 1850s Youngs Coleman and his son Thomas built a sprawling south Texas cattle operation centered on this spot, chosen for its freshwater depression. In 1871 the Colemans partnered with George W. Fulton and the Mathis brothers to create the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, whose Rincon headquarters grew into a small settlement with a main house, worker housing, a school, and a commissary. The ranch was prominent enough that President William Howard Taft visited in 1909 before the company dissolved in the 1920s.

Bogata, TX

When the Ringo family arrived from Missouri in 1840 with nine children, they set up a ferry across the Sulphur River that quickly became a lifeline for travel, trade, and news between the Red River country and central Texas. Their son expanded the family's holdings on both banks, and the crossing carried travelers until a bridge replaced it in 1900. Long after the ferry was gone, locals still called the spot Ringo's Crossing, and a small family cemetery marked the family's roots nearby.

Rio Grande City, TX

During the Civil War, this booming border town on the Rio Grande served as a Confederate port of entry and customhouse — a key terminus of the "cotton road" that funneled Southern cotton to neutral ships in the Gulf and returned with European arms, medicine, and supplies. Blockaded on every ocean coast, the Confederacy depended on this frail international lifeline through Mexico. Federal troops seized the town in 1863, and it changed hands again in 1864 amid raids, smuggling, and cross-border intrigue.

Mercedes, TX

Mercedes staged its first livestock show in 1913 to share knowledge of livestock and agriculture with area farmers, an exhibition formally revived in 1939 and chartered in 1949 as the nonprofit Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show. That year the organization bought 44 acres at the north end of Texas Avenue for its grounds. Today it ranks among the five largest livestock shows in Texas and remains focused on educating youth and promoting agriculture.

Mission, TX

In the booming early-1900s Rio Grande Valley, Spanish immigrant and bricklayer Juan Bautista Barberá opened Teatro La Paz around 1912, bringing films, touring lecturers, actors, and musicians to the young farming town of Mission. Renamed the Río Theatre after Enrique Flores bought it in 1945, the modest vernacular commercial building has anchored the town's cultural life for over a century. It was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1982.

Rio Vista, TX

Rio Vista rose on the railroad in 1885 in one of Johnson County's earliest-settled areas, taking its Spanish name — "river view" — from its outlook over the Nolan River and Mustang Creek. Within a decade it boasted stores, a lumber yard, gins, a school, and three passenger trains a day, until a devastating 1914 fire leveled 24 buildings and slowed its growth. Cotton and later dairy farming carried the town, and a 1950s state highway brought a fresh boost.

Socorro, TX

Established in 1915 as El Paso County's poor farm, this place sheltered the destitute under the care of the O'Shea family, and later Helen O'Shea Keleher, who devoted fifty years to the thousands of orphaned and neglected children who passed through. Renamed Rio Vista Farm, it hosted a parade of Depression-era relief programs — the Texas Transient Bureau, the WPA, and a CCC unit — before taking on its most far-reaching role. From 1951 to 1964 it served as a reception and processing center for the Bracero program, funneling Mexican laborers into the fields of the lower valley and beyond.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Ambrose Ripley brought his family to what was then Red River County in 1837, settling along the Cherokee Trace near the creek that now bears his name. On April 10, 1841, while he was away, a band of Indians attacked the farmstead, killing his eldest son and most of the family; two daughters escaped to a neighboring farm. The attack became a rallying point for President Mirabeau B. Lamar's aggressive frontier policies and spurred the militia campaigns of Edward H. Tarrant to drive Native people from the region.