Search Markers

Dallas, TX

On land once part of a Republic-era grant, a streetcar company opened Oak Lawn Park in 1903, luring weekend riders and prospective buyers out on a nickel fare. The City of Dallas bought the leafy grounds in 1909, and in 1936 the Dallas Southern Memorial Association placed a bronze statue of Robert E. Lee here, unveiled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; a scaled replica of Lee's Arlington home followed in 1938. The park long remained one of the city's most popular retreats.

Weymouth, MA

In 1920, Irene Loud Walker placed this memorial to Robert E. Loud in Weymouth, one of the oldest towns in Massachusetts. It belongs to a long New England tradition of privately raised monuments — a family member or admirer commissioning a lasting tribute to honor a local figure's memory. The marker itself records the dedication rather than the details of his life.

Leming, TX

Robert E. Neill came to Texas as a small boy in the 1830s and, though a childhood accident crippled his left arm, went on to soldier through three of the era's conflicts. He served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War of 1847, rode with the Texas Rangers on frontier duty, and closed his military life fighting for the Confederacy. Afterward he returned to ranching in Atascosa County, where he raised five children and died in 1878.

Cresson Township, PA · est. 1947

Robert E. Peary, the Arctic explorer long credited with reaching the North Pole on April 6, 1909, was born in Cresson in 1856 before his family moved to Maine three years later. This monument honors the town's connection to a man whose expeditions captured the world's imagination during the great age of polar exploration. His name became synonymous with the daring pursuit of the earth's last frontiers.

Austin, TX

South Carolina–born Robert Eanes brought his family to Travis County in 1872, following a brother who had settled the area decades earlier. Buying a ranch from that brother, he built the first school in the neighborhood, and both the community and the school came to bear the Eanes name. He was laid to rest here in 1895 beside his wife, Eliza.

San Marcos, TX

This one-story frame house was built in 1906 by local contractor H. C. Leffingwell for Robert Early McKie, a San Marcos native, attorney, and descendant of area pioneers. Costing $2,000, it blends Italianate tall windows with Colonial Revival porch columns, topped by a pyramidal roof and wraparound porch. It has been a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1989.

Albany, TX

Albany native Robert "Bobby" Nail carried a Princeton-honed literary talent back to his small West Texas hometown, directing theater across North Texas before settling home for good. In 1938 he penned the pageant that grew into the Fort Griffin Fandangle, an outdoor musical that has become the oldest of its kind in Texas and still fills Albany's summers. His name endures through the Old Jail Art Center, a scholarship fund, and an archive of his work.

Belton, TX

Robert Emmet Bledsoe Baylor served in the legislatures of Kentucky and Alabama and in the U.S. Congress before coming to Texas in 1839, where he became an associate justice of the Republic's Supreme Court and a long-serving district judge. A lay Baptist preacher, he carried his Bible alongside his law books, holding court one day and preaching the next after riding as far as fifty miles between towns. He helped organize the Texas Baptist Convention and lent his name to Baylor University and Mary Hardin-Baylor College, and he sat on the bench as Texas pioneered homestead and community-property protections.

Independence, TX

R.E.B. Baylor, a Kentucky native who served in the War of 1812 and the Creek War, rose in law and politics before moving to Texas in 1839. He became a judge of the Republic of Texas Supreme Court and, after a religious conversion, helped found the Texas Baptist Education Society and worked with W.M. Tryon and J.G. Thomas to charter Baylor University in 1845. The university opened at Independence, where Baylor taught law without pay and served as a trustee before his death in 1873.

El Paso, TX

Robert Ewing Thomason gave more than fifty years to public life, serving as an El Paso attorney, state legislator, mayor, U.S. congressman, and federal judge. As Speaker of the Texas House he helped win the state's ratification of the 19th Amendment, urging colleagues to let "the American woman walk by the side of the American man to the ballot box." In Congress he helped establish Big Bend National Park and expand Fort Bliss, and as a federal judge appointed by President Truman he presided in this courthouse over landmark cases, including the 1955 Thelma White desegregation case.

Boston, MA

This ballfield honors Robert F. "Bob" Cusick, nicknamed "Mr. Baseball," who spent more than four decades with Boston's Parks and Recreation Department. From 1930 to 1974 he helped run the city's public recreation, serving as Director of Recreation in his final years. Generations of Boston children learned to play on the fields he helped program and maintain.

Lincolnton, NC

Robert F. Hoke of Lincolnton became one of the Confederacy's youngest major generals, promoted after his victory at the Battle of Plymouth in 1864, and led troops through the campaigns of Virginia and North Carolina. His home still stands just east of this marker.

Indianapolis, IN

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy arrived here to campaign before a large, mostly African American crowd during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Learning that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis that day, a visibly shaken Kennedy set aside his stump speech and broke the news, urging the crowd to answer with understanding, compassion, and prayer rather than hatred and violence. His words are widely credited with keeping Indianapolis calm while other cities erupted in unrest.

Alto, TX

An Ohio native, Robert F. Mitchell arrived in the Republic of Texas in 1837 and, after a stint in the mercantile trade at Nacogdoches, settled in Cherokee County in 1849. His land on the high ground between the Neches and Angelina rivers became the townsite of Alto — Latin for "high." A storekeeper, ginner, and hotelkeeper, Mitchell was a driving force in the young town's growth over the following decades.

Llano, TX

Llano County leader Robert Flack "Bob" Rowntree built this majestic two-story house between 1875 and 1888, its 20-inch sandstone-and-limestone walls designed by Scottish architect John K. Finlay, a pioneer of the Texas granite industry. Each of its eight rooms had a fireplace, and porches on both floors looked out over Prairie and Rough Mountains from his 8,500-acre ranch. Rowntree died suddenly in 1893, a death some tied to his role in the region's Hoodoo War, and the house later passed to the Marschall family.

Amherst, MA · est. 2009

The Jones Library in Amherst was one of the earliest and most devoted collectors of Robert Frost's work, a bond nurtured by librarian Charles Green during the years the poet lived and taught in the town. Frost, four times a Pulitzer winner, drew much of his verse from the New England landscape around Amherst. The site is dedicated as a Literary Landmark in honor of that long friendship.

Derry, NH

Between 1900 and 1911 the young Robert Frost worked this small Derry farm while teaching at nearby Pinkerton Academy. The New Hampshire landscape and rural rhythms of these years shaped the plainspoken, deeply American voice of his poetry. Though not yet famous, he was here finding the style that would later win him four Pulitzer Prizes.

Boston, MA

By the time Robert Frost lived at 88 Mount Vernon Street from 1938 to 1941, he was a national institution, an unofficial poet laureate and four-time Pulitzer winner. During these Beacon Hill years he taught poetry at Harvard and continued to shape American letters. The address marks a late, honored chapter in a long literary life.

Ripton, VT

Homer Noble Farm in Ripton was the beloved summer home of Robert Frost, one of America's greatest poets, who spent decades of warm-weather seasons writing in a rustic cabin on this land amid the Green Mountains. Frost's deep attachment to rural Vermont and New England landscapes shaped much of his celebrated verse. The farm remains a touchstone for readers who trace his poetry back to the hills that inspired it.

Fulton Township, PA · est. 1978

Robert Fulton, born in this corner of Lancaster County in 1765, first made his way as a portrait painter in Philadelphia and Europe before turning his restless mind to machines. In 1807 his steamboat—the North River Steamboat, remembered as the Clermont—proved that steam could reliably move a vessel against the current. He also experimented with an early submarine, the Nautilus, floating mines, and improvements to canals.

Longview, TX

A largely self-educated native of Vermont, Robert G. LeTourneau built his first plant in 1921 and went on to invent components that became standard in construction equipment worldwide. During World War II his company built roughly seventy percent of the earthmoving machinery used by U.S. forces, and afterward he moved to Longview, opened a plant, and founded the technical institute that became LeTourneau University. He poured much of his fortune into a worldwide Christian missionary foundation and became one of Longview's most influential civic leaders.

Cornish, NH

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw commanded the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first Black regiments raised in the North during the Civil War. On July 18, 1863 (the inscription's July 23 marks his death and burial in the aftermath), Shaw led his men in the doomed but valiant assault on Fort Wagner guarding Charleston Harbor, and fell at the parapet alongside scores of his soldiers. Confederate troops buried the young officer in a common grave with his Black troops, an insult his abolitionist family embraced as an honor. This memorial in Cornish echoes the celebrated Saint-Gaudens relief that immortalized Shaw and the regiment.

Boston, MA

This memorial honors Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the Union's first Black regiments raised in the North during the Civil War. In the summer of 1863 the regiment led a desperate twilight assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold guarding Charleston harbor in South Carolina; Shaw, a young Boston officer who had volunteered to command them, was killed at the parapet alongside scores of his men. Though the attack failed to take the fort, the courage of the 54th under fire became national news and helped open the ranks of the U.S. Army to Black soldiers.

New Summerfield, TX

Born in North Carolina, Robert Graves Stadler had already served in the War of 1812 and fought for Texas independence before buying land here in 1845 near the community of Griffin. By 1853 he had drawn relatives from North Carolina to settle around him, laying the groundwork for the farming community that became Blackjack. He died just as the Civil War began.

Victoria, TX

Robert Clark, a Pennsylvania native and Mexican War veteran who was severely wounded in that conflict, built his fortune in South Texas as a merchant and cattle trader in partnership with Charles Stillman. After an 1875 hurricane battered the port of Indianola, he moved his family inland to Victoria, where in 1877 he raised this frame Greek Revival house with its central portico and boxed columns. He and his wife Pauline are remembered for their civic contributions to the growing town.

Sadieville, KY

Robert H. Brooks left Sadieville in the years before World War II and entered a National Guard tank unit that had been all-white, serving as a private in the 192nd Tank Battalion in the Philippines. On December 8, 1941 — hours after Pearl Harbor — he was killed during the first Japanese bombing of Clark Field. Officially recognized as the first U.S. Armored Forces casualty of the war, he was honored when Fort Knox named its main parade ground Brooks Field just weeks later.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1993

In the decades after the Civil War, Bethlehem was reshaped by the twin engines of railroading and iron, and Robert H. Sayre stood at the center of both. As the driving force behind construction of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and a founder of the Bethlehem Iron Company, he helped turn the Lehigh Valley into one of the industrial powerhouses of Gilded Age America. His wealth flowed back into the community through a hospital, a church, a girls' school, and the young Lehigh University he helped charter.

Negley, TX

Robert Hamilton, born in Scotland in 1783, cast his lot with the Texas independence movement and on March 2, 1836, was among the delegates who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He settled in Red River County, where he died in 1843, during the years of the young Republic of Texas.

Flatonia, TX

This grave marker, set with the Star and Wreath of the Texas Revolution, honors a man who fought through the pivotal campaigns of Texas independence. Robert Hancock Hunter stood at Gonzales — where the "Come and Take It" defiance sparked the revolt — through the Siege of Bexar, and finally at San Jacinto in April 1836, the eighteen-minute battle that won the Republic of Texas. The State of Texas placed this memorial in 1962.

Bryan, TX

Born in Ireland in 1801, Robert Henry came to America in 1820 and to Robertson's Colony in Texas in 1832. In the 1836 war for independence he served with the 2nd Regiment of Texas Volunteer Infantry and was among the victors at San Jacinto. A staunch Presbyterian who prized his faith and a prominent figure in public life, he held a justice-of-the-peace court in the shade of trees and raised thirteen children whose descendants became noted Texans.

Columbus, TX

A Georgia-born doctor's son, Robert Henry Harrison earned his medical degree in 1846 and served as a Confederate colonel before settling in Columbus in 1869. From his office on the town square he became a founder and president of the State Medical Association, helped create Texas' Board of Health, wrote prolifically on medicine, and in 1880 built a hospital for railway workers.

San Marcos, TX

Part of this San Marcos structure began about 1859 as one of the town's first schools before the Rev. Robert H. Belvin, president of the Methodist Coronal Institute, converted it into a family home in 1875. Later owners enlarged it, and it eventually housed a professor from the first faculty of what became Southwest Texas State University, tying the building to the town's long educational heritage.

Spring Creek Township, PA · est. 1997

On the family farm at this spot in 1892 was born Robert H. Jackson, one of the towering American lawyers of the twentieth century. He climbed from country attorney to U.S. Solicitor General, Attorney General, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, where he was known for defending civil liberties. He is best remembered as the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, where the Nazi leadership was held to account after World War II.

Sonoma County, CA

Bob Bugatto (1925–1993) spent more than forty years in California's commercial fishing industry. After serving in World War II as a merchant seaman aboard an ammunition supply ship, he founded a small wholesale fish company in San Francisco in 1948, becoming a respected leader on the working waterfront. This marker honors a life spent in one of the Bay Area's oldest and most demanding trades.

Kingsville, TX

Kingsville's public library began as a project of the Woman's Club in 1909 and moved in 1927 into this Spanish colonial revival building, erected under the leadership of club president Mrs. John D. Finnegan. The land was donated from the Henrietta M. King Estate by cattleman Robert J. Kleberg, for whom the library was named. It served the community from this site for three decades.

Glenview, IL

Robert Kennicott (1835–1866) was a pioneering naturalist who grew up at The Grove in Glenview and became a driving force in early American science, helping found the Chicago Academy of Sciences and collecting specimens for the Smithsonian. He led expeditions into the far Northwest and Russian Alaska as part of the Western Union Telegraph survey, where he died in the field at just thirty, work that helped inform the United States' purchase of Alaska soon after.

Pearland, TX

Robert Lee Hunter descended from Dr. Johnson Calhoun Hunter, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, and grew up on the family's Fort Bend County plantation. Around 1903 he sold his holdings and moved to Pearland, then known as Mark Belt, to raise cattle with his brother-in-law, and in 1905 he married Nebraska-born Julia Iva Martin, whose family had settled the area in 1894. Respected community members remembered for offering advice and hospitality to former slaves, the couple later had a Pearland park named in their honor.

Victoria, TX

This late-Victorian house was built in the 1890s for Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898), a Presbyterian theologian, teacher, and author who had served as chief of staff to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in 1862. After teaching in Austin and helping establish a school of theology there, Dabney and his wife settled in Victoria and built this home. In 1922 it passed to Dr. Oscar McMullen, Victoria's first city health officer, and remained in his family for generations.

Crowell, TX

Foard County honors Robert L. Foard (1831–1898), a Maryland-born lawyer who came to Texas in 1853 and served the Confederacy as a major in the 13th Texas Infantry. His regiment guarded the Texas coast against Union raiding parties and briefly campaigned in Louisiana in 1863, as the South fought to keep the Mississippi River open. The State of Texas erected this memorial in 1963 to Texans who served the Confederacy.

Medina County, TX

Robert Lee Bobbitt rose from a North Texas farm to the heights of state government, serving as a World War I infantry officer, a legislator, Speaker of the Texas House, and Attorney General by 1929. As chairman of the Texas Highway Commission from 1937, he helped drive the state toward a connected system of paved roads during a transformative era for travel. His long public career touched nearly every branch of Texas government across four decades.

Robert Lee, TX

Established in 1891, two years after the town of Robert Lee was founded, this West Texas cemetery was sold for a token dollar by a land and cattle company to the local Masonic lodge for use as a burial ground. Already holding a few graves, it became the resting place of the community's founding families. Among them lie 34 Civil War veterans, along with soldiers of later American wars.

Ahoskie, NC

Born in Hertford County in 1879, Robert Lee Vann became a lawyer, editor, and civil rights advocate who led the Pittsburgh Courier from 1910 until his death in 1940. Under his direction the Courier grew into one of the most influential African American newspapers in the country, campaigning for equality and shaping national Black opinion. He was born about four miles east of this marker.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1997

In the early decades of the 20th century, a Black-owned weekly newspaper became one of the most powerful voices in Black America, and its headquarters stood here in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Under the editor named on this marker, the Pittsburgh Courier grew into a national institution that campaigned for civil rights, fair employment, and dignity at a time when the mainstream press ignored Black life. Its influence stretched far beyond Pennsylvania, and its editor even served in the U.S. Justice Department during the New Deal.

San Francisco, CA · est. 1972

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson lodged at 608 Bush Street from December 1879 to March 1880, having crossed an ocean and a continent to reach San Francisco. Poor and often ill during these months, he nonetheless poured out essays, poems, and fiction. The apprenticeship of these lean years helped shape the author who would soon write Treasure Island.

Bastrop, TX

Robert Love Reding, born in Tennessee in 1810, joined the Army of Texas and took part in the capture of Goliad on October 9, 1835, one of the opening actions of the Texas Revolution. He was also a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence, an early call for Texas separation from Mexico. He died in 1849, and this marker in Bastrop County honors his part in the fight for Texas independence.

Lewisburg, PA · est. 1954

The hymn writer Robert Lowry lived in this Lewisburg house from 1869 to 1875, a productive stretch during which he composed some of the works that carried his name around the world. Among them is "Shall We Gather at the River," a hymn still sung in churches far beyond America. A Baptist minister as well as a composer, Lowry helped shape the sound of 19th-century American gospel music before his death in 1899.

Coleman, TX

Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in 1832 and threw himself into the revolution, commanding volunteers at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. As a delegate he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and then served as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later took up arms as a Texas Ranger on the frontier before his death in 1837.

Tehuacana, TX

Robert M. Love was among the armed men who helped seat the 14th Texas Legislature in 1873 during the tense standoff when outgoing Governor E. J. Davis contested Richard Coke's election. A Confederate veteran of Ross' brigade, he went on to serve as Limestone County deputy sheriff and sheriff, president of the Texas Sheriff's Association, U.S. Marshal, and finally state comptroller from 1901 to 1903. His career threads through some of the sharpest political conflicts of Reconstruction-era Texas.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1993

Robert Mara Adger came of age in a Philadelphia that was home to one of the nation's largest free Black communities, active in the antislavery and self-help movements before and after the Civil War. A businessman who helped lead a pioneering Black building-and-loan association, he was also a passionate bibliophile who gathered a major collection of rare books and pamphlets on Black life and the fight against slavery. He helped found an Afro-American historical society to preserve that record for future generations.

Anahuac, TX

Robert McAlpin Williamson, nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie" for the pegleg he wore after a boyhood illness, settled in Texas in 1827 to practice law. At Fort Anahuac in 1832 he made a bold stand against the Mexican commandant Juan Davis Bradburn, who had jailed his friends Patrick Jack and William Barret Travis — an early flashpoint on the road to revolution. Williamson went on to fight at San Jacinto and serve as a district judge and justice of the Republic's first supreme court.

Mineola, TX

A Georgia-born son of a Methodist minister, Robert N. Stafford settled in Mineola in 1880 and served as county attorney, district attorney, and, from 1894, a member of the Texas Senate. A steady advocate of public education, he donated two acres of land in 1902 for an African American school in Mineola. Alongside his political career he edited a newspaper, worked for the railroad, and managed the town's ice and light company.

Roxboro, NC

Born near this spot, Robert Paine rose to national prominence as a Methodist leader, helping organize the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, when the denomination split in 1845. He served as a bishop and as president of LaGrange College in Alabama, and was also an author.

Scranton, PA · est. 2012

A lifelong son of Scranton, Robert P. Casey climbed through a long public career — state senator, auditor general, and finally two terms as governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995. His administration pioneered the Children's Health Insurance Program, a state experiment in covering the working poor's kids that became a national model, alongside landmark clean-water reforms like PENNVEST. A devout Catholic, he also drew national attention for an outspoken pro-life stance that cut against his party's grain.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

Robert Patterson chaired mathematics and served as vice-provost at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1800s, a respected man of science in the young republic. In 1803 he tutored Meriwether Lewis in the celestial navigation and surveying skills the explorer would need to chart the unknown West. From this home Patterson helped equip the Lewis and Clark Expedition with the mathematical tools of discovery.

Austin, TX

Robert Potter arrived in Texas after a turbulent political career in North Carolina, where he had served in both the state legislature and the U.S. Congress. In 1836 he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and became the first Secretary of the Navy of the Republic of Texas. He died violently in 1842 at the place now known as Potter's Point.

Round Mountain, TX

Robert Price served in the Texas Revolution, detailed to guard the army's baggage at Harrisburg on April 21, 1836—the very day Sam Houston's forces won independence at nearby San Jacinto. He lived on for another six decades, dying in 1900 at the age of 89. His marker preserves the memory of one of the ordinary men whose service secured the young republic.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

Robert Purvis, born in 1810, devoted his life to the abolition of slavery through lecturing, writing, and leadership in antislavery societies. As an agent of the Underground Railroad, he built a hidden compartment in his home here to shelter freedom seekers fleeing bondage. Wealthy and eloquent, he risked reputation and safety to advance the cause of Black freedom and equal rights.

Canadian, TX

Born in Canadian, Texas, in 1897 in a house built by Sam Houston's son, Robert R. Young rose from a rancher's grandson to one of America's most daring financiers. After making a stock-market fortune and years on Wall Street, he won national fame in a 1954 proxy battle to seize and modernize the New York Central Railroad, backing his fight with Texas oil money from friends Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson. He kept lifelong ties to his hometown, restoring a local cemetery and endowing the University of Texas with rare papers.

Austin, TX

Born in Virginia in 1753, Robert Rankin served as an officer in the Continental Army's Virginia troops from 1776, in the same company as his kinsman John Marshall, the future Chief Justice. He fought at Brandywine, Germantown, and Stony Point and endured the Siege of Charleston. His sons carried the family's service into the War of 1812, one of them killed in the 1813 massacre at Fort Mims in Alabama, before several of them died in Texas.

New York, NY

Robert Richard Randall was a New York merchant and mariner whose 1801 will did something remarkable: it left his considerable fortune to establish a home for 'aged, decrepit, and worn-out' sailors. That bequest became Sailors' Snug Harbor, which for generations sheltered seamen who had spent their lives at sea, and whose handsome buildings still stand on Staten Island. This monument keeps the memory of a founder whose charity outlived him by more than two centuries.