Search Markers

Deer Park, TX

This was the 1836 homesite of Dr. George Moffit Patrick (1801–1889), a pioneer surveyor of early Texas. After the decisive Battle of San Jacinto, the victorious Texas army encamped here, and the young Republic's cabinet met on the grounds. The State of Texas marked the spot in 1936, the centennial of independence.

Nacogdoches, TX

Antonio Gil y Barbo, a Spanish frontiersman born in 1729, founded modern Nacogdoches in 1779 and became a leader who matched wits with Spanish governors on behalf of the region's early settlers—famously bringing back exiles who had been forced to abandon the area. This marker stands at the site of his home, remembering the man behind one of the oldest towns in Texas.

Refugio, TX

Captain Ira Westover was a committed soldier of the Texas Revolution, taking part in the capture of Goliad in October 1835 and, with just 14 Texans, seizing Fort Lipantitlán from a much larger Mexican force weeks later. He served in the General Council of Texas in 1835 as a representative of the Goliad municipality. Leading a company raised in Refugio as part of Fannin's command, he was among those massacred at Goliad on March 27, 1836.

Yorktown, TX

Captain John York came to Texas as a member of one of Stephen F. Austin's ranging companies, and in 1835 commanded a company at the capture of San Antonio during the Texas Revolution. The town of Yorktown, laid out on his land in 1848, was named in his honor. Born on Independence Day in 1800, he was killed by Indians that same year, 1848.

Nacogdoches, TX

Charles S. Taylor, born in London in 1808, made his home in Nacogdoches from 1830 until his death and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. He served the young republic and county as land commissioner and as Chief Justice of Nacogdoches County. The State of Texas marked the site of his home in 1936, the centennial of independence.

Utley, TX

Robert M. Coleman was one of the founding figures of the Texas Republic — a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, an aide to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto, and a commander of frontier Rangers. He drowned in 1837, but tragedy followed his family: in 1839 his widow Elizabeth and son Albert were killed and young Thomas captured in an Indian raid near their homesite. The State of Texas honored him with this marker in 1936, and a supplemental plate added in 1968 records his role as an early official and namesake of Coleman County.

Montgomery, TX

This site marks the home of Dr. Charles B. Stewart (1806–1885), a founding figure of Texas who served in the 1835 Consultation and became the Republic's first Secretary of State. A signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, he later represented Montgomery County at the 1845 Constitutional Convention that brought Texas into the Union and served in the state legislature. The State of Texas erected this monument in 1936, the state's centennial year.

San Antonio, TX

Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff came to Texas in 1847 as one of Die Vierziger, the idealistic "Forty" who tried to found a utopian commune called Bettina in the Hill Country. When that dream collapsed within a year, he returned to Germany, married, and came back for good, settling in San Antonio in 1850 and building this home in 1855. A German-trained surgeon of real distinction, he helped organize the county medical society, founded the city's first infirmary with the Sisters of Charity, and — though a Confederate surgeon — was quietly known for Union sympathies, practicing until he was nearly ninety.

San Augustine, TX

Elisha Roberts (1785–1844) was an early and influential citizen of San Augustine, serving as alcalde in 1831 and playing an important role in the Fredonian Rebellion, an early revolt against Mexican authority in Texas. His home was known as a haven of hospitality to travelers passing along the eastern gateway into Texas. The State of Texas marked the site of his home in 1936, the centennial of Texas independence.

Granbury vicinity, TX

Elizabeth Crockett, widow of Alamo hero David Crockett, spent her final years on the Texas frontier and died here in 1860 at the age of 74. She had come west to claim land granted for her famous husband's service, outliving him by nearly a quarter century. This site marks the home where that long journey ended.

Beasley, TX

By the time Elizabeth Powell received this land grant in 1831, the Texas frontier was filling with Anglo-American colonists under Mexican rule — settlers whose grievances would soon erupt into revolution. Five years later this spot became a hinge point of that war: it marked the farthest eastern reach of General Urrea's column and the southern turn of Santa Anna's army toward the Brazos and San Jacinto. After Sam Houston's decisive victory at San Jacinto in April 1836, the defeated Mexican forces camped near here as they withdrew.

Beach City, TX

This site marks the location of a home built around 1860 for Sam Houston—the victor of San Jacinto, president of the Republic of Texas, U.S. senator, and governor. He occupied the residence during parts of 1861 and 1862, the final years of a long career that closed as the Civil War engulfed the state he had helped create. Houston, who opposed secession and was removed as governor for refusing to swear loyalty to the Confederacy, spent his last years on the Gulf Coast he knew so well.

Independence, TX

On this Independence, Texas, lot once stood a house built in 1837 that later became home to Sam Houston and his family, who first occupied it in 1854. Houston — hero of San Jacinto, president of the Republic of Texas, and later U.S. senator and governor — spent time here in the town where his wife Margaret's family had deep roots. The original dwelling was torn down and rebuilt at the end of the 19th century.

Perry, TX

On the night of January 1, 1839, in the frontier settlement of the young Republic of Texas, Indians attacked the home of George Morgan that once stood nearby. The raid killed George Morgan, his wife, Mrs. Jackson Morgan, and Miss Adeline Marlin. The tragedy was one of many violent clashes along the exposed edge of settlement in Falls County.

Point Blank, TX

This site marks the home of George Thomas Wood, a Georgia-born leader who rose to prominence in the young state of Texas. He commanded a regiment as a colonel in the Mexican War, served in the Congress of the Republic, and was elected the second governor of the State of Texas, holding office from 1847 to 1849. He died in Texas in 1858, and the State erected this memorial in 1936, the year of the Texas Centennial.

Jasper, TX

This site marks the home of George Washington Smyth, one of the founding figures of the Republic of Texas. Smyth signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, helped draft the constitution, ran the boundary line between Texas and the United States, and served in the Texas Congress, the U.S. Congress, and the General Land Office. He and his wife Frances lived here through the turbulent decades of Texas independence, statehood, and civil war.

Huntsville, TX

This was the home of Henderson Yoakum, where he wrote his pioneering History of Texas, published in 1855. Yoakum's two-volume work chronicled Texas from its first settlement through annexation to the United States in 1845, telling the story of the sacrifices and struggles that made the republic. His history became one of the earliest serious accounts of the young state's past.

Nacogdoches, TX

James Dill came from Pennsylvania to the Texas-Louisiana borderlands as a frontier Indian trader in the era when this country was still ruled from Mexico City. Trusted by Spanish authorities, he became the first alcalde — roughly a mayor and magistrate — of Nacogdoches under the new Mexican government in 1821. The State of Texas marked his home site during the 1936 Centennial.

San Patricio, TX

Born in County Sligo, Ireland, James McGloin partnered with John McMullen to win a Mexican contract in 1828 to settle two hundred families in Texas, landing his colonists at El Copano in 1830 and laying out the town of San Patricio in 1834. He built his home on this site in 1855 and died here the following year. His life bridged the Irish diaspora and the Mexican-era colonization that helped populate South Texas on the eve of the Republic.

Brazoria, TX

John Austin lived at the turbulent birth of Anglo Texas. He rode with the ill-fated Long Expedition of 1819, settled among Stephen F. Austin's colonists, and served as alcalde of Brazoria before commanding at the 1832 Battle of Velasco, one of the first armed clashes between Texas colonists and Mexican troops. He signed the Turtle Bayou Resolutions that same year, declaring the colonists' grievances, and died in 1833 — just before the revolution he had helped set in motion.

Falls County, TX

John Marlin built his home on the Central Texas frontier in 1835, in the uneasy borderlands of the new Republic of Texas. On a January day in 1839 a large party of Indians attacked the house, but its handful of defenders drove them off in a sharp fight in which one defender was injured.

Nacogdoches, TX

John S. Roberts, a Virginia native who reached Texas in 1826, threw himself into the fight for Texas independence—fighting at the Battle of Nacogdoches, sitting as a delegate to the 1835 Consultation, helping storm Bexar, and finally signing the Texas Declaration of Independence in March 1836. His home once stood on this Nacogdoches site, marked by the state during the 1936 centennial of Texas independence. He represents the ordinary settlers who became revolutionaries.

West Columbia, TX

Josiah Hughes Bell was one of the 'Old Three Hundred,' the first families Stephen F. Austin brought to colonize Texas under Mexican authority beginning in 1821, and he served as the colony's first alcalde. On the sprawling land grant he received in 1824 grew the town of Columbia, which in 1836 became the first capital of the Republic of Texas. The marker stands where his home once anchored that early settlement.

Nacogdoches, TX

A native son of Nacogdoches, Juan Antonio Padilla rose to serve as land commissioner in 1829 and as vice-governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, then took an active part in the Texas Revolution. He died in Houston in 1839, and his wife, Maria Montes del Padilla, died at their Nacogdoches home in 1846. A 1936 state marker honors the site where they lived.

Galveston, TX

This site marks the home of Michael Branaman Menard, who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas. Best remembered as the founder of the city of Galveston, Menard helped turn the island into the young Republic's principal port. He lived from 1805 to 1856.

Richmond, TX

This Richmond site was the home of Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, where he lived from 1851 until his death in 1859. Remembered as the father of Texas education for laying the foundation of the state's public school system, Lamar spent his final years here after a career at the center of Texas independence and nationhood.

Oran, TX

This is the 1855 home site of Oliver Loving, remembered as the first man to drive Texas cattle to distant markets. In the years that followed he blazed the routes that opened the cattle-trail era before his death in 1867, and both Loving Valley and Loving County carry his name. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936.

Richmond, TX

Randal Jones joined James Long's filibustering expedition into Texas in 1819, served as a militia captain under Stephen F. Austin in 1824, and sat in the 1835 Consultation that set the Texas Revolution in motion. On land granted to him in 1824 he built a house where the famed scout Erastus "Deaf" Smith died in 1837. The state marked the site during the 1936 Texas centennial.

Austin, TX

Reuben Hornsby and his wife Sarah built this home in 1832, the first in what is now Travis County and part of Stephen F. Austin's colonizing effort on the Texas frontier. Renowned for their hospitality, the Hornsbys nursed Josiah Wilbarger here after he was scalped and left for dead in 1833. Hornsby and his sons rode as Rangers and Indian fighters, and Captain John J. Tumlinson's company was organized on this very ground in 1836.

Meyersville, TX

Robert Justus Kleberg, born in Germany in 1803, came to Texas in 1834 and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in Captain Moseley Baker's company during the Texas Revolution. He went on to serve in the state legislature as a senator and lived in the Meyersville area until his death at Yorktown, Texas, in 1888. A Texas county was later named in his honor.

Wharton, TX

Born in Georgia in 1806, Robert McAlpin Williamson edited some of Texas's pioneer newspapers, The Texas Gazette and The Mexican Citizen, before throwing himself into the fight for Texas independence. He went on to serve on the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1839 and later in the state legislature. His home once stood on this Wharton site.

Nacogdoches, TX

Thomas J. Rusk was one of the towering figures of the Texas Republic—a hero of San Jacinto, commander-in-chief of the army in 1836, chief justice of the Supreme Court, president of the 1845 annexation convention, and then a U.S. senator. He called Nacogdoches home from 1835 until his death in 1857, and the state marked his home site during the 1936 centennial. Few careers span so completely the passage of Texas from rebellion to republic to statehood.

Nacogdoches, TX

William Clark, Jr., born in Virginia, came to Texas in 1829 and settled at Nacogdoches in 1840, the same year he built his home on this site. He put his name to the Texas Declaration of Independence and served in the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1837–38. His life spanned the pivotal years when Texas broke from Mexico and governed itself as an independent republic.

Castroville, TX

Henri Castro, a French-born naturalized American, became one of the Republic of Texas's most important empresarios when he won authority in 1842 to plant a colony of Europeans in the rugged country west of San Antonio. Recruiting hundreds of families — many Alsatian — he founded Castroville on the Medina River in 1844, spending his personal fortune to shelter and provision colonists he treated "as though they were his children." He reserved this central block as his own homestead, built a stone house, and even planted an experimental garden to learn which crops the land would bear.

Newark, IL

In the golden age of American railroading, even the smallest lines earned their bragging rights. This marker honors a stub of track once billed as the shortest railroad in the United States, a curiosity of Kendall County's rail history erected under the sponsorship of the American Legion. Short lines like this fed passengers and freight to the great trunk railroads that stitched the Midwest together.

Ireland, TX

When the town of Ireland was founded in 1911 on the Coryell-Hamilton county line, its first classes met in a church tabernacle. A frame schoolhouse followed in 1914, and in 1921 the community bought five acres for a two-story brick school that became the heart of local life. Enrollment peaked in 1940, but as consolidation reshaped rural education the high school classes moved away in 1943 and the school closed for good in 1964.

Edna, TX

On this ground in February 1837, two generals of the young Republic of Texas' army, Albert Sidney Johnston and Felix Huston, settled a bitter dispute over command in the era's brutal fashion — a pistol duel that left Johnston seriously wounded. Johnston survived to become one of the Confederacy's most senior generals, only to be killed leading the attack at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862.

Latexo, TX

On land given by settler John Jesse Jones, a one-room log cabin school rose in the 1860s, furnished with a teacher's platform and hand-hewn peg-leg benches. It served as church and community meeting hall as well as schoolhouse, and two generations of East Texas children learned their letters and figures within its walls before the school moved and grew after 1900. A deep rock-bottomed well is nearly all that now marks the spot.

Berkeley, CA

On a block once holding an apple orchard, two houses, and a tailor shop, local businessmen and a university professor financed one of Berkeley's first public schools in 1879. The wood-frame Victorian Kellogg School — named for Board of Education president Martin Kellogg, later the University of California's seventh president — opened with three classrooms and separate entrances for girls and boys. In 1884, with just four graduates, it became the first high school in California accredited by the University of California.

Frankston, TX

During the years of the Republic of Texas, conflict between settlers and Native peoples flared repeatedly across the eastern frontier. On October 16, 1838, General Thomas J. Rusk led about 200 Texans in an attack on a band of Native Americans and allied Mexicans near this spot, dispersing them in what became known as the Kickapoo battle. The clash was one of many in the Republic's campaigns to push Indigenous nations from the settlement line.

Vidor, TX

In 1908, Kichimatsu Kishi—a Japanese native and veteran of the Russo-Japanese War—founded an agricultural colony here, bringing Japanese tenant farmers who found the wet Orange County soil ideal for rice. The settlers became American citizens and adopted Western ways while keeping their homeland's traditions, and Kishi gave land for a church, a school, and a cemetery as Mexican and French Louisiana workers joined them. Falling prices and the Depression broke the colony in the 1930s, though many families stayed and their descendants remain in Southeast Texas.

Shelbyville, TX

This spot marks the final clash, on August 14, 1844, of the Regulator–Moderator War, a bitter feud between rival vigilante factions that convulsed Shelby County from 1841 to 1844. The violence claimed many lives and destroyed property until the Republic of Texas sent General James Smith and militia to disarm both sides and restore order. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936.

Springfield, IL

In 1928, at Springfield's Leland Hotel, chef Joe Schweska is credited with creating the horseshoe sandwich — an open-faced dish of meat over toast, blanketed in cheese sauce and crowned with French fries, served sizzling. The playful name came from the horseshoe-shaped cut of ham, with the fries as nails and the hot platter as the anvil. A century on, the horseshoe remains a signature of central Illinois menus, and this marker fixes the spot where the local icon was born.

Frankfort, KY

Built around 1786 by General James Wilkinson on land once owned by Aaron Burr, this house hosted the first meeting of the legislature after Frankfort became Kentucky's capital in 1793. Later purchased by Major Thomas Love, it served for years as an inn and the social and political heart of the young capital. Its guests included the exiled French prince Louis Philippe—a future king of France—and Aaron Burr himself.

Snyder, TX

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army pushed to secure the West Texas frontier, and Colonel Ranald S. MacKenzie became the central figure in the campaigns against the Comanche and their allies. From forts like Griffin and Concho he blazed supply routes across the Plains toward Palo Duro Canyon, where in 1874 his troops broke the power of the Southern Plains tribes. The trail crossing near Snyder was so well known that the town's 1881 townsite abstracts referenced 'The MacKenzie Trail' as a landmark.

Palestine, TX

In 1837, during the era of the Republic of Texas, frontier guides Daniel McLean and John Sheridan were killed here while shielding settlers from an attack. According to the marker, the two held off their attackers long enough for the settlers to escape, losing their own lives in the process. The site memorializes a violent episode of the early Anglo-Texan frontier.

Harper, TX

In 1863 the family of pioneer preacher Matthew Taylor built a cabin near the source of the Pedernales River, deep in the contested Texas hill country. In August 1864 a band of Kiowas attacked, killing Eli McDonald and a young woman and carrying off several women and children, who were taken as far as Oklahoma before being ransomed. Others survived by taking refuge in the cabin or hiding in a nearby cave.

Douglass, TX

Franciscan missionaries founded Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción here in 1716 as Spain sought to convert and settle the Indigenous peoples of East Texas. French incursions from Louisiana forced its temporary abandonment in 1719, and though the Marquis of Aguayo restored it in 1721, the mission was ultimately relocated—first to the Colorado River and then, in 1731, to the San Antonio River.

Nacogdoches, TX

Founded in 1716 by the pioneering Franciscan Antonio Margil de Jesus, this Spanish mission aimed to convert and gather the Nacogdoches Indians of East Texas. Threatened by French incursions from Louisiana, it was briefly abandoned in 1719, restored by the Marquis of Aguayo in 1721, and finally given up in 1773. Its deserted buildings became the nucleus around which Antonio Gil y Barbo re-founded the town of Nacogdoches in 1779.

San Gabriel, TX

In 1749 Franciscan missionaries planted this mission on the San Gabriel River, part of a short-lived cluster of Spanish missions meant to draw the Coco, Mayeye, Orcoquiza, Karankawa and other peoples into colonial life. Violence—including the killing of Padre José Ganzábal—unraveled the effort, and by 1755 the friars and their would-be converts had scattered, the mission relocating to the San Marcos River. It rose again in 1762 far to the west on the Sabinal, this time aimed at the Lipan Apaches, keeping the name Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria.

Montell, TX

Franciscan missionaries first founded Mission Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria in 1749 on the San Gabriel River, hoping to convert the Coco, Mayeye, Karankawa, Orcoquiza, and other Native peoples. Repeatedly relocated, it was reestablished on the San Marcos River in 1755 and moved to this Nueces River site in 1762 to reach the Lipan Apaches before being abandoned in 1769. Its restless history reflects the fragile reach of Spain's mission frontier.

Goliad, TX

Founded by Spanish Franciscans in 1722 beside the ruins of La Salle's French fort on Garcitas Creek, this mission was relocated twice before settling near Goliad in 1749 to serve the Karankawa, Aranama, and other coastal peoples. Part of Spain's northern frontier system, it paired with the nearby presidio to convert and control Indigenous communities and to counter French claims on the Gulf. It was secularized in 1794 as Spain wound down its mission enterprise in Texas.

Rio Grande City, TX

This site marks a Spanish mission established in 1749 as part of José de Escandón's ambitious colonization of the lower Rio Grande country. As a visita — a mission chapel served periodically rather than by a resident priest — it was one node in a chain meant to settle the region and draw its Indigenous peoples into Spanish colonial and Catholic life. Escandón's project laid the groundwork for the ranching settlements that still define the borderlands.

Alto, TX

Franciscan missionaries first founded Mission San Francisco de los Tejas in 1690 to convert the Neches and other Native peoples of East Texas. Reestablished in 1716 and briefly abandoned after a French incursion from Louisiana in 1719, it was relocated here in 1721 by the Marquis de Aguayo, then moved again until it finally settled on the San Antonio River in 1731 as San Francisco de la Espada. A 1936 state marker records its wandering history.

San Gabriel, TX

Franciscan missionaries founded Mission San Ildefonso here in 1749, one of a cluster of Spanish missions meant to draw the Coco, Mayeye, Orcoquiza, Karankawa, and other peoples into Catholic and colonial life. The killing of Padre Jose Ganzabal and the turmoil surrounding it prompted the friars and the Native people to depart, and the mission moved to the San Marcos River in 1755. It was later reestablished on the Nueces River in 1762 to reach the Lipan Apaches under a new name.

Camp Wood, TX

In 1762, Franciscan missionaries established Mission San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz on this ground to minister to the Lipan Apache, part of Spain's broader effort to draw Native peoples into mission life on its northern frontier. Like many such ventures among independent Plains and mountain nations, it proved short-lived and was abandoned in 1769. Its brief existence marks one of Spain's northernmost attempts to plant a mission among the Lipan.

Corpus Christi, TX

As railroads made the Texas coast reachable, South Texas businessmen built the 205-room Nueces Hotel on the Corpus Christi waterfront in 1912–13 to draw vacationers to the bay. It weathered a devastating 1919 hurricane and thrived through the 1920s as the port opened, passing into the hands of rancher William W. Jones's family before Hurricane Celia's damage led to its demolition in 1971.

Odessa, TX

In 1886 the Odessa Townsite Company opened a twenty-room, two-story medical and surgical sanitarium under Dr. R.E. Haughton, a former railroad physician from Indiana, hoping to draw settlers to the raw West Texas plains. The venture failed by 1890, and the building drifted through new lives as a haven for migrant families and a church. When Ector County was formed in 1891, the structure was moved and pressed into service as the county's first courthouse.

Austin, TX

This ground once held the official residence of Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas from 1838 to 1841. Built in 1840 for the head of an independent nation, the house burned in March 1847, only two years after Texas joined the United States. Since 1882 the site has been home to Saint Mary's Academy.

San Antonio, TX

From 1846 to 1868 a plastered-rock building on this site served as the first Presbyterian church in San Antonio, raised by the Reverend John McCullough. In a frontier town short on houses of worship, the modest "Old Adobe" was shared by Protestants of every faith. Its simple construction reflects the improvised beginnings of organized religion in a city only just becoming American.