Search Markers

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1996

Thomas Eakins spent his life in Philadelphia painting the people and pastimes of his city with an almost scientific devotion to anatomy and light, from rowers on the Schuylkill to the unflinching operating-theater canvas The Gross Clinic. From the row house and studios on Mount Vernon Street he built a reputation as one of America's foremost realists, even as his insistence on studying the nude body from life scandalized polite society. His portraits and sporting scenes now anchor the American realist tradition.

Southlake, TX

Virginia-born Thomas Easter reached Tarrant County by 1848 and patented a 640-acre tract in the county's northeast corner. When he died in 1862, a portion of that land became a family and community burial ground, where his wife Charity and neighboring pioneers such as Hardin West were later laid to rest among several unmarked graves. A one-room schoolhouse once stood beside the cemetery, tying the burial ground to the small farming settlement that grew up around it.

New York, NY · est. 1938

On an April night in 1896, a New York vaudeville house called Koster & Bial's Music Hall hosted something audiences had never seen: images that moved on a screen for a paying crowd. Using Thomas Edison's Vitascope projector, the program threw flickering scenes larger than life before a Broadway audience, marking the American debut of projected motion pictures. The tablet was later affixed by the motion-picture industry itself, honoring the spot where its business was, in effect, born.

Temple, TX

Born in Hearne in 1890, Dr. Thomas Edison Dixon trained at Meharry Medical College and by 1927 had brought his practice to downtown Temple, where health care for African Americans was scarce. Devoted to pediatrics and obstetrics, "Tommy" Dixon also anchored the community's Black churches and civic groups, sold land cheaply to the city for schools, and contributed to the NAACP's 1954 "Fighting Fund for Freedom" against racial discrimination. At his death he was the only African American physician practicing in Bell County.

Whitley County, IN

On June 23, 1838, near this site, Thomas Estlick Jr. was born — recorded as the first white child born in Troy Township, in the earliest days of Whitley County's settlement. Such "first birth" markers were a common way frontier communities dated their own beginnings, fixing the moment a wilderness township became a place where families put down roots. It reflects the wave of settlers pushing into northern Indiana in the 1830s.

Fort Worth, TX

Built in 1927 in the graceful Monterrey style, this stucco-and-tile home was among the first to rise in Fort Worth's fashionable new Park Hill Addition. It was completed by prominent local contractor Bert B. Adams and bought by Thomas and Marjorie Shaw. Thomas Shaw had struck out on his own in the oil business, founding the T. G. Shaw Oil Corporation in 1924 during the boom years that reshaped North Texas.

Upper Darby, PA · est. 2007

Thomas Garrett was born at Riverview in Delaware County and became one of the most fearless conductors on the Underground Railroad. A devout Quaker who moved to Wilmington in 1822, he funneled freedom seekers northward to family properties, working alongside Harriet Tubman and William Still. Though convicted and heavily fined under the fugitive slave laws, he never relented—by his own account aiding some 2,700 people on their journey out of slavery.

Nashville, TN

Thomas Green Ryman rose to prominence as a Nashville riverboat captain and businessman in the late 19th century. Moved by a revival preacher, he devoted his fortune and energy to building the Union Gospel Tabernacle, a grand hall meant to host religious gatherings. After his death in 1904, the building was renamed the Ryman Auditorium in his honor, later becoming the legendary 'Mother Church of Country Music.'

Houston, TX

Born in Huntsville in 1859, Thomas H. Ball, Jr. rose from small-town mayor to four terms in the U.S. Congress, where he secured federal authorization and funding for the Houston Ship Channel. His decades of legal work and lobbying for the Harris County Navigation District earned him the title 'Father of the Port,' and the town of Tomball was named in his honor.

Bastrop, TX

Born in Virginia in 1802 and arriving in Texas from Tennessee in 1830, Thomas H. Mays became Bastrop's first municipal surveyor in 1834 and laid out the young town's streets. He was wounded in the leg at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 while serving with Edward Burleson's "Mina Volunteers," then returned to a life of public service as county deputy surveyor, city alderman, and associate justice. He and his wife raised their family on a large Bastrop homestead that included this site.

Galveston, TX

Thomas Henry Borden was one of Austin's 'Old Three Hundred,' the first legal Anglo-American colonists of Texas. A surveyor, he laid out the town of Galveston, and in 1835 he helped found the Telegraph and Texas Register, the newspaper that chronicled the Texas Revolution. A New York native, he lived in Galveston until his death in 1877.

Mathis, TX

After the Coleman, Mathis, Fulton Cattle Company dissolved in 1879, Thomas Henry Mathis founded the 24,000-acre Henry Bend Ranch on a bend of the Nueces River, fencing thousands of acres with wooden planks and even raising prized polo ponies trained for buyers in England. Sensing the value of the railroad, he donated a right-of-way to the San Antonio & Aransas Pass line in 1887 and platted the fenced townsite of Mathis in 1889. The ranch headquarters near this site stood until 1953.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1995

Thomas Holme came to Pennsylvania in 1682 as William Penn's Surveyor General, charged with turning Penn's ideals into a working colony. He laid out the original grid of Philadelphia, drew the city's first map in 1683, and later mapped the settled parts of the province. He served in the colony's first Assembly and Provincial Council and was buried here on his own estate alongside members of Penn's Crispin relatives.

Call Junction, TX

Thomas Holmes helped steer Texas from colony to republic, serving as delegate for the Bevil municipality at the 1835 Consultation that set the Texas Revolution in motion. A decade later, as the frontier organized itself into counties, he became the first chief justice of newly formed Newton County in 1846.

New Orleans, LA

Built in 1827 for Dr. Pierre Thomas, this Federal-style townhouse reflects the elegant urban architecture of early New Orleans. Remodeled in 1844 and later sold in 1867 to Jean Schweitzer, who ran a book and stationery shop here, it carries the layered story of a single address across the 19th century, down to its graceful cast-iron balcony.

Strawn, TX

Completed in 1919 for rancher Randal Burton Thomas, this Prairie School house — low, horizontal, with wide projecting eaves — was designed by a Dallas architect and built with wealth from the Ranger Oil Boom that began nearby in 1917. The Thomas family had been among the region's earliest settlers after the railroad reached West Texas around 1881, and the house was arranged with separate quarters for Thomas's mother, who had raised him running the family ranch.

Waco, TX

Born in Virginia in 1796, Thomas Hudson Barron fought at the Battle of New Orleans with the Kentucky Militia before joining the stream of settlers into Mexican Texas, appearing in Stephen F. Austin's 1831 registry of families. As a Ranger captain he oversaw the building of Fort Fisher on the Brazos in 1837 and became one of the earliest settlers of what would grow into Waco, later serving as the county's first court clerk. A street, a school, and a creek in the city still carry his name.

Boston, MA

This marker notes the site of the mansion of Thomas Hutchinson, built about 1687 in Boston's North End. Hutchinson served as the colony's royal governor in the tense years before the Revolution, and his fine home stood as a symbol of Crown authority. It was famously ransacked by a mob during the Stamp Act protests of the 1760s.

Corsicana, TX

Born in Virginia in 1800, Thomas Ingles Smith soldiered in the War of 1812 under his father before coming to Texas in 1836 to join the Republic's army. He was wounded at the Battle of the Salado in 1842 and figured in the "Archive War" when Austin residents blocked his Rangers from removing the Republic's records. A frontier Ranger, Indian scout, and treaty commissioner, he lent his name to Fort Smith and helped found Corsicana before his death in 1848.

Houston, TX

Thomas J. Donoghue, a founder and executive of the Texas Company (Texaco), and his wife Mary built this Georgian Revival house in 1915–16. Designed by the celebrated New York firm Warren and Wetmore with carvings by master artisan Peter Mansbendel, it stood in Houston's exclusive Courtlandt Place neighborhood and remained in the family until 1966.

Somerville, TX

Born in 1922 and schooled in Somerville, Thomas J. Gary, Jr., enlisted in the U.S. Navy at eighteen and was assigned to the USS California, flagship of the Pacific Fleet. When Japanese planes struck Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Gary gave his life rescuing several crewmates and was lost at sea. Honored with the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a Navy Citation, he had two ships named for him, including the destroyer escort USS Thomas J. Gary.

Greenville, NC

Thomas J. Jarvis served as governor of North Carolina from 1879 to 1885, later representing the nation as minister to Brazil and briefly serving in the United States Senate. A leading figure in the state's post-Reconstruction politics, he was long associated with the cause of public education. His home stands three blocks south and his grave one block west of this marker.

Milford, TX

Thomas J. Jordan carried a rifle for the fledgling Texas Army in 1836, the year Texian forces won independence from Mexico at San Jacinto. Tennessee-born like so many who poured into the new republic, he lived out his days on the Blackland Prairie of Ellis County, where he and his wife Stacy are remembered side by side. Their joined dates trace a full pioneer lifetime spanning frontier Texas from revolution to the Gilded Age.

Lewis County, WA

This marker honors Thomas J. Kinsman, a United States Army soldier awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in Vietnam in 1968, along with all who served across the armed forces. The nation's highest military decoration recognizes actions above and beyond the call of duty, and Kinsman's stands among the acts of gallantry from America's long, divisive war in Southeast Asia.

Portland, OR

This memorial bears a line from Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's third president. His words about the 'boisterous sea of liberty' reflect his lifelong conviction that self-government, though turbulent, was worth its storms. Jefferson's era saw the young republic take shape and, through the Louisiana Purchase, double in size and turn its gaze westward.

Liverpool, TX

Illinois-born Thomas Jefferson Callihan fought in the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, the swift and decisive clash that won Texas its independence. He lived to 1880, and rests here alongside his German-born wife Johanne, whose life stretched into the 1920s.

Liberty, TX

This residence went up in the 1860s for Thomas Jefferson Chambers (1840–1929), a Virginia-born newspaper editor, Confederate veteran, and nephew of the Texas colonial leader of the same name. Over a long public life he served as state representative, justice of the peace, city councilman, and mayor. Known as the "octagon house" for its central chimney and unusual form, the home has since been reshaped by remodeling.

Jacksonville, TX

Thomas Jefferson Dean became pastor of Jacksonville's First Christian Church in 1909, four years before finishing his degree at Texas Christian University. Beyond the pulpit he helped found the town's public library and Boy Scout troop, later returned to farming, and in the 1940s ran the local Farm Security Administration office. As chamber of commerce manager he launched "Farm Family Days," a community fair that ran into the 1950s.

San Antonio, TX

Built between 1930 and 1932 to relieve overcrowding in San Antonio's high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School rose despite public grumbling over its cost — and quickly justified the expense. Designed by the firm of Adams and Adams around twin patios and a landmark tower, its Spanish Baroque entry, red tile roof, and wrought-iron balconies made it one of the most celebrated school buildings in the country, later appearing in magazines and films. It opened to 1,400 students in February 1932.

Nacogdoches, TX

Thomas Jefferson Rusk passed the bar at twenty-one and, drawn to Nacogdoches, threw himself into the Texas independence movement, signing the Declaration of Independence and serving as secretary of war. He fought beside Sam Houston at San Jacinto and briefly commanded the Republic's army, then helped bring Texas into the Union and served in the U.S. Senate, where he worked to fix the state's boundary and promote a transcontinental railroad. Grief-stricken after his wife's death, the ailing statesman took his own life in 1857.

Sherman, TX

Thomas Jefferson Shannon arrived in Texas in 1839, when it was still an independent republic, and settled in the area that became Grayson County in 1845. As the county's first state legislator he pushed to move the county seat to present-day Sherman and donated the land for the townsite, earning the nickname "Father of Sherman." A pioneering cattleman, he even imported Durham cattle said to be a gift from Queen Victoria in 1848, while his daughter Julia named the town's first streets.

Richmond, TX

Born in Virginia in 1808 and raised in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson Smith joined the fight for Texas independence in 1836, serving under James W. Fannin at Refugio. Captured at Goliad, he was spared to repair weapons for the Mexican army and escaped amid the confusion of the Battle of San Jacinto. He settled in Richmond after the war, running a blacksmith shop, hotel, and livery stable, and served as Fort Bend County sheriff in the 1850s.

Sweeny, TX

This marker honors Thomas Jefferson Sweeny, a Tennessee-born settler who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. He lived out his years in the young Republic and early state of Texas, dying at La Grange in 1869. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936 during the centennial of the revolution.

Hemphill, TX

Built around 1930, this Hemphill school was one of thousands across the rural South funded in part by the Rosenwald Fund, a partnership between Sears executive Julius Rosenwald and educator Booker T. Washington to build schools for African American children. Over the decades it grew into the Hemphill Colored School and later the Thomas Johnson School, adding a program to train returning WWII veterans and publishing its own yearbook, 'The Hawk.' In 1966 it integrated into the local district, closing a long chapter as the cornerstone of Black education in the county.

Austin, TX

Thomas Jones Hardeman came to Texas from Tennessee and helped govern the young republic and state, serving in the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas and later in the state legislature. He also acted as chief justice of Bastrop County and rose to lead the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas in 1850. His grave marker records a life woven into the civic institutions of frontier Texas.

Galveston, TX

Thomas Miller Joseph (1823–1905) arrived in Galveston about 1841 as a young man from Hartford, Connecticut, and made the booming island city his home for the rest of his long life. Admitted to the bar, he rose as a Democratic Party leader, serving as county judge, state legislator, and senator, and raising eight children with his wife Mary. Fittingly for a place battered by hurricanes, his own grave may lie atop his mother's, its exact spot lost after storms swept the cemetery.

Caldwell, TX

Built in 1891 for merchant Thomas Kraitchar, Jr., this cypress-framed Victorian cottage shows the era's taste in its five-bay symmetrical facade and central gable. Beyond his store, Kraitchar served Burleson County as tax collector and sat as a Caldwell city alderman. The house stayed in his family for more than ninety years, until 1982.

Dallas, TX

Thomas L. Bradford built this home around 1907 at the height of Dallas's emergence as a Southwestern financial center. A Louisiana native who arrived in the 1890s, he rose through Southwestern Life Insurance to become chairman of the board and, briefly in 1931, mayor of Dallas. His 1929 gift for a newborn baby center helped seed what became Children's Medical Center of Dallas.

Kane, PA · est. 1980

Thomas L. Kane was one of 19th-century America's most fascinating idealists: a Civil War general who raised and led the famed "Bucktail Regiment" of Pennsylvania riflemen, and an outspoken friend of the persecuted Mormons when few others would defend them. He founded the borough of Kane in the northern Pennsylvania wilderness and was breveted major general in 1863. He died in 1883 and lies buried at the chapel he directed to be built here in the late 1870s.

Diboll, TX

A Virginia native, Thomas Lewis Latane Temple moved to Texarkana in 1877 and in 1893 organized the Southern Pine Lumber Company, buying up timberland in Angelina County. In 1894 he founded the town of Diboll around his main sawmill, building an East Texas lumber empire. He became known for early conservation and reforestation practices and for his philanthropy toward his workers and their town.

Minneapolis, MN

Thomas Lowry was one of the towering figures of Gilded Age Minneapolis, the streetcar magnate whose electric railway lines knit the young Twin Cities together and helped them grow into a metropolis. This memorial, inscribed with a civic benediction, honors his role as a builder and booster of the community. His transit empire shaped how a generation of Minnesotans lived, worked, and moved.

Cuero, TX

Born in Florida and raised in Texas, Thomas M. Stell came up as a cowboy, driving cattle north to Kansas and Wyoming before studying at Covey College in Concrete. Elected sheriff of DeWitt County in 1892, he held the office fifteen years, relying on persuasiveness and tact — and once numbered the notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin among his prisoners. A member of the Old Trail Drivers Association, he served as president of the Texas Sheriffs Association.

Marple Township, PA · est. 1986

The oldest part of this house, a brick section, rose before 1708 on the 300-acre plantation Thomas Massey had acquired by 1696 in the young colony of Pennsylvania. Successive generations added to it in stone, and its rooms record the slow evolution of a rural homestead from William Penn's day into the nineteenth century. Deeded to Marple Township in 1964 and restored, it survives as a rare example of early Pennsylvania architecture.

Franklin Township, PA · est. 1974

This Chester County farm was the 1734 birthplace of Thomas McKean, one of the most consequential founders few remember. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, he served simultaneously in the politics of two states and famously urged Caesar Rodney's dramatic ride to break Delaware's tie for independence. He later became Chief Justice and then Governor of Pennsylvania.

Louisville, KY

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, poet, and spiritual writer, entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky in 1941 and won international acclaim with his 1948 autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. At this Louisville corner on March 18, 1958, he experienced a sudden revelation—an overwhelming love for the strangers around him, "shining like the sun"—that reoriented his monastic life toward the world and its struggles for social justice.

Shillington, PA · est. 1947

Thomas Mifflin was one of the most active political figures of the Revolutionary generation, serving in the Continental Congress and as a soldier before becoming Pennsylvania's first governor under the state's 1790 constitution. His country estate here, called Angelica, was his home through the turbulent 1770s and 1780s when the new nation was being forged. Today the Berks County Farm and Home occupies the ground where his estate once stood.

Morristown, NJ

This was the Morristown home of Thomas Nast, the most influential American political cartoonist of the 19th century, who lived here at the height of his fame. From the pages of Harper's Weekly his pen helped bring down the corrupt Tweed Ring that ran New York City, and he popularized two enduring symbols of American politics — the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant. Nast is also credited with shaping the familiar modern image of a jolly, round Santa Claus.

Red Rock, TX

Thomas Osborn was one of the settlers-turned-soldiers who took up arms in the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836, the uprising that severed Mexican Texas from Mexico. The battles named here trace the war's arc: the early clash at Gonzales and the fight at Velasco, the grinding Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and the disastrous defeat at Coleto that led to the Goliad massacre. Texas erected the marker in 1962 to honor a veteran of that founding struggle.

Newburgh, IN

This residence belongs to Newburgh's collection of 19th-century homes, built while the town thrived as an Ohio River shipping point. The prosperity of the steamboat years let local families raise substantial houses along the bluff. The marker names the household associated with the property.

New York, NY · est. 1923

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet "Common Sense" helped ignite the drive for American independence, died in 1809 at a site here in New York City. The marker quotes his creed from "The Age of Reason" — "The world is my country. To do good is my religion" — words that captured his belief in reason, human brotherhood, and liberty across the Atlantic world. Born in England in 1737, Paine wrote for revolutions in America, France, and his native British Isles.

Bordentown, NJ

In 1783, as the Revolution he had championed drew to a close, Thomas Paine bought this Bordentown house and lived in it off and on until his death in 1809. The author of "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis" had done as much as any writer to rally colonists to independence. Here in New Jersey he kept up his restless pursuits in politics, science, and invention between travels to Europe.

Morristown, NJ

Thomas Paine was the pamphleteer whose words helped turn a colonial rebellion into a revolution. His American Crisis series, begun in the dark winter of 1776, opened with the immortal line about times that try men's souls and was read aloud to Washington's cold, discouraged troops across New Jersey's Revolutionary landscape. An Englishman by birth who later became a French citizen and an adopted American, Paine went on to write Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, works that carried the era's arguments about liberty and reason far beyond the new nation's borders.

Austin, TX

Thomas Pliney Plaster, born in Tennessee in 1804, helped work one of the celebrated "Twin Sisters" cannon at the Battle of San Jacinto, the artillery that pounded the Mexican line in Texas's decisive 1836 victory. He later served in the Mexican War of the 1840s. The State of Texas set this marker at his grave during the 1936 Centennial.

Lampasas, TX

Thomas Pratt served as a captain in the army of the Republic of Texas in 1836 and, decades later, in the Texas militia and Confederate service during the Civil War. In private life he farmed and ranched land in Coleman and Lampasas counties, and his wife Susan belonged to one of the first Anglo colonies in Texas. Remembered as a kindly man, he left funds in his will to provide meat for poor and reputable widows.

Raleigh, NC

Thomas R. Jernigan spent some thirty years as an American diplomat and negotiator in China, also serving as consul in both Japan and China. A lawyer, editor, and author, he brought a Carolinian's eye to the affairs of the far Pacific. His home stood two blocks east of here.

Leming, TX

Born in Missouri in 1824 and raised in Bastrop County, Thomas Ransdell Brite came of age amid the conflicts of early Texas. He volunteered against Mexican incursions in the 1842 Vasquez, Woll, and Somervell campaigns, served in the Mexican War under Captain McCulloch in 1846, and joined the Texas Rangers in 1855 to counter frontier raids. Settling in what became Atascosa County, he was elected its first tax assessor-collector and later county treasurer before his death in 1859.

Cheltenham Township, PA · est. 2006

In 1795 Benjamin Rowland, Jr. founded a mill complex near here that turned out high-quality shovels and spades for a young nation. Run by the Rowland family until 1901, the works earned an international reputation and helped prove that American-made goods could compete with the finest from abroad. The surviving Rowland house is among the last 18th-century structures tied to early American hardware production.

Helena, TX

Princeton-educated Thomas Ruckman was drawn to Texas by cheap land and boundless opportunity, arriving in San Antonio on Christmas morning of 1850. He opened a trading post on the Old Ox-Cart Road between San Antonio and Goliad, then in 1852 laid out with partner Dr. L. S. Owings a new town they named Helena, which became the seat of Karnes County in 1854. For nearly forty years Ruckman served as its leading merchant, banker, and postmaster, and in 1872 he helped found the Helena Academy.

Douglass Township, PA · est. 1982

Thomas Rutter, an ironmaster who died in 1730, built Pennsylvania's first ironworks nearby in 1716 and went on to raise Pine Forge and this mansion in the decade that followed. Remarkable for his era, he was an outspoken opponent of slavery. Generations later, in the 19th century, the house served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom seekers; an academy was founded on the grounds in 1945.

Corpus Christi, TX

Philadelphia-born Thomas S. Parker came to Texas at twenty, and in 1839 he and his parents received large land grants near present-day Corpus Christi, where they raised cattle. He allied with trader Henry L. Kinney, and when Zachary Taylor's army camped near Kinney's post in 1845 — the staging ground for the war with Mexico — Parker won the contract to supply the soldiers' beef. "Col. Tom" went on to become the first sheriff of Nueces County, later a Texas Ranger and Confederate soldier, and finally Corpus Christi's city marshal, shaping the young city's commerce and law until his death in 1886.