Search Markers

Sharp, TX

Born in Germany in 1844, William Persky came to the United States with his family at age eight and grew up to enlist in the Confederate army, spending part of the Civil War as a prisoner of war. He farmed in Austin and Bell counties before settling in the Milam County area in 1925. Living to 100, he was at his death in 1945 both the oldest resident and the last surviving Confederate veteran of the county.

Pflugerville, TX

William Pfluger, a German immigrant and Confederate veteran, bought this land in 1871 and built its limestone house in 1875 as he raised a family that would span five generations here. Beyond ranching, he ran a cotton gin, founded Pflugerville's first bank, and deeded land for the railroad and the Lutheran church. The town that grew up around him still carries his name.

Raleigh, NC

William Polk served as an officer in the Revolutionary War, then helped steer the new nation's economy as first president of the State Bank from 1811 to 1819. In 1825, at a house that once stood here, he hosted the Marquis de Lafayette during the aging general's celebrated farewell tour of the United States. Polk's life bridged the fight for independence and the institution-building of the Early Republic.

Giddings, TX

Bill Longley (1851–1878) came from a respectable Texas family, but a violent temper and the turmoil of Reconstruction turned him into one of the era's most notorious gunmen, credited by legend with killing 32 people. Captured in 1877 and tried for a Lee County murder, he was hanged at Giddings in 1878. In his final days he reportedly repented and urged others to shun his example; his grave once lay just outside the cemetery bounds.

Ratcliff, TX

On land bought in 1852, W. P. "Press" and Rebecca Kate Conner built their home in 1891 from logs harvested on the property, a vernacular L-plan house later expanded with a second story and generations of additions. Press worked as a farmer and rancher while Kate served the surrounding community as its midwife. More than a century on, Conner descendants still own and care for the homestead.

Person County, NC

Born near here in 1842, William R. 'Sawney' Webb served as a Confederate soldier before founding a school in 1870 that, relocated to Bell Buckle, Tennessee, became the celebrated Webb School. Late in life he served briefly as a United States Senator in 1913.

Edgecombe County, NC

William R. Cox rose to become a Confederate general whose brigade is remembered for taking part in one of the last infantry actions at Appomattox in April 1865, in the final hours before Lee's surrender. After the war he returned to public life as a congressman and later served as Secretary of the U.S. Senate. His home stood here in the Edgecombe County countryside.

Smithville, TX

This state marker honors William Redfield, who served as a soldier in the Texas War for Independence during 1835–1836. That struggle, fought by Texian colonists against the Mexican government, ran from the first clashes of 1835 through the decisive victory at San Jacinto in 1836 and the birth of the Republic of Texas. The monument, topped by the Lone Star and wreath, was erected by the State of Texas in 1962 to mark his grave and service.

Tehuacana, TX

William Rees carried a Liverpool stonemason's training across the Atlantic in 1870, arriving in the tiny college town of Tehuacana two years later. When Presbyterian-backed Trinity University ran short of funds in 1873, the skilled Welsh-descended craftsman took the contract for the building's wings and did much of the fine stonecutting himself—labor usually left to hired hands. A devoted champion of education who served on and led the local school board, Rees embodied the immigrant artisan who helped literally build the institutions of a young Texas.

Fort Worth, TX

Businessman and philanthropist William Reeves built this Fort Worth home for himself and his wife, Mattie Hosea, in 1907–08, at the height of the city's early-twentieth-century boom. As president of Reeves Investments and founder of the First Fort Worth Bank and Trust, he could afford a showpiece blending Neo-Classical Revival and Queen Anne styling. Its rounded entrance pavilion and Doric-columned wrap-around porches announced his standing in the community.

Athens, TX

Born in South Carolina in 1805, William Richardson moved to Alabama, married Mary "Polly" Kilpatrick, and in 1855 brought his large family, his brothers' families, and the people he enslaved to Texas by wagon train, arriving at this location. He became a successful planter, registered his "Three Circles" cattle brand, and helped lay out an early road between Athens and Kaufman that Highway 175 still roughly follows. The enslaved people he brought all took the Richardson name; many stayed on after emancipation and, with their descendants, founded the nearby Sand Flat community.

San Francisco, CA

On June 25, 1835, William A. Richardson pitched a tent dwelling on this spot in Mexican-era California, the first habitation of the settlement he named Yerba Buena. He soon replaced it with a wooden house and, in 1836, the substantial adobe known as "Casa Grande." From this modest beginning grew the city that would become San Francisco.

Victoria, TX

William Robert Smith rode with Company D of the Texas Rangers from 1927 to 1933, when the Rangers still patrolled the Rio Grande against smugglers and waded into volatile duties — guarding a prisoner from a Sherman lynch mob, enforcing cattle-dipping under death threats, and probing the 'hot oil' scandals of the East Texas boom. He later served as a Cameron County deputy sheriff and a Brownsville police lieutenant.

Village of Upper Brookville, NY

In the early twentieth century, the north shore of Long Island became America's "Gold Coast," where industrialists and financiers built grand country estates amid rolling lawns and gardens. Planting Fields was one of the finest of these, shaped by William Robertson Coe (1869–1955), a businessman who made his fortune in insurance and rail and poured his resources into an ambitious landscape of specimen trees, greenhouses, and formal gardens. This marker, dedicated in 1962, honors the vision and generosity that turned a private estate into a lasting public arboretum devoted to horticulture.

Oakhurst, TX

Bill Kelley, a Virginia-born overseer who came to Texas by 1851 and served in the 25th Texas Cavalry, C.S.A., built a family and a nearly 700-acre farm with Dinah Rush, a woman born enslaved in Alabama in 1848. Because state and federal law barred their union, Dinah could never marry the father of her ten children or carry his name, yet the couple built an enduring household until her death in 1884. Their descendants went on to become leaders in business, law, medicine and education.

Goliad, TX

In segregated 1930s Goliad, Mexican American children were confined to a cramped one-room school that ended at seventh grade, while the high school admitted only white students. Backed by his principal Frank Wallace and the newly formed Goliad chapter of LULAC, the Carbajal family carried their fight to the Texas Board of Education, which finally ordered the school to admit William. After three days waiting on the schoolhouse steps he was let in, and in 1935 he became the first Mexican American to graduate from Goliad High School.

Teague, TX

William Rufus Boyd, Jr. was admitted to the bar at 19 and became Teague's first mayor at 21. He managed a region for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during World War I, then joined the American Petroleum Institute in 1920, rising to executive vice president and president. During World War II, as chairman of the petroleum industry's War Council, he helped marshal the oil that fueled Allied victory.

Houston, TX

William S. Stilwell, born in New York in 1809, served as a private in Captain Isaac N. Moreland's artillery company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. Promoted to captain that December, he lived only a short time longer, dying suddenly in Houston in September 1837. A Telegraph notice asked New Orleans and New York papers to mark the passing of the young Texian officer.

Garland, TX

William Sachse, born in Prussia, came to North Texas in 1845 as a Peters colonist and built a thriving life as a businessman, rancher, and trader who drove cattle to Kansas and amassed thousands of acres. In 1886 he gave land to the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad for a line and townsite, and the community that grew up there took his name. He set aside two acres for a church and this cemetery, where his 1899 grave is the oldest marked and where generations of area settlers now rest.

Keyport, NJ

In the years surrounding World War I, communities across America planted living "memorial trees" to honor the local men who died in the fighting of 1917–1918 — a quiet, growing alternative to stone and bronze. This tribute in Keyport, a small bayside town on the New Jersey shore, remembers Private William Senson, who died in service on September 19, 1918, only weeks before the November armistice brought the war to a close. Nearly every town of the era carried such losses home, and marked them wherever neighbors would pass and remember.

Iredell County, NC

William Sharpe (1742–1818) served in both the provincial and Continental Congresses during the American Revolution, helping guide North Carolina through the founding era. In 1784 he became the first legislator to propose what would become the University of North Carolina, the first public university in the United States. His grave lies two miles east.

Columbus, TX

Kentucky-born William S. Delaney taught at the college level before turning to law, practicing in Tennessee until he moved to Columbus in 1860. Through the Civil War and the decades that followed he served his adopted community as district attorney, county judge, and state legislator, and worshipped as a lay leader at St. John's Episcopal Church. He died in 1900 while visiting his daughter in Austin.

Dallas, TX

Born in Reconstruction-era Alabama in 1875, William Sidney Pittman rose from segregated schools to study at Tuskegee and the Drexel Institute, becoming one of the most accomplished Black architects in America. After a Washington practice and marriage to Booker T. Washington's daughter Portia, he settled in Dallas in 1913, where he designed churches, the Pythian Temple, and other buildings financed and used by the city's Black citizens. Remembered as the first practicing African American architect in Texas, he also published the newspaper Brotherhood Eyes before his death in 1958.

Hallettsville, TX

Orphaned young on the Virginia frontier, William Smothers fought through some of the Revolution's hardest Southern battles — King's Mountain, Guilford Courthouse, Camden, and Eutaw Springs — before pushing west to build forts in Kentucky and found the river port that became Owensboro. He later scouted Texas with Stephen F. Austin's party, helped protect the "Old 300" settlers, and won Mexican land grants in DeWitt's Colony, living to see his descendants fight for Texas independence.

Austin, TX

A New York-born West Point graduate, William Steele fought in the Seminole and Mexican Wars before resigning from the U.S. Army to serve the Confederacy, rising to general and commanding troops from New Mexico and the Indian Territory to the defenses of Galveston. He led cavalry in the Red River campaign and other Louisiana actions against Union invasions of Texas. After the war he served as Texas Adjutant General, rebuilding the Texas Rangers during the turbulent Reconstruction years.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

From his Philadelphia home, William Still worked as a key agent of the Underground Railroad, guiding fugitives from slavery toward freedom and carefully recording their names and stories so that separated families might one day reunite. A prosperous coal merchant, he used his standing and resources to advance Black civil rights, helping found the city's first Black YMCA. His meticulous accounts, later published, remain one of the most important firsthand records of the Underground Railroad.

Reading, PA · est. 1951

William Strong built a distinguished legal career from this corner of Reading, where his home and law office once stood. He rose from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to the Supreme Court of the United States, where he served through the 1870s during the turbulent Reconstruction years, and in 1877 sat on the Electoral Commission that resolved the disputed Hayes–Tilden presidential election. He died in 1895, one of the era's most respected jurists.

Baltimore, MD

William Sydney Thayer was a distinguished Baltimore physician who served as a much-decorated Chief Medical Consultant to the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. He later rose to the presidency of the American Medical Association. His career bridged the wards of Johns Hopkins and the battlefields of Europe.

Austin, TX

Built in 1933–34 by William Kutalek and Peter Mansbendel for attorney William T. Williams Jr. and his wife Clotilde Valerie Williams, this Tudor Revival home wraps a U-shaped plan around an enclosed courtyard. Its interior and exterior are adorned with wood and stone carvings by Valerie's father, the noted local artisan Peter Mansbendel. William was a prominent civic leader and attorney, while Valerie was active in church, school, and civic organizations.

Collier Township, PA · est. 1992

From his home in Rennersdale, William T. Kerr devoted his life to a single patriotic cause: establishing a national day to honor the American flag. He founded the American Flag Day Association and led it for half a century, campaigning tirelessly for official recognition. His persistence was rewarded on August 3, 1949, when President Truman—with Kerr standing beside him—signed the act designating June 14 as Flag Day.

Dublin, TX

Built in 1882 by a trio of stonemasons for William T. Miller, this two-story native-stone mill ground the grain that fed a young Erath County. It moved with the times—from steam power to a crude-oil engine in 1918, then to feed production after new owners took over in 1926—before being donated to the Dublin Historical Society as a museum in 1974. The sturdy stone walls are a rare survivor of the small-town gristmills that once anchored rural economies across Texas.

Millican, TX

William T. Millican came to Texas in 1821 as part of Stephen F. Austin's first colony — the famed "Old Three Hundred" — and received a land grant in 1824 in the area that took his family's name. As revolution loomed, he served as a delegate to the 1835 Consultation at San Felipe, then fled with his family in the 1836 Runaway Scrape, losing his father along the way before San Jacinto secured Texas independence. He went on to serve the young Republic as a soldier and public official, helping choose the seat of Brazos County.

Galveston, TX

Connecticut-born William Tennant Austin came to Texas in 1829 and threw himself into its revolution, fighting in the 1835 Siege of Bexar and serving as aide to his distant relative Stephen F. Austin as well as to Generals Burleson and Houston. He commanded the Port of Velasco, held county offices, and worked as a customs collector before moving to Galveston as a cotton factor, later serving the Confederacy in the Civil War.

White Settlement, TX

William Terry Allen came to Tarrant County from Kentucky as a boy in 1854, and by 1864 — after serving in the Confederate army — he and his wife had built this small 13-by-18-foot log cabin west of the courthouse. The family enlarged it over the years, even setting aside a "Professor's Room" for the local schoolteacher during the school term. After decades of use, sale, and relocation, the cabin was finally moved to make way for Carswell Air Force Base runways, then numbered log by log and restored to its original size by the White Settlement Historical Society.

Hamilton, TX

Born in Ohio in 1850, William Thatcher Baker came to Texas as a young man and married Emily Beeman, daughter of a Dallas pioneer family. Though a Unionist at heart, he stayed loyal to his adopted state and made shoes for the Confederacy during the Civil War, then ran a ferry on the Trinity River in the years after. In 1879 he settled at Plum Creek Farm in Hamilton County and, in 1882, founded a post office he pointedly named "Ohio" for his home state.

Austin, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1792, William Tom served under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War of 1813 before joining the Army of Texas in the 1835 struggle for independence. His long life spanned the early American republic and the settling of Texas, and he died in Guadalupe County in 1871. The state placed his grave marker in 1936 alongside that of his wife, Kissiah.

Crockett, TX

William Van McConnell was born in Crockett in 1855, the son of an Irish immigrant blacksmith, and after learning that trade he opened a mercantile store on the town square. The family business he built there lasted nearly a century, and he helped charter the First Christian Church. Widowed young, he married his late wife's sister Daisy, a common pattern in an age when families closed ranks around loss.

Austin, TX

William Vanoy Criswell, born in Kentucky in 1815, came to Texas as a teenager in 1830 and fought as a soldier at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. He lived out his days in Fayette County, dying in 1858. The State of Texas placed this marker at his grave during the 1936 Centennial.

Savoy, TX

English-born William W. Bell emigrated to America in 1820 and reached Texas by 1836, enlisting in the Republic of Texas army in 1837 and later riding with the Texas Rangers and carrying the Republic's mail. When he died in 1845, his family buried him here, beginning a graveyard that holds his wife Elizabeth, several of their children, and—by family tradition—some enslaved people in unmarked graves. Bell descendants formed an association in 1985 to preserve the site.

Lexington, TX

This grave marker honors William W. Hawkins, who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 — the decisive clash that won Texas its independence — and afterward served as a Texas Ranger under the Republic of Texas. The star-and-wreath emblem marks him as a veteran of that founding generation of Texas soldiers who fought and then policed a fledgling nation on the far southwestern edge of the American frontier.

Raleigh, NC

William W. Holden, a powerful newspaper editor, was appointed provisional governor of North Carolina in 1865 and elected to the office in 1868 during Reconstruction. His campaign against the Ku Klux Klan led to his impeachment and removal in 1871, the first of a U.S. governor. His home once stood on this site.

San Marcos, TX

William W. Moon, orphaned in infancy in Alabama, came to Texas in 1838 and rode with the Texas Rangers, first seeing the San Marcos Springs during a running Indian fight in 1843. Enchanted by the country, he brought his family to build a cabin here in 1845, making the Moons the first permanent Anglo-American settlers of what became Hays County. His cabin hosted the county's first sermon and first school, and he later served in both the Mexican War and the Civil War while running a hotel, stage stop, blacksmith shop, and freight line.

Scranton, PA · est. 2016

William W. Scranton belonged to the family whose name the city bears, and he came of age as its anthracite economy was fading. A World War II pilot, he served in Congress and then as governor of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, pushing to modernize the state's industry, highways, schools, and welfare programs. His later roles as a United Nations ambassador and adviser to presidents made him a national figure across decades of public life.

Fredericksburg, TX

William Wahrmund served repeatedly as Gillespie County Judge between 1852 and 1890, and in 1875 he hired local German stonemasons to build this limestone residence near his own home and store. Three of his sons and several grandchildren later lived in it, and its Victorian porch detailing dresses up the sturdy Hill Country stonework. Restored in 1976, it embodies the blend of German craftsmanship and civic leadership that defined Fredericksburg's founding families.

Blessing, TX

Born in Minneapolis in 1867, William 'Pudge' Heffelfinger became one of football's foundational figures, starring as a guard at Yale where in 1890 he devised the pulling-guard play still used today. In 1892 he was paid $500 to play a game in Pittsburgh, an event widely credited as making him the first professional football player in America. He later coached across the country, married Matagorda County native Grace Pierce, and died near Blessing in 1954, three years after entering the College Football Hall of Fame.

Utopia, TX

Born in 1800, William Ware brought his family to Montgomery County, Texas, in 1828 and threw himself into the fight for Texas independence, raising a military company that fought at the Siege of Bexar in 1835 and leading volunteers at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Years later he pushed west into Sabinal Canyon, arriving in 1852 to build a cabin that became the seed of the settlement of Waresville. He died the next year and was buried in the cemetery there.

Ephraim, UT

This Ephraim historical marker records the death of William Washington Thorpe, killed on October 17, 1865, while trying to recover stolen cattle in the Sanpete Valley. His death came during the Black Hawk War, a prolonged conflict between Mormon settlers and Ute and allied bands over land, livestock, and survival in central Utah.

Burlington, VT

This marker honors William Wells (1837–1892), a Vermont businessman and politician who rose to become a general in the Union Army during the Civil War. He received the Medal of Honor for gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he led a cavalry charge on July 3, 1863. After the war he returned to civic and business life in Burlington, his home city.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

William Whipper, born around 1804, was a founder of the American Moral Reform Society and edited its journal in 1838-39, advocating self-improvement and equality. A committed Underground Railroad agent, he used his lumber business in Columbia, Pennsylvania, to help hundreds of freedom seekers passing through between 1847 and 1860. A prosperous Black businessman, he later made his home in this city.

Gordon, TX

William Whipple Johnson left Michigan after the Panic of 1873 wrecked his family's businesses and by 1880 had reached Strawn, Texas, just as the Texas & Pacific Railroad arrived. He and his wife Anna built a mercantile serving railroad workers, won contracts supplying crossties, and expanded into coal and mineral mining and livestock across Palo Pinto County. After burying children in a series of family mausoleums, he was finally laid to rest in a permanent structure completed in 1923 on his ranch at Salt Point.

Belton, TX

William Whitaker Reed came to Texas from Tennessee in 1833 and joined Robertson's colony, taking land along the Little River just as the Texas Revolution swept the region. His family fled in the 'Runaway Scrape,' and he and his brother enlisted in the Republic of Texas Army, helping bury the remains of Fannin's men massacred at Goliad. Settling permanently after the war, Reed helped organize Bell County in 1850 and served as its first sheriff.

Howe, TX

William Whitley Wheat came to Texas from Alabama in 1842, joining the Peters Colony before settling in what became Grayson County, where he and his wife raised ten children. An early cattle drover who pushed herds to northern markets, he prospered as a farmer and served for years as county commissioner in the 1870s and 1880s. As the first president of the Old Settlers Association of North Texas, he worked to calm the frictions of the post-Civil War frontier.

Vidor, TX

Louisiana native William Williamson and his wife Joissine bought squatters' rights and a log house on this public-land tract in 1867, and their home soon became the community's gathering place for socials and church meetings. A devoted supporter of schooling, Williamson served as a school trustee, as did many of his fifteen children. In 1900 he and his wife were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the beginning of Mormonism in the area—and the congregation raised its first log meetinghouse about 1901, with the present building following in 1915.

McKinney, TX

Grafton Williams arrived in 1843 with the Peters Colony, one of the land-grant settlements that drew Anglo families into north Texas, and received 640 acres. After his wife Harriet died in 1848, he donated land for a community burial ground, sometimes called Mount Olive for the Baptist church that once stood beside it. A cemetery association formed in 1885 still tends the grounds, sustained by land willed to it decades later.

Stonewall vicinity, TX

The Williams Creek School—also called the Albert School—began around 1890 to serve the rural Albert community, moving into a stone building in 1897 and growing to two rooms by 1922, its dogtrot and bell tower marking a classic Texas country schoolhouse. For one year a young Lyndon Baines Johnson, an area native, was among its pupils. After merging with Stonewall in 1950, the building lived on as a community meeting hall.

Monroe Township, PA · est. 1980

In the decades after the Civil War, farmers organized into the Grange movement to fight railroad monopolies and share knowledge, and Williams Grove became one of its great gathering places. Founded in 1874 by Robert H. Thomas of the Pennsylvania State Grange, the Great Grangers' Interstate Picnic Exhibition drew crowds estimated at 100,000 or more in a single week by the 1890s. The nearby John Williams House, built around 1799, anchored the site to an earlier era of rural Pennsylvania life.

Mineola, TX

Mineola native Dr. James W. Williams opened his medical practice in 1946 after returning from World War II service, and a growing patient load led him to build this modern clinic. Its California-style red-brick design, wraparound corner window, and central heating and air conditioning made it strikingly up to date for the 1950s, when such climate control was still rare. The building has changed hands over the years but has continued to serve the Mineola community.

Mullin, TX

Overlooking the springs that gave rise to the frontier settlement of Williams Ranch, this cemetery sits on land granted to William W. Williams in 1852 and settled by John and Annie Williams in 1855. Its first marked grave, from 1864, is that of a six-year-old great-grandson killed in a horse accident. Granite, limestone, and cast-iron markers record pioneers and their descendants, including veterans from the Civil War to the Korean War.

Maysfield, TX

Thomas Herbert Williams, a South Carolina native and former Confederate officer, arrived in Milam County in 1866 and built a 5,000-acre cotton empire complete with his own gin. He died before finishing the family home, so his widow Emma completed the Folk Victorian house in 1893 and ran the farm herself. After Emma's death in 1897, eldest daughter Amelia raised her four sisters — all five earned college degrees — and Amelia went on to earn a doctorate in history at the University of Texas, becoming a leading authority on the Alamo whose research recovered the names of its defenders.

Liberty Hill, TX

Legend clings to the earliest years of this hilltop burial ground, where oral history places the graves of an enslaved man, an unknown Native American, and a settler family said to have been ambushed and buried in their own wagon in 1854. The oldest marked grave is that of infant Polly Williams, interred that same year on land owned by W. W. Williams. Honored veterans of both Confederate and U.S. forces lie here, along with graves relocated when Lake Georgetown was formed.