Search Markers

Beeville, TX

Stonemason Robert A. Ezell built this settler's "box" home in 1892 from Florida longleaf pine salvaged from a razed house in Old St. Mary's. Ingeniously planned, one of its three chimneys vented both a kitchen stove and a dining-room fireplace. Ezell's wife Sara Jane, daughter of legislator L. B. Camp, was born at Mission San José, and their six sons formed a popular orchestra that played from 1895 to 1904.

Mercedes, TX

In 1836 Antonio Cano established Rancho Guadalupe at Campacuas on part of the Llano Grande royal land grant, fronting the Rio Grande and stretching some fifteen miles north. He set his ranch headquarters on the wooded shore of Campacuas Lake — a resaca named for the Tampacuaze Indians who frequented it — and donated land for a school, chapel, and this cemetery. His own grave, an above-ground bóveda crypt, is the oldest marked burial among the handmade markers and tall monuments that remain.

Catoosa County, GA

In early May 1864, Union corps marching from Cleveland, Tennessee, converged near Catoosa Springs to open Sherman's campaign against Atlanta, moving south toward Dalton on May 7. From the yard of the nearby Dr. Lee house, the Federal high command—Sherman, Thomas, Schofield, and others—watched the first troop movements of the drive. The armies pressed on toward Tunnel Hill and Rocky Face Ridge.

Longview, TX

Before he became governor of Texas, Thomas Mitchell Campbell was a young Longview clerk who read law, married, and set up housekeeping with his bride in this modest frame cottage. He went on to a career as a railroad executive before winning two terms in the statehouse, and in 1982 the little starter home was moved a short distance to be preserved.

Glen Rose, TX

Dr. T. B. Campbell and his wife Julia raised this sturdy commercial building in 1894–95 from native limestone, its walls eighteen inches thick and its pillars and window sills shaped by hand. Over the decades it served the small town of Glen Rose as a general store, a telephone exchange, and a post office, with its upper floor given over to community meetings. It stands as a well-preserved example of the local stone masonry that defined turn-of-the-century Texas main streets.

Seguin, TX

Around 1850, Irish immigrant John Campbell is thought to have raised the first room of this log cabin near Seguin, then sailed home to persuade relatives—his brother Peter among them—to join him on the Texas frontier. Peter, a farmer and rancher, lived in the cabin and enlarged it as his family grew, and Campbell descendants kept it as a home until 1957. Relocated here in 1979, the humble structure survives as a tangible link to the region's immigrant pioneers.

Paris, TX

Campbell Cemetery dates to 1843, when Texas was still an independent republic and Anglo settlement of the region was just taking hold. Though the marker records little beyond its founding and its Historic Texas Cemetery designation, the burial ground stands as one of the area's oldest, holding the earliest generations of local settlers.

Palestine, TX

This is one of the countless small family graveyards scattered across Texas, begun by the Campbell family who settled the Mound Prairie community in 1844. Son John Bartlett Campbell returned from Civil War service, worked in a hardware store to buy his own land, and set aside an acre where his father became the first burial in 1876; descendants use the cemetery still.

Gillette, WY

In the coal and cattle country of northeastern Wyoming, this memorial honors the young men and women of Campbell County who died in the nation's service. The inscription speaks not of any one war but of duty, honor, and the price of freedom paid across generations. It stands for a rural community determined that its own be remembered.

Gillette, WY

Erected in 1955 by the local VFW Auxiliary, this memorial gathers the names of Campbell County's war dead across three conflicts of the 20th century — World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. In a sparsely populated corner of northeastern Wyoming, each name represented a substantial loss to a small ranching community. The monument reflects a mid-century wave of civic remembrance following two world wars and Korea.

Weatherford, TX

In the early twentieth century, medical care in Parker County meant scattered individual doctors — until 1924, when Dr. E.D. Fyke converted the 28-room Bowie family home into a hospital he ran until 1945. The county then took over the building, and after remodeling and additions it was renamed in 1958 for Dr. William Campbell, who practiced in the county for sixty-eight years and delivered, by his own count, more than five thousand babies. A modern 97-bed Campbell Memorial Hospital opened on a new campus in 1972, growing over the following decades into today's Medical City Weatherford.

Bastrop, TX

This marker honors Campbell Taylor, one of the Mina (present-day Bastrop) volunteers who took up arms in the Texas Revolution and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That eighteen-minute rout of Santa Anna's army secured Texas independence. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1962 to remember him among the citizen-soldiers of the young republic.

Barry, TX

Navarro County pioneer David Wilson Campbell donated ten acres to the Harmony Methodist Church in 1855, setting part aside as a burial ground that came to bear his name. Campbell himself was laid to rest here in 1879, among marked and unmarked graves of early settlers, the earliest documented being a child who died in 1859.

Campbellsville, KY

Settled around 1800, Campbellsville was established by the legislature in 1817 and named for brothers Adam and Andrew Campbell, who came from Virginia to their father's land grants. When Taylor County—Kentucky's 100th—was formed from Green County in 1848, the town became its seat. The county honors Gen. Zachary Taylor, the Indian-fighter of the War of 1812, Black Hawk, and Seminole campaigns whose victory at Buena Vista in 1847 made him a national hero and carried him to the presidency in 1848.

Campbellsville, KY

Taylor County's oldest congregation grew from the Pitman Creek (1791) and Robinson Creek (by 1793) churches, which merged and took the Campbellsville name in 1852. During the Civil War the frame meetinghouse served as a courtroom after Confederates burned the county courthouse. A series of later buildings—one lost to fire in 1962—led to the present Greek Revival edifice of 1963.

Campbellsville, KY

On Christmas Day 1864, the courthouse at Campbellsville went up in flames as Confederate General Hylan B. Lyon swept through Kentucky. Leading a force that began at 800 men, Lyon aimed to enforce the Confederate draft and pull Union attention away from Nashville, burning seven courthouses that federal troops had been using in just 23 days. Desertions thinned his ranks to 250 before he slipped out of the state in early January.

Campbellton, TX

Atascosa County was carved from Bexar County in 1856, and this community took its name from John Campbell, an Irish immigrant who came to Texas as a boy and began ranching here around 1857. After Confederate service in the Civil War, Campbell returned to open a store, run a mail relay, and in 1874 establish the first post office; by 1880 he donated land for a school that doubled as a church. Rail service arrived in 1913 and oil in the 1950s, but ranching endured even after Interstate 37 rerouted travelers away.

Fayetteville, NC

Chartered in 1762, Campbelton was a busy colonial trading town near the head of navigation on the Cape Fear River, where goods from the backcountry met boats bound for the coast. Its riverside commerce drew Scottish merchants and inland farmers alike. In time it joined with neighboring Cross Creek to become Fayetteville, named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette.

Jasper, TX

Adam Byerly came to Texas from South Carolina in 1834 and received a Mexican land grant on Sandy Creek, where the site became a Methodist camp meeting ground known as Byerly Campground. Byerly sold ten acres to the church in 1843, and a cemetery for the area's African American residents took shape to the south. Its earliest marked grave is that of Tom Limbrick (1827–1908), and many former slaves, community leaders, and veterans rest here. Ties with nearby Armstrong C.M.E. Church give the site its alternate name, Armstrong Campground Cemetery.

Mt. Enterprise, TX

The Mt. Zion Baptist Association, a fellowship of thirteen area churches, organized on this ground in 1857, and the cemetery takes its "campground" name from the Confederate cavalry of General John A. Wharton, who camped at the church during 1864-65. Though the first recorded burial dates to 1910, numerous unmarked graves point to earlier interments, and the roughly 140-site cemetery still serves the rural community.

Brownsville, TX

Laid out as an entire block of the original 1848 Brownsville townsite and active by 1852, Campo Santo Viejo was the border city's first official cemetery. The city abandoned it in 1864, later burials trailed off in the 1870s, and the site was built over until its very existence faded from memory. Only in 2004, when human remains surfaced during county work, did archeologists rediscover its neat nineteenth-century rows and dozens of undisturbed graves, leading to its dedication as a memorial park and State Archeological Landmark.

Camp Verde, TX

During the Civil War, Texas could not spare Confederate regulars to guard its long frontier, so in 1862 a state "frontier regiment" post rose near the old U.S. Army Camp Verde, part of a chain of outposts spaced a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Troops who often lacked food and supplies still patrolled effectively against raids, while the captured federal camels — some driven by their Egyptian handlers — hauled Confederate cotton to Mexico to trade for salt and other scarce goods. The camp even held a canyon prison for Union soldiers, and its dances featured a camel named "Old Major" and a prisoner-ventriloquist frightening the ladies with unseen pig sounds.

Gonzales, TX

In March 1836, as the Texas Revolution reached its most desperate hour, Sam Houston reached Gonzales to muster a second volunteer army. Word arrived here of the fall of the Alamo and of Santa Anna's advance, and Houston ordered the town put to the torch before withdrawing eastward. That long, calculated retreat set the stage for the decisive Texian victory at San Jacinto on April 21.

Junction, TX

In 1764 King Charles III of Spain ordered the Marqués de Rubí, a field marshal, to inspect every presidio across New Spain's vast northern frontier. Accompanied by engineer and mapmaker Nicolás de Lafora, Rubí toured the borderlands and camped at this spot on July 23, 1767. His resulting report recommended closing most of Texas's small missions — carried out in 1772, leaving only San Antonio and Goliad — a sweeping reorganization of Spain's presence on the frontier.

McAllen, TX

During the tense border troubles of 1916–1917, New York's famed 69th Infantry Regiment camped near McAllen, guarding the Rio Grande and choking off gun-running to the fighters of the Mexican Revolution. The hard tour hardened these men for what came next: the trenches of France, where the regiment earned lasting fame in World War I.

Ira, TX

In October 1849, Captain Randolph B. Marcy's expedition camped near here while blazing a wagon route across West Texas. The trip turned tragic when Lieutenant Montgomery Pike Harrison—grandson of President William Henry Harrison—rode out alone and was killed, his body hidden in a ravine on Canyon Creek. Despite the loss, the Marcy Trail became a major artery carrying gold-seekers to California and supplies across the frontier.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1969

This small Bradford County village lent its name to one of America's most enduring folk tunes: Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races," said to be inspired by horse races that ran from here toward Wyalusing. Foster, often called the father of American popular song, spent time in the nearby towns of Towanda and Athens as a teenager, where he completed "The Tioga Waltz," among his earliest compositions. The connection ties an ordinary rural crossroads to the birth of a national musical tradition.

Brenham, TX

Camptown is the oldest predominantly African American cemetery in Brenham, dating from the 1860s and tied to the nearby Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church. Its name comes from the federal troops who camped here from 1865 to 1868 to keep peace between emancipated Black residents and landowners, and a July 1868 army map already shows the cemetery in use. Among an estimated 400 burials are former slaves, possibly soldiers lost to yellow fever, and Caroline Seward (1811–1902) of the Seward Plantation.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947

Stephen Foster, the songwriter often called the father of American popular music, spent time along the Susquehanna at Towanda and Athens, and tradition holds that the nearby community of Camptown gave him the title for one of his best-known tunes. Written in the mid-19th century, the bouncing, nonsense-refrained song became a fixture of American parlors and stages. This quiet corner of Bradford County thus lent its name to a piece of the nation's musical memory.

Marietta, OH

When the Ohio Company's pioneers founded Marietta in 1788, they raised Campus Martius, a stout fortified stockade to shelter the first settlers and the seat of government of the vast Northwest Territory. Through the perilous frontier years of 1788 to 1795, amid conflict with the region's Native nations, the fort stood as the anchor of American settlement north of the Ohio River.

Crawford, TX

Canaan Baptist Church opened this burial ground in 1894 on land donated by German settler Heinrich Engelbrecht, in a McLennan County community shaped by central European immigration. The earliest marked grave belongs to Austrian immigrant Franz Massirer, who died in 1900. Engelbrecht, a Civil War veteran, is the oldest of more than a dozen veterans buried here, and the cemetery earned Historic Texas Cemetery status in 2010.

Richmond Hill, GA

Canaan Baptist Church, a primarily African American congregation, was organized in 1913 by the Rev. David Boles, Sr. and Deacon Fred Gilbert—the only organized denominational church in what is now Richmond Hill in the early 20th century. Its present sanctuary was built with support from Henry Ford, who developed extensive holdings in the area. Many founding members descended from the enslaved people who had worked the antebellum rice plantations at nearby Cherry Hill and Silk Hope.

Crawford, TX

In 1891 German settlers in the Prairie Chapel community organized a Baptist congregation in a local schoolhouse, forty of them signing on as charter members. They built a sanctuary in 1894 on land later donated by Heinrich Engelbrecht, and for decades all services were held in German. Only in 1933 did English creep in every second Sunday, and by 1940 the transition was complete.

Canadian, TX

The trails along the Canadian River were ancient corridors of trade, hunting, and exploration long before Coronado followed them in 1541 chasing rumored cities of gold. Josiah Gregg led a Missouri trading party this way toward Santa Fe in 1840, and Captain R. B. Marcy escorted gold-seekers along the river in 1849. Through the 1870s and '80s hunters, cattlemen, and settlers used the same routes as the Panhandle was opened to settlement — a river whose name comes from a Spanish word for 'boxed-in.'

Erie, PA · est. 1948

In the canal-building fever of the 1830s and '40s, Pennsylvania stitched together a statewide system of waterways to move coal, freight, and passengers before the railroads took over. This basin marked the northern terminus of the Erie Extension, whose ground was broken on Independence Day 1838 and which finally opened in December 1844 when the R.S. Reed arrived carrying Mercer County coal and the Queen of the West brought passengers. For a few decades, boats bound for Lake Erie ended their journey right here.

Hollidaysburg, PA · est. 1982

At Hollidaysburg, the 127-mile Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal met the Allegheny Portage Railroad, an ingenious system that hauled canal boats over the mountains toward Johnstown, 36 miles west. The canal opened in 1832 and the railroad in 1834, together forming a continuous route across the formidable Allegheny barrier. Engineers marveled at the portage line, which climbed nearly 1,400 feet in just ten miles using inclined planes.

Del Rio, TX

Watered by San Felipe Springs, this arid borderland was irrigated first by Indian and Spanish inhabitants and then, from about 1869, by Anglo-American landowners who formed the San Felipe Agricultural, Manufacturing & Irrigation Company. By 1871 their dams and canals—the five-mile "Madre Ditch" and the shorter "San Felipe Ditch"—brought water to thousands of acres under an 1875 state charter. The system fed Del Rio's farms and the growing town alike, and it still carries water today.

Linwood, TX

Candace Midkiff Bean came of age on the Texas frontier as the wife of the adventurer Peter Ellis Bean, settling in the piney woods of East Texas during the turbulent years of Mexican rule and the young Republic. Born near Nashville in 1802, she lived out her days near Douglass and died there in 1848. The marker honors her among the pioneer women whose labor and endurance underpinned early Anglo-Texan settlement.

Mineral County, NV

Seven miles west lie the ghost towns of Candelaria and Metallic City, born of the silver mines opened in this district in the 1860s. Candelaria — its name drawn from a mine and ultimately the Catholic feast of Candlemas — grew by 1880 into the area's largest town, with three doctors, three lawyers, two hotels, six stores, and ten saloons. Its leading mine, the Northern Belle, was located in 1864 and developed after 1870 to yield an estimated $7 million, chiefly in silver, and piped-in water eventually dropped the price from a dollar to a nickel a gallon.

Metter, GA

Candler County was created in 1914 from parts of Bulloch, Emanuel, and Tattnall Counties and named for Governor Allen D. Candler (1834–1910). Candler is remembered for preserving and first compiling Georgia's colonial and Confederate records, an early act of state historical stewardship. The marker also lists the new county's first officers.

Alamance County, NC

Established in 1751, Cane Creek was the first monthly meeting of the Society of Friends in central North Carolina, planted as Quaker families migrated down the backcountry into the Piedmont. The present meeting house still occupies the original site, marking more than two and a half centuries of continuous Quaker life.

Ben Wheeler, TX

The making of syrup from sugar cane and sorghum came to East Texas with settlers migrating from the Deep South in the later nineteenth century, and Van Zandt County's fertile soil and abundant water proved ideal for it. Beginning in 1884, one farmer built a reputation for ribbon-cane syrup of exceptional quality, irrigating his cane from a large spring and shipping the product across the state and nation. A later owner modernized the mill and expanded sales for decades, employing many local families through the Great Depression before demand faded after World War II.

Kirvin, TX

The families who founded this congregation arrived in Freestone County in the 1830s, part of the first wave of settlers to work this land. Organized before 1858 and meeting at first in homes and schoolhouses, the church took the name of a nearby creek before shortening it to Caney by 1884. Its rolls read like a roster of the community's leaders, and the sanctuary built in 1896 on donated land still stands.

Campbell, TX

Caney Cemetery grew from land that Confederate veteran M.J. Fox and the Amis family gave to Methodist church trustees in 1904, though the earliest known grave—Fox's sister Elizabeth—dates to 1895. Likely named for nearby Caney Creek, the burial ground held 153 graves by 1997, some still marked with weathered bois d'arc wood. A 1972 bequest from a community resident helps keep it maintained today.

Richmond Heights, MO

At Bellevue and Arlington Avenues, a captured World War I cannon once stood as a memorial to the men of Richmond Heights who served in that war. In a twist common to such trophies, the cannon was itself dismantled and given to the scrap-metal drives that fed the American war effort during World War II. Its story links two generations of service, from the trenches of 1917 to the home-front sacrifices of the 1940s.

Leavenworth, KS

This cannon commemorates the crucial aid France provided to the American colonists during the Revolutionary War, from 1776 to 1782. French money, arms, troops, and naval power — decisive at the 1781 siege of Yorktown — helped secure American independence. The display honors that alliance between the young republic and its European ally.

Van Alstyne, TX

Elijah Cannon brought his eleven sons and the people he enslaved from South Carolina to Texas in 1852, settling this corner of Grayson County. In 1874 the family graveyard was formally deeded as a community burial ground; its oldest documented grave is that of ten-year-old Nancy J. Bowen from 1857. A separate section was set aside for formerly enslaved people, beginning with Billy and Glory Boyd in 1880, and today the cemetery holds more than 700 graves of pioneers and war veterans.

Brookfield, IL

Dedicated on October 13, 1935, by Edward Feely Post No. 190 of the American Legion, this memorial honors all who served honorably in the armed forces of the United States. Erected between the world wars by veterans of the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, it reflects the American Legion's mission to keep the memory of service alive in the everyday life of the community. A cannon standing sentinel gave the memorial its enduring local name.

Lincoln, NH

This tramcar once climbed Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire's Franconia Notch as part of the first passenger-carrying aerial tramway in North America, opened in 1938. Loaded, it lifted more than two dozen riders to the summit in about nine minutes, opening the high country to sightseers and skiers in a way no road or trail could. This car did the work for more than four decades before being retired and preserved.

Crockett, TX

Built around 1885 for William and Anna Cannon, this East Texas farmhouse was bought in 1907 by Joe Brown Stanton, a Houston County native active in civic, fraternal, and religious life. In its heyday the property was a working farmstead complete with a large barn, smokehouse, well, and cistern. Today the house stands as a fine surviving example of the vernacular farmhouses that once dotted the region.

Canton, TX

When the Texas Legislature carved Van Zandt County out of the frontier in 1848, its seat of government wandered with its shifting boundaries — first at Jordan's Saline, then to the newly platted town of Canton in 1850. A surveying blunder soon revealed that Canton sat two and a half miles off the county's own land, and only a landowner's donation in 1853 spared officials the cost and chaos of moving the seat. Resentment ran so deep that voters refused to pay for the 1857 brick courthouse until 1880.

Waco, TX

Born on Norway's Karmøy Island in 1832, Ole Knudson emigrated with his family to Illinois in 1850, Anglicizing the name to Canuteson. Drawn on by immigration promoter Cleng Peerson, they joined other Norwegian families in founding the Norse community of Bosque County, where Ole worked as a blacksmith, postmaster, and leader. In 1868 he moved to Waco and built a thriving machine shop and metal foundry.

Canyon, TX

Before 1909, Canyon's residents fought fires with buckets and homemade ladders until the city organized a department, enlisted 21 men, and bought a horse-drawn engine with gasoline pump motors. The crew proved its worth in 1910, saving downtown buildings when the town's largest hotel burned. The department spurred Canyon's first water works and, over the decades, adapted to grain elevators, hazardous rail freight, and a growing university, opening a regional firefighting training school in 1973.

Cape Elizabeth, ME

This memorial honors the men and women of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, who served in the armed forces across two centuries, from the American Revolution through the Persian Gulf War. The span 1775–1975 traces the town's contribution to every major American conflict, a roll call of service that touched generation after generation of a small coastal community. Such town memorials gather the whole sweep of a place's wartime sacrifice into a single place of remembrance.

Virginia Beach, VA

In 1880, builders laid a temporary tramway across the dunes at Cape Henry to haul stone and iron for the new Cape Henry Lighthouse, which replaced the crumbling colonial-era tower nearby. As this windswept Atlantic headland grew busier, more permanent rail lines eventually followed, linking the remote cape to the growing resort and port communities of the Virginia coast. The marker traces how the simple act of moving construction materials seeded a small network of railroads at the very entrance to the Chesapeake Bay.

Laredo, TX

In 1840, a coalition of Mexican federalists rose against Santa Anna's centralist regime in Mexico City, proclaiming a short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande with Jesús Cárdenas as president and Laredo as its capital. The rebels recruited support in Texas and won early victories, but after roughly two years the movement collapsed and made peace with the centralists. This modest border building served as the seat of that breakaway government.

Hampshire County, WV

This wrought-iron span is a rare surviving example of the Whipple truss, the bowstring bridge design that American engineer Squire Whipple patented in the mid-19th century and that helped carry the nation's roads and railroads across its rivers. Prefabricated iron trusses like this one could be shipped in pieces and bolted together on-site, letting even remote crossings replace timber bridges that rotted or burned. Bridges of this type once dotted the countryside, but few remain; this one was preserved and moved to Capon Lake rather than being scrapped, as most were once heavier traffic outgrew them.

Scranton, PA · est. 1947

Long before Scranton's anthracite furnaces lit the valley, the flat ground along the Lackawanna River held a Native village led by a chief remembered as Capoose. Its people were Munsee, a Lenape (Delaware) group who moved here from the upper Delaware valley in the years after 1743 — part of the slow, forced displacement of eastern Indigenous nations as colonial settlement pushed westward. The marker fixes their presence to a specific place that would later be swallowed by an industrial city.

Austin, TX

Chauncey Johnson, born in Vermont in 1798, served in the War of 1812 before coming to Texas in 1840. In 1842 he was captured when General Adrian Woll's Mexican force raided San Antonio and was carried off to imprisonment in Mexico, one of many Texans caught in the border conflicts that followed independence. His grave marker was placed by the state in 1936.

Riverside, TX

Benjamin Ingram Harper came from Virginia to Texas in the early 1830s, working as a schoolmaster in Liberty County before the fight for Texas independence swept him up. He fought at the Battle of Concepción and the Siege of Bexar, then raised a company that marched toward the Alamo — arriving too late, but joining the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Rewarded with land and the rank of captain, he lived out his years farming in Walker County, where tradition places his 1863 grave.