Search Markers

Houston, TX

Founded in 1896, College Memorial Park is among Houston's three oldest African American cemeteries, taking its name from the nearby Houston College and serving the freedmen's town that grew in the Fourth Ward after the Civil War. Here rest many of the community's founders—including the Rev. Jack Yates, who championed Black property ownership and was reinterred here from Olivewood—along with educators, veterans of both world wars, and participants in the 1917 Houston riot. Neglect and vandalism scarred the grounds before late-century efforts revived it as a site of heritage.

College Station, TX

The commissioners who chose this spot for Texas A&M in 1871 did so largely because the Houston and Texas Central rail line already ran past it. Though no depot yet stood here when the college opened in 1876, conductors calling out the stop as "College Station" gave the surrounding town its name. Depots built by the H&TC and the International & Great Northern carried generations of cadets to and from campus until passenger service ended in 1959.

Junction, TX

In 1880, as the Hill Country town of Junction City took shape, A.J. Bush led seventeen men and women in forming a Church of Christ, meeting first in the county courthouse. Members raised their first sanctuary in 1882, and in 1883 John S. Durst began a 42-year ministry that spanned the congregation's growth. Successive buildings rose on this site in 1890 and 1929 as the church became a fixture of frontier Junction's religious life.

Collegeport, TX

In 1908 the Pierce brothers hired developer Burton D. Hurd to carve a town from 9,000 acres of ranch land, promising a college and a port on Trespalacios Bay. Advertised in northern newspapers for its mild climate and rich farmland, Collegeport drew settlers, and by 1912 it boasted a bank, churches, the county's first free public library, its first Boy Scout troop, and a women's club. But a hard freeze in 1914, then drought and livestock disease, drove families away, and the venture faded—its old rail depot later rebuilt as the town library.

Collegeport, TX

Founded alongside the town of Collegeport in 1908, this cemetery served area residents from its earliest days, with some graves marked simply by Roman numerals set in shell concrete. The King's Daughters, a women's charitable organization, tended it from 1921 until a cemetery association formed in 1958. Hurricane Carla destroyed most of the records in 1961, but the community has always cared for the grounds.

Walterboro, SC

In the Lowcountry seat of Colleton County, this monument gathers the memory of local men who marched off to the Civil War — some who came home and many who did not. Like hundreds of memorials raised across the South in the generations after 1865, it was meant to fix a community's grief and pride in stone. Its second face is more unusual: it turns to the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters who 'fought the home battle,' keeping farms, households, and families going through years of war and hardship.

Austonio, TX

Collin Aldrich, born in 1801, fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in the war that won Texas its independence, then served as the first chief justice of Houston County from 1837 to 1841 under the Republic of Texas. He died in 1842, and the State of Texas erected this memorial to him in 1936, the centennial of independence. His life bridged the battlefield and the founding of civil government on the Texas frontier.

McKinney, TX

Carved from Fannin County and created in April 1846, Collin County was named for Collin McKinney — land surveyor, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas. The county seat began at Buckner in 1846 before moving to the town of McKinney, also named for him, two years later. The county was organized in the same summer it was created, just as Texas was joining the United States.

McKinney, TX

As early as 1858 Collin County had a system for relieving its poorest citizens, and in 1886 it acquired this property as the County Farm, where residents helped work the land in exchange for care. In the 1920s the county added guarded quarters to hold prisoners here, and a paupers' cemetery on the grounds is still maintained. The farm ceased operations in the 1950s.

McKinney, TX

Completed in 1880 to a design by F.E. Ruffini — architect of many Texas public buildings of the era — this High Victorian Italianate structure served as the Collin County prison for 99 years. Its bracketed cornice and arched windows mark it as one of the few surviving Ruffini works in the state, and federal Public Works Administration funds modernized it in 1938.

McKinney, TX

Born in New Jersey in 1766, Collin McKinney lived to the remarkable age of 95, dying in this very house in 1861. In between he became a fixture of Texas's fight for nationhood: one of the five men who drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence and among its fifty-nine signers on March 2, 1836, before serving in the House of Representatives of the young Republic. In gratitude both the county and its seat carry his name.

Corsicana, TX

Collin Street Bakery opened in Corsicana in 1896 when German immigrant baker August Weidmann partnered with local cotton buyer W. T. McElwee, pairing baking skill with showmanship. Weidmann's secret recipe became the famous "DeLuxe" fruitcake, eventually shipped worldwide. McElwee's rooming house above the bakery drew visiting ballplayers, circus troupes, and celebrities—from Will Rogers to John Ringling—who mailed the cakes to friends far and wide.

Wellington, TX

Collingsworth County was carved from the sprawling Young and Bexar territories in 1876 and formally organized in 1890 with Wellington as its seat. It honors James Collinsworth, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, a soldier at San Jacinto, secretary of state under President Burnet, and the Republic's first chief justice. The county thus links the far Texas Panhandle to the founding figures of the Republic.

Welllington, TX

The county's first hospital rose on this site in 1917, and in 1924 surgeon Dr. Elmer Wood Jones bought the facility. He built a new fieldstone hospital here in 1935 and the next year gave it to the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois, who renamed it St. Joseph's. The sisters won accreditation in 1950, doubled its size in 1951, and served the community until selling it back to the people of Collingsworth County in 1972.

Austin, TX

This family burial ground was established by Newton Isaac Collins, Sr., who came out of slavery in Alabama and, after the Civil War, acquired land across eastern Travis County and founded the thriving community of Pilot Knob. The first known burial here was his son-in-law in 1894, and generations of the Collins and Bremond families followed, gathered around a monument to the community's founder. A small iron fence still encloses his memorial.

Quitman, TX

Erected in 1859–1860 by Mississippi settlers James and Harriet Collins, this was Wood County's first brick structure, its bricks molded and burned nearby and its furniture crafted in a plantation shop by Collins and enslaved workers. In the war years of 1861–1865, Confederate units marched past on their way to the front. The home has belonged to the Haines family since 1870.

Lufkin, TX

Attorney Chester B. Collins built this two-story bungalow in the early 1920s, using lumber given to him by a client, Lillian Knox, whom he had successfully defended in a murder case. Its distinctive details include corbeled brick piers, bracketed gables, and unusual window patterns. From 1936 to 1974 the Jean Shotwell family owned it, and in 1937 rented it to the family of the local Civilian Conservation Corps district commander, Marvin L. Marsh.

Plano, TX

This medallion marks Collinsworth Cemetery, established in 1895 and recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery. Cemeteries of this era served the farming families who settled Collin County's fertile Blackland Prairie in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.

Colmesneil, TX

By local tradition, African American residents of Colmesneil began burying their dead on this East Texas ground as early as the 1850s, with the oldest legible stone marking Henry Mitchell's 1859 death. For decades absentee landlords held the property before a 1930s owner secured its continued use. More than two hundred people rest here, among them ministers, doctors, teachers, railroad workers, and veterans of both World Wars, and in 1972 the ground was renamed Mount Zion after two associated Baptist churches.

Colmesneil, TX

William Taylor Colmesneil, one of the first conductors on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, built this shiplap house in 1883 in the town that bears his name. Legend holds he oriented it to face the tracks so he could watch the trains from his porch. He sold the house to Frank Patterson in 1885 and moved on with the railroad, working as a conductor until his death in 1907, while later owners expanded the original center-passage plan into an L-shaped home.

Fannin, TX

Cologne was founded by formerly enslaved people seeking safety as Reconstruction gave way to renewed white political control and violence in Texas. Freedmen Joseph Smith and George Washington, who had built a prosperous freight and passenger business in Victoria, bought more than five hundred acres along Perdido Creek in 1877 and sold parcels to other Black families. The community built a cemetery, churches, a school, and a post office, and its economy grew when the railroad arrived in 1889—served, unusually for the era, by an integrated depot.

Decatur, TX

Absalom Bishop (1804–1883) began his military career as a militia captain in Florida's Seminole War before settling in what would become Wise County in 1855. Within a year he persuaded the Texas Legislature to carve out the new county, helped choose Decatur as county seat, and — a fierce Democrat — got the town named for naval hero Stephen Decatur after Zachary Taylor turned Whig. His mercantile store served as post office and Butterfield stage stop, and he championed the bridges that routed the mail line through town.

Weatherford, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1817, Alfred G. Cooper served across three of the era's conflicts: the Seminole war in Florida in 1836, the Mexican War as a captain in 1846, and the Civil War as a Confederate lieutenant colonel from 1862. His long military career spanned a generation of American expansion and division. He died in 1883, and this marker was placed in his memory in 1936.

Whitley County, IN

This marker commemorates Colonel Augustin de La Balme, a French cavalry officer who came to America on Benjamin Franklin's recommendation to aid the Revolutionary cause. In November 1780, leading a force toward the British post at Detroit, La Balme's expedition ended in disaster in this region of the Indiana country when it was overwhelmed by Miami warriors under the leader Little Turtle. His defeat was one of the war's westernmost actions, far from the eastern battle lines.

Brownfield, TX

A Kentucky-born Texan and secession delegate, Colonel B. F. Terry raised the cavalry regiment that won fame as Terry's Texas Rangers, the 8th Texas Cavalry. He accepted command only when his men elected him, then fell leading their very first charge at Woodsonville, Kentucky. His Rangers carried his name to the war's end, earning a reputation as reckless horsemen and marksmen at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and their final charge at Bentonville.

Houston, TX

Benjamin Franklin Terry was a Fort Bend County planter who sat in the 1861 Secession Convention and then rushed to Virginia to fight in the war's opening battle, winning notice for his service at First Manassas. He raised a Texas cavalry regiment that became legendary as Terry's Texas Rangers, accepting command only after his men elected him colonel. He was killed leading the unit's first charge at Woodsonville, Kentucky, in December 1861; his Rangers carried his name until the war's end, and Terry County honors him.

Eldorado, TX

Colonel William L. Black built this ranch headquarters in 1884 as the seat of the Camilla Black Ranch in Schleicher County. Its heavy lumber was salvaged from the first hospital building at old Fort McKavett, tying the house to the earlier frontier military presence in the region. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1963.

Tyler, TX

This school honors Bryan Marsh, an Alabama native who came to Tyler in 1854 and rose to command a company of the 17th Texas Cavalry when war came in 1861. Captured at Arkansas Post in 1863 and later gravely wounded—losing his right arm in the fighting around Atlanta—he returned to the field until Lee's surrender. In the decades after, Marsh commanded a company of Frontier Battalion Texas Rangers, quelled violence in rough frontier towns, and served two decades as Smith County sheriff.

Dallas, TX

Christopher Columbus Slaughter, the first native-born cattle king of Texas, ranged the west Texas frontier as a ranger, Confederate beef supplier, and trail driver before building a ranching empire of more than a million acres. In the early 1870s he moved to Dallas, where he founded and led three early banks and helped launch the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Renowned for his philanthropy to Baptist schools, churches, and hospitals, he left a mark on both the open range and the growing city.

Plainview, TX

Hailed as the first native-born "cattle king" of Texas, C. C. Slaughter worked cattle from boyhood and pushed his herds onto the West Texas frontier by 1856, supplying beef to the Confederacy and riding in a frontier regiment during the Civil War. Afterward he helped rescue the bankrupt state's economy by opening cattle markets, improved the Texas Longhorn with Shorthorn and Hereford bulls, and helped organize the first cattle raisers association. At his height he ranched around a million acres and became a banker and philanthropist.

Kermit, TX

A North Carolina native, C. M. Winkler raised a company of 150 men at the start of the Civil War and led them to Virginia, where the unit joined the 4th Texas Infantry of Hood's famed brigade. He rose to lieutenant colonel and fought from Second Manassas to Gettysburg, where he was wounded, and on through campaigns in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee before surrendering with Lee at Appomattox. Winkler County later took his name.

Xenia Township, OH

This was the Ohio home of Colonel Charles Young, one of the most distinguished African American soldiers of his era. Young was the third Black graduate of West Point and rose to become the highest-ranking Black officer in the U.S. Army, leading Buffalo Soldier cavalry and serving as an acting national park superintendent. His home near Wilberforce, a center of Black education, is preserved as a National Historic Landmark.

Crockett, TX

David Alexander Nunn (1836–1911) was a fixture of Crockett's public life across a turbulent era, serving as mayor in 1859. During the Civil War he led Company I of the 4th Texas Cavalry, and afterward he helped shape the state's government as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875. His long career bridged frontier town-building, wartime service, and Reconstruction-era politics.

Rostraver Township, PA · est. 1994

Edward Cook came to this corner of western Pennsylvania in the 1770s and rose to become one of its leading citizens — a large landholder, judge, and politician who sat in the Provincial Congress at Philadelphia in 1776 and helped shape the state's constitution. Though a moderate by temperament, when the Whiskey Rebellion swept the frontier in 1792–94 he cast his lot with the tax protesters and was chosen to chair several key rebel meetings.

Harrodsburg, KY

A Mercer County native and Marine veteran of World War II and Korea, Colonel George Morgan Chinn (1902–1987) became one of the nation's foremost authorities on automatic weapons. His firsthand study of weapons in combat produced the five-volume Navy-sponsored work The Machine Gun, and as a Vietnam-era consultant he helped develop grenade launchers later used through the Persian Gulf War. In 1960 he also served as director of the Kentucky Historical Society and wrote extensively on pioneer Kentucky.

Kaufman, TX

Isham Chisum was among Kaufman County's leading early citizens, representing it at the Texas Secession Convention in early 1861. He then rode with Col. Tom Green's Confederate cavalry in the New Mexico campaign and, as colonel of the 2nd Partisan Rangers in Walker's Division, fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign that turned back a Federal invasion of Texas. He was a cousin of trailblazers Jesse Chisholm and cattle baron John Simpson Chisum.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1931

This graveyard began as the cemetery of the Mission of Dansbury, a Moravian outpost started in 1743 near where Daniel Brodhead had settled in 1736. The mission chapel was destroyed during the Indian uprising of 1755 amid the French and Indian War, then rebuilt. Colonel Jacob Stroud — the frontier officer and founder of Stroudsburg — lies buried here.

Coleman, TX

James E. McCord came to Texas from South Carolina in 1853 and made his name surveying the raw frontier, including the ground around Camp Colorado. When the Civil War drained regular defenses, he took charge of the Texas Frontier Regiment, a hard-to-discipline band of frontiersmen, and in 1863 was unanimously elected its colonel. He scrapped the predictable patrol routes that raiders had learned to slip past, favoring surprise scouting expeditions, and his outfit was eventually absorbed into Confederate service as the 46th Texas Cavalry.

Orlando, FL

This Orlando park honors Joe Kittinger, an Air Force test pilot celebrated as a pioneer of the edge of space. In the Project Excelsior high-altitude balloon program around 1960, he rode an open gondola to the stratosphere and made record-shattering parachute jumps, gathering data that helped make crewed spaceflight survivable. Decades later, in 1984, he became the first person to cross the Atlantic solo in a gas balloon.

Athens Township, PA · est. 1946

John Franklin was a leading figure in the Connecticut settlers' claim to lands in the Wyoming Valley, a bitter dispute with Pennsylvania over overlapping colonial grants. He served in the Sullivan Campaign of 1779, was imprisoned from 1787 to 1789 for backing a movement to carve a new state out of the contested territory, and later sat in the Pennsylvania legislature. He settled here in 1789 and died in 1831, with his homesite and grave just east of the road.

Junction, TX

Born in 1831, John Griffith served as a Confederate officer, and returned from the Civil War to a family scattered by the conflict — his wife and children having fled Arkansas to Texas behind a milk cow and a one-eyed mule, famously reunited in 1866 when the mule was recognized near the Comanche courthouse. Settling at Buffalo Gap, he helped organize Taylor County in 1878 before moving to Kimble County, building property and civic influence. His story typifies the Southern veterans who rebuilt their lives on the West Texas frontier after the war.

Seguin, TX

John Ireland came to Texas from Kentucky in 1853, served as a delegate to the 1861 Secession Convention, and rose from private to colonel in the Confederate defense of the long Texas coast, once wading waist-deep to help capture a Federal vessel. After the war he re-entered public life, earning the nickname 'Oxcart John' for opposing railroad land subsidies, and served as Governor of Texas from 1882 to 1886. His term saw the University of Texas open and the fence-cutting wars answered with new law.

Goshen Township, OH

In the skies over southern Europe during World War II, the 15th Army Air Force flew long, dangerous missions from bases in Italy, escorting heavy bombers deep into enemy territory. John J. Voll, a young man from Goshen, Ohio, rose to become the highest-scoring fighter ace of that entire air force, downing twenty-one enemy aircraft from the cockpit of his P-51 Mustang. In an era when air power was still coming into its own, pilots like Voll turned the sleek, long-range Mustang into one of the most decisive weapons of the war.

Pittsburg, TX

John L. Camp came from Alabama to Texas in 1849, practicing law and teaching before the Civil War. He raised and captained a company in the 14th Texas Cavalry, part of Gen. M.D. Ector's hard-fighting brigade, and was wounded and captured twice, ending the war in a prison camp. Elected to Congress in 1866, he was denied his seat over his Confederate service, but went on to serve as district judge and state senator and to champion the 1876 constitution that ended Reconstruction in Texas.

New Brunswick, NJ

John Neilson was a New Brunswick merchant who committed his fortune and standing to the Patriot cause, commanding New Jersey militia through the Revolution. Local tradition holds that he gave one of the earliest public readings of the Declaration of Independence in the state in July 1776. He lived on into the young republic as a civic leader in his home city.

Sonora, TX

A seasoned soldier, Ranger, and Indian fighter, John S. Sutton joined the 7th Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War and was elected lieutenant colonel. He led five companies in the Confederate bid to carry the war — and a coast-to-coast Confederacy — into Arizona and New Mexico. Mortally wounded at the Battle of Val Verde, he waved his men on to seize the Union cannons before accepting aid.

Reston, VA

John Singleton Mosby was a Confederate cavalry officer whose partisan rangers became legendary across the rolling countryside of northern Virginia during the Civil War. Operating in the region around Fairfax and Loudoun counties—territory so dominated by his raiders it became known as "Mosby's Confederacy"—he led lightning strikes against Union supply lines, pickets, and patrols before melting back into the local landscape. His daring earned him the nickname the "Gray Ghost." After the war, Mosby surprised many by becoming a Republican and a friend of Ulysses S. Grant, even serving as a U.S. diplomat.

Spartanburg County, SC

In the South Carolina backcountry the Revolution was a brutal civil war of neighbor against neighbor, and Colonel John Thomas commanded the Spartan Regiment of Patriot militia that fought it. His wife Jane Thomas earned her own place in local memory for her courage on the home front while the men were in the field. This granite tribute was raised in 1904 by the Spartanburg chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, part of a wave of turn-of-the-century monument-building that sought to honor the founding generation.

Columbus, TX

A Philadelphia native, Wallace served as United States Consul to the Texas colonies from 1829 to 1832 before joining Austin's Colony and the campaigns for Texas independence. In 1837 he helped plat the town of Columbus with W. B. DeWees, and he later fought at the 1840 Battle of Plum Creek against the Comanche and under General Edward Burleson in the 1842 defense against Mexican invasion.

Marathon, TX

Lewis Given Harman (1818–1902) typified the many men who served the Confederacy and then pushed into the new counties of West Texas. Born in Tennessee, he came to Texas in 1838, fought in the Mexican War, and though 43 when the Civil War began, joined the 11th Texas Cavalry in the 1861 campaign to seize Confederate forts in Indian Territory, briefly commanding Fort Arbuckle. A surveyor, Indian agent, soldier, and legislator, he became a civic leader in Marathon after the town's founding in 1882.

Seguin, TX

Nathaniel Benton came from Tennessee to Texas in 1835 and threw himself into the frontier's every fight: the Texas army in 1836, the Texas Rangers in 1858, and a Confederate command in 1861. His life traced the arc of Anglo Texas from revolution through the Civil War. He died in Seguin in 1872, a decade after his wife Jane.

Arlington, TX

Raised in Arlington, Neel Kearby earned a business degree and joined the Army Air Corps, rising to command the 348th Fighter Group in the Pacific during World War II. Flying the bulky P-47 Thunderbolt he had drilled his pilots to fight aggressively, he ran up 22 aerial victories—including a record six enemy planes downed in a single mission on October 11, 1943, which earned him the Medal of Honor. He was killed in action over New Guinea in March 1944.

Tyler, TX

Georgia-born Richard B. Hubbard came to Texas in 1853 and built a career as a Tyler lawyer, legislator, and eventually governor. During the Civil War he raised the 5th Texas Infantry Battalion, which merged into his own regiment, the 22nd Texas Infantry, and served in the 1863 campaign around the Vicksburg siege and the 1864 Red River campaign that turned back a Federal invasion of Texas. A local school was later named in his honor.

Freeport, TX

Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in time to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence and serve as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He went on to command the first regiment of Texas Rangers before drowning at the mouth of the Brazos River in 1837. This state memorial honors a founder of the Republic of Texas whose life was cut short in its earliest years.

Buffalo, TX

Robert Simonton Gould came to Texas in 1850, built a law practice in Centerville, and won election as the region's first district attorney and then judge. A delegate to the 1861 Secession Convention, he raised local troops that became the nucleus of the 6th Texas Cavalry and led the battalion for four years, fighting in the 1864 Red River Campaign at Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkins Ferry, where his horse was shot from under him. After Reconstruction officials removed him from the bench, he rose to chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court and became one of the first two law professors at the new University of Texas.

Corsicana, TX

Roger Q. Mills came to Texas from Kentucky in 1849 and rose as a civic and political leader in Navarro County. He joined the call for secession in 1861 and served the Confederacy as a colonel in the 3rd Texas Cavalry and 10th Texas Infantry, taking wounds in battles across Tennessee and Georgia. After the war he helped lead the movement to end Reconstruction in Texas and served two decades in Congress, authoring the Mills Tariff Bill before entering the U.S. Senate.

New Orleans, LA

Built in 1859 for the Kentucky commission merchant Robert H. Short and designed by noted architect Henry Howard, this New Orleans mansion is famous for its cast-iron cornstalk-and-morning-glory fence. During the Federal occupation the house was seized as Rebel property; in 1864 it briefly served as the residence of Louisiana's Union governor Michael Hahn and then of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. It was returned to Short after the war, and he lived there until his death in 1890.

Austin, TX

Stephen Heard Darden's public life stretched from the Texas Revolution, where he served in the Army of Texas in 1836, to the Confederacy, for which he was commissioned a colonel and elected to the Confederate Congress. After the Civil War he returned to Texas government as state comptroller through the 1870s and into the 1880s. His grave marks a career that bridged the Republic, the Confederacy, and Reconstruction-era Texas.

Lubbock, TX

Thomas S. Lubbock, for whom the city and county are named, came to Texas in 1835 and lived a frontier life as Indian fighter, soldier, and businessman before the Civil War called him east. He won commendation as a scout at First Manassas, then helped raise the 8th Texas Cavalry—the legendary Terry's Texas Rangers—rising to colonel before typhoid fever took him in 1862. The marker pairs his story with Texas's broader Confederate war effort, from cotton wagon trains to Mexico to home-front production by families and enslaved people.

Tyler, TX

Mississippi-born Thomas R. Bonner came to Texas in 1849 and, at the outbreak of the Civil War, joined the state militia before being elected captain and then colonel of the 18th Texas Infantry, C.S.A. He led the regiment in Louisiana and Arkansas battles—Bourbeau, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkins' Ferry—that helped block Federal invasions of Texas. After the war he practiced law in Tyler, served in the legislature as speaker of the house, founded the town's first bank, and helped build its railroad.