Search Markers

Houston, TX

Beginning in 1910, developer Alfred A. Wright platted the subdivisions that became Acres Homes, drawing Black families with cheap land, low taxes, and freedom from building restrictions. Lacking city utilities, the community built itself — churches, schools, Masonic halls, businesses, and even the South's first Black-owned bus line. By the 1950s it was celebrated as one of the largest all-Black communities in the United States, retaining its identity even after Houston annexed it in the 1960s and 70s.

Acton, TX

In 1855, a preacher known as "Fighting Joe" Robinson gathered about twenty charter members to organize a Baptist congregation on the North Texas frontier at Acton. He was succeeded by the Rev. James Halford, a son-in-law of frontiersman David Crockett, whose family had settled nearby. For years the Baptists shared a communal building called the Long House before raising their own sanctuary in 1894, a structure still in use today.

Acton, TX

Acton Cemetery holds the grave of Elizabeth Patton Crockett (1788–1860), widow of Alamo hero David Crockett, along with two of his children; a monument and statue were raised in her memory in 1911. The surrounding grounds form the smallest state park in Texas. The community — first called Comanche Peak — was renamed Acton in 1855 by merchant C. P. Hollis, and pioneers set aside this plot as a burial ground after building a shared church and school.

Los Angeles County, CA

This marker traces the roots of the Acton Community Presbyterian Church to April 28, 1888, when settlers in this high-desert corner of Los Angeles County first gathered as the Union Moral and Religious Association of Acton. A retired pastor, John Robbins, was called back to lead them, and within two years the congregation had taken shape. Acton was then a small mining and railroad settlement along the route through the Soledad Canyon.

Acton, TX

The settlement once called Comanche Peak Post Office took shape in the early 1850s, and its Methodists first worshipped in a shared union church and the local Masonic hall before establishing themselves on their own. In 1874 the trustees bought land here for church, school, and burials, raised their first sanctuary in 1899, and grew steadily—especially after the nearby de Cordova Bend Reservoir revived the area in the 1960s. From a handful of frontier worshippers the congregation swelled into the hundreds by the 1990s.

Acton, TX

The oldest community in present-day Hood County, Acton was settled in the 1850s and first called "Comanche Peak" when its post office opened in 1856. Renamed Acton by 1868, the town centered on this public square, donated by pioneer merchant Clarence P. Hollis, which once buzzed with commerce before fires and decline set in. The square was resurveyed and restored in 1974 as the heart of the rural community.

Ames, IA

This marker honors Ada Hayden (1884–1950), an Iowa State botanist and the first strong voice for preserving Iowa's native prairies. In an era when the tallgrass prairie was vanishing under the plow, she pressed to save remnants of it for future generations. A preserved prairie now bears her name.

Sylvester vicinity, TX

Discovered in 1969 near the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, the Adair-Steadman Site preserves traces of some of the earliest people to live in Texas. Between about nine and eleven thousand years ago, hunters of the Folsom culture made this a large base camp, drawn by fresh water and a nearby source of toolmaking stone. Excavations have recovered fluted-point fragments, preforms, channel flakes, scrapers, and other stone tools that speak to their daily craft.

Spring Branch, TX

German native Adam Becker came to Texas in 1845 to join Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and the Adelsverein colonization effort, helping build Fredericksburg before establishing his own homestead here by 1852. He raised cattle and built a house of locally quarried stone and hand-hewn cypress cut from the nearby Guadalupe River. Becker became a U.S. citizen in 1860 and, at his death in 1901, was buried in the cemetery on his own land.

Somerset, PA · est. 1954

In 1795, as settlement pushed into the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Adam Schneider laid out the northern half of the newly renamed town of Somerset. With his brother Jacob he opened the settlement's first store on this site, giving the young frontier community an early anchor of commerce and everyday life.

Moscow, TX

This burial ground, now named for a former county commissioner, began as a family graveyard for the Lotts, who moved from Mississippi to the Republic of Texas in 1843. Their son Calvin farmed the land and served as a Confederate soldier and in the Texas State Troops during the Civil War; his 1884 grave is the oldest marked burial, though earlier unmarked graves are believed to lie here. Known over the years by several names, the cemetery preserves the memory of Polk County's pioneer families.

Logan, TX

After the Civil War, Lorenzo H. Adams (1849–1912) came from Arkansas to this corner of Panola County, serving over the years as constable, justice of the peace, and deputy sheriff. When his young daughter Georgia Anne died in 1884, Adams donated an acre around her grave as a public cemetery. Its stones—Baker, Goodwin, Kilburn, McNeese and others—record pioneer families and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1982

Established in 1800 and named for President John Adams, this county in Pennsylvania's rolling southern hills became known for its orchards and fruit harvests. Its seat, Gettysburg, was a quiet crossroads town until July 1863, when it became the site of the Civil War's bloodiest and most decisive battle. That autumn, President Abraham Lincoln came to dedicate the soldiers' cemetery and delivered the brief, immortal Gettysburg Address.

Marshall, TX

Attorney and plantation owner Chesley Meredith Adams bought this Harrison County land in the 1850s and raised a log house on it. After his death, his widow Martha and her second husband, the Rev. J. F. Riggs, replaced the cabin with this frame residence in 1880, and here Adams's son — a lawyer and educator — raised eight children. The home traces three generations of one family's life across the antebellum, wartime, and Gilded Age South.

Los Angeles, CA

Built in 1939 and designed by the architect Lloyd Wright, the Adams Residence is a work of modernist design later recognized as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 629. Lloyd Wright—son of Frank Lloyd Wright—was an accomplished architect and landscape designer in his own right, shaping Southern California's distinctive twentieth-century modern style. The 1996 designation reflects a growing appreciation for the region's mid-century architectural heritage.

Brownwood, TX

Around 1876, rancher and former Texas Ranger George H. Adams—who had his cattle brand carved into the front step—built this sandstone house from local Willis Creek stone, laid up by English-born mason William Frederick Morton. The Shaw family bought it in 1908, and their descendants restored and enlarged it after 1945.

Hearne, TX

Erected in 1896 by Horatio "Rashe" Adams, a Hearne citizen who worked as a public relations man in Washington, D.C., this Victorian house passed through a succession of owners over the following decades. Contractor A. A. White built it complete with a detached kitchen and a backyard artesian well that once supplied its water. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1968.

Austin, TX

Augusta Adams was a German widow who immigrated to Texas and bought this Austin lot in 1857, part of a wave of German settlers reshaping central Texas in the mid-19th century. The modest buff-brick house here rose around 1868, and through her daughters' marriages it passed into the Ziller family, descendants of one of Austin's earliest settlers. The home stayed in the family until 1955 and was rescued from demolition in the 1990s.

Adamsville, TX

Settlement of this Lampasas County community began just before the county organized in 1856, and it grew around Oliver Hazzard Perry Townsen's flour mill on the Lampasas River. By the 1880s the crossroads had steam mills, churches, a school, and a general store whose partners, John T. Adams and Rev. McCall Smith, gave rise to the platted town of Adamsville in 1908. Over the following century it evolved from a frontier milling settlement into a close-knit rural community of fiddling jams and community barbecues.

Thorp Springs, TX

In 1873, J. A. Clark and his sons Addison and Randolph opened a private school at Thorp Springs, chartering it as Add-Ran Christian College and blending their sons' names into its title. The college moved to Waco in 1895 and was reestablished at Fort Worth in 1909, where it grew into Texas Christian University. Its humble beginnings in a small Hood County community launched one of the state's major universities.

Austin, TX

Built in 1935 and later owned by University of Texas electrician Charles Addcox and his wife Addie Lee, this Austin house earned the nickname the “Red Rock House on the Corner” for its exuberant mix of stone and brick. Its walls are studded with petrified wood, limestone, honeycomb and volcanic rock, quartz crystal, fossilized shells and flint — a one-of-a-kind display of vernacular craftsmanship wrapped by an arched brick porch.

Graham, TX

Born in Indiana in 1843, Agnes Mary "Addie" Kinter married Edwin Smith Graham, who with his brother founded this North Texas town in 1872. After her husband's death, Addie returned to Graham and poured her fortune into it — endowing schools, building a home for the aged poor, and in 1910 funding the water-filtering plant that stood on this spot for 75 years. Her giving shaped the town's civic life for decades after her death in 1929.

Cedar Creek, TX

Addison Litton arrived in Texas in 1827, in the years when Anglo colonists were streaming into the Mexican province. When revolution came he served in the Army of Texas in 1836 as a member of Captain Gibson Kuykendall's company at Harrisburg during the campaign that won independence. He lived out his remaining years in Bastrop County, where he died in 1847, and the state later marked his grave with the Republic's star and wreath.

Addison, TX

Completed in 1913, this brick commercial building housed the Addison State Bank, organized the year before to serve a fledgling railroad town. The bank failed in 1926 and the structure became a mercantile store for many years; with its corbeled brick cornice, it is one of the few survivors of Addison's original townsite.

Bethany Beach, DE

Built around 1902-03, this was the third of five houses raised by John Addy along Ocean View Parkway in the early resort days of Bethany Beach. Donated to the town in 1999, it was moved to become part of the Bethany Beach Nature Center, preserving a piece of the seaside community's founding era.

Lexington, TX

After serving in the Civil War, Alabama native R.L. Cain settled in this part of Lee County and in 1867 deeded five acres for a community cemetery, then known as Cain School Community. The settlement was renamed Adina when its post office opened, and the graveyard took the name with it; among its oldest burials is Martha Cane Slaughter, who died in 1871. In 2001 several graves — including that of William B. Craddock, a victim of the lawless violence that plagued the area in the 1870s and 1880s — were reinterred here beside relatives.

San Antonio, TX

Granddaughter of Republic of Texas vice-president Lorenzo de Zavala, Adina de Zavala grew up steeped in stories of the Texas past and made its preservation her life's work. She helped save landmarks including the Alamo, the Spanish Governor's Palace, and San Antonio's missions, and in 1889 formed the De Zavala Daughters, who erected some of Texas's first historical markers. In 1908, convinced the Alamo's long barracks held the mission's original walls, she barricaded herself inside for three days and nights to stop their demolition.

San Antonio, TX

Granddaughter of the Republic of Texas's first vice-president, Adina De Zavala became a teacher, historian, and one of the state's earliest and most determined preservationists. She helped save the Alamo's Long Barracks from demolition — famously barricading herself inside in 1907 — and worked to protect the Spanish missions, the Governor's Palace, and other landmarks. In 1938 she founded an association that installed dozens of historical markers across Texas.

Brackettville, TX

Raised during Fort Clark's 1873–1875 expansion to house a full regiment, this quarters stood apart from the line's duplexes as a single dwelling. Its adobe core followed a three-room hall-and-parlor plan with a symmetrical front and end chimneys, later enlarged in 1904 and 1944. When the Fifth U.S. Cavalry was garrisoned here from 1921 to 1941, the regimental adjutant — the officer handling the commander's essential paperwork — lived within these walls.

Fort Worth, TX

This Texas limestone hall was raised in 1902 for Polytechnic College, a coeducational Methodist school organized in 1890 on land donated by local benefactors. It served through the institution's years as Texas Woman's College from 1914 to 1934 and continued in use after the school became Texas Wesleyan College, receiving a modernization in 1963. The building remains a link to more than a century of Methodist higher education in Fort Worth.

Baird vicinity, TX

Organized in 1881 with nine charter members, this congregation first gathered pioneer settlers of the Admiral community in a log cabin, under brush arbors, and in local schoolhouses before building a sanctuary near the turn of the century. Known first as Shiloh Baptist, it took the community's name in 1905. The church disbanded in 1968, and its historic building was destroyed by arson in 1993, leaving the cemetery to mark a settlement that once had stores, doctors, a gin, a school, and a post office.

New York, NY

This monument marks the grave of David Glasgow Farragut, the U.S. Navy's first full admiral and one of the Union's most celebrated Civil War commanders. A career sailor who first went to sea as a boy, Farragut won lasting fame in the 1860s for his daring victories on the Gulf and Mississippi, running his fleet past shore batteries and mines to seize control of vital Confederate waters. Erected by his wife and son after his death in 1870, the memorial honors a man Congress created the rank of admiral expressly to recognize.

Cresson Township, PA · est. 1948

The Cambria County hills near Cresson gave the nation one of its most famous polar explorers, Robert E. Peary, born here in 1856. Peary spent decades pushing into the Arctic, and his expeditions toward the North Pole made him a household name in the age of heroic exploration. This park and its monument honor the boy from the Pennsylvania highlands who became a rear admiral and a symbol of American ambition at the ends of the earth.

Rockhill, PA · est. 1995

When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, William Sims commanded American naval forces operating in European waters, coordinating with the Royal Navy against the German submarine campaign that was strangling Allied shipping. A sharp-penned naval writer and reformer, he had left this small Huntingdon County community for the U.S. Naval Academy back in 1876, and his family lived in the house opposite this marker for nearly two decades. His career bridged the age of sail-trained officers and the modern steel navy that fought a global war.

Boerne, TX

Born in Boerne in 1869 to Prussian immigrants, Adolph "Ad" Toepperwein learned to shoot from his gunsmith father and could outshoot seasoned marksmen by age ten. After stints as a cartoonist, vaudeville performer, and circus act, he signed with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1901 as an exhibition shooter. With his wife Elizabeth—whom he taught to shoot—he toured for over forty years as "The Wonderful Toepperweins," setting records that landed him in Ripley's, the Guinness Book, and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Fredericksburg, TX

At the turn of the twentieth century, Fredericksburg was outgrowing its original town grid, and banker Adolph Gold helped lay out its first subdivision in 1900. The next year he built this limestone-and-block home there for his own family, dressing it up with a five-bay front, jigsawn porchwork, and a centered pediment. The Golds held the house for nearly nine decades, a marker of the town's early move from frontier village toward modern community.

Moulton, TX

Born in Moulton in 1916, Adolph Hofner became a pioneer of Texas western swing, blending country, jazz, blues, pop, and the Czech folk songs of his heritage. With his brother Emil "Bash" Hofner he led a popular band, and in 1941 cut the first recording of "Cotton-Eyed Joe," now a Texas dance-hall standard, alongside his hit "Maria Elena." After signing with Pearl Beer as the Pearl Wranglers, he played San Antonio's dance halls for decades until a 1993 stroke, earning induction into multiple music halls of fame.

Dallas, TX

In 1911–1912, Dallas businessmen convinced brewing magnate Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch, to build the first section of this hotel on the site of the old 1880s city hall. Designed by a St. Louis firm in Beaux Arts style with lavish French Renaissance detailing, the Adolphus long dominated the Dallas skyline. For decades it was the stage for the city's most important business and social occasions.

Edom, TX

Adren Anglin came to Texas from Kentucky in 1833 and helped build Fort Parker in present Limestone County, a frontier stronghold against attack. He became a Texas Ranger in 1835 and furnished food and supplies to the revolutionary army during Texas' fight for independence, earning a headright grant in Henderson County. He married Phebe Parker, tying him to one of the era's most storied frontier families.

McCamey, TX

This Western Bungalow was built in 1915 in the town of Girvin by R. F. Mayse, its first merchant, and later moved to the oil boomtown of McCamey in 1946. Given by Mr. and Mrs. Hal Holmes, it became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1965. Its journey mirrors the restless mobility of the West Texas oil frontier.

Blanco, TX

Built before 1873 with walls a full sixteen inches thick, this Blanco home was equipped for self-sufficiency with a hand-dug well, a rock-walled cellar, and an underground cistern. Its sturdy stone construction reflects the practical building of the Hill Country's early settlers. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Galveston, TX

Built in 1914 for the family of Galveston businessman John Adriance, this house blends several architectural fashions of its day, from colossal Doric columns to a craftsman gable and wraparound porch. It later became the longtime home of civic leader Oscar Springer and his family. The house stands as a survivor from an era when Galveston was rebuilding after the catastrophic 1900 hurricane.

St. Tammany Parish, LA

Abbé Adrien Rouquette (1813–1887) was a New Orleans poet who became a Catholic priest and spent his last decades as a missionary among the Choctaw of the Bayou Lacombe region, from 1859 until his death. He lived so closely among them that they called him 'Chata Ima' — 'like a Choctaw.' His life bridged the literary world of the city and the Native communities of the north shore.

Radnor Township, PA

Radnor Township lies along Philadelphia's storied 'Main Line,' where the railroad drew the region's wealthiest families to build grand country estates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 'Adrossen' was one such named estate — part of a landscape of gentleman's farms, gardens, and manor houses that gave the Main Line its enduring reputation for genteel affluence.

Madison, GA

When Madison incorporated two women's colleges in 1850 — the Baptist Georgia Female College and the Methodist Madison Female College — the town became one of the antebellum South's notable centers of female education. This building opened the Georgia Female College's first session with 148 pupils and later served as the president's house. A diverse curriculum drew young women from as far as Philadelphia, until the Civil War turned the facilities into hospitals and private education never recovered its former standing.

Los Angeles, CA

This marker notes a filming location for the pioneering television series 'Adventures of Superman,' produced from 1951 to 1957 during the earliest years of American television. A portion of the episode 'The Man Who Could Read Minds,' directed by Tommy Carr from a script by Roy Hamilton, was shot near here in the San Fernando Valley. The show helped a fledgling medium invent its appetite for action and adventure.

Pacific, WA

This memorial honors the Americans who served in the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 and the Iraq War of 2003–2021, two conflicts that defined a generation of U.S. military service in the Middle East. The Gulf War, launched to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, was a swift coalition victory; the Iraq War that began in 2003 became a long, costly occupation and counterinsurgency spanning nearly two decades. The stark casualty figures inscribed here — the killed and wounded — put a human weight behind the headlines, while the quoted words of veteran M. D. Dallocchio speak to the private cost carried home by those who fought.

Orange Township, OH · est. 2003

On the eve of the Civil War, enslaved people from an Alston family plantation in North Carolina were freed and sent north by a mistress who opposed slavery, finding refuge in a central Ohio settlement pointedly called Africa. There they built log homes, worked for antislavery farmers, and worshiped in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, a denomination born of abolitionist conviction. After emancipation the community dispersed to Delaware, Westerville, and other Ohio towns.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1998

For more than eight decades, Black baseball thrived in Philadelphia, from the Pythians and Excelsiors of 1867 to the great professional clubs of the twentieth century. The Philadelphia Giants claimed early championships, the Hilldale club won the 1925 Colored World Series, and the Philadelphia Stars competed in the Negro National League. These teams built a proud institution while the major leagues remained closed to Black players.

Danville, KY

For more than a century this Danville block was home to a thriving African American business district—restaurants, barber and beauty shops, medical and dental offices, and retail stores that drew customers from Boyle and neighboring counties—until it was razed by urban renewal in 1973. At its heart stood Doric Lodge No. 18 (F. & A.M.–P.H.A.), founded in 1888 and moved to this site in 1920, where ten members each contributed $1,000 to secure a construction loan. For half a century the lodge served as a cultural and social center of the county's Black community.

Washington, TX

Traced to the late 1840s, this settlement is believed to be the oldest African American Catholic community in Texas. When the Spann families migrated from South Carolina in 1848, the enslaved people they brought worshipped alongside them at a log chapel known as Old Spann Chapel, and the Spanns and Sweeds share the still-active Old Catholic Cemetery. Over the following century the community sustained its faith through dedicated missions and churches, culminating in a new sanctuary for the Brenham-area descendants in 1995.

Belton, TX

Public education for Black students in Belton dates to 1882, when Mrs. Aleck McGee was hired "to teach the colored school." In 1890 Fisk University graduate Thomas Breckenridge Harris became the first instructor of the African American high school, and in 1936 a new building rose on this site for students of all grades, named T. W. Harris in his honor. The last class graduated in 1966, and Belton's schools integrated the following year.

College Station, TX

Formal schooling for Black children in Brazos County took root after the Public School Act of 1871, first in scattered community and church schools and later in a district that bused older students to Bryan. Rising numbers led the A&M Consolidated District to open its own high school in 1941, soon renamed Lincoln School, which served the community until a 1966 fire and the closures that followed. The City of College Station preserved what remained, and in 1980 the campus reopened as the Lincoln Center, still a gathering place today.

Gonzales, TX

Education for Black residents of Gonzales began in the 1870s in the home of Myrtle Moses Mathis and grew more formal in the 1890s within a two-story community building. About 1914 a brick schoolhouse rose on donated land, and in 1922 it was named George Edwards High School, serving some 300 students and eight teachers by 1940. The school closed in 1964 as districts desegregated under the federal Civil Rights Act.

Saint Mary's County, MD

St. Mary's County holds Maryland's oldest colonial roots, and African Americans—first enslaved, later free—helped build its tobacco economy, churches, schools, and towns across nearly four centuries. This monument, dedicated on July 29, 2000, was raised by the Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions to make that long and often overlooked story visible in the public landscape. It stands not for a single event but as a standing reminder of a community's role in the county's growth and development.

Erie, PA · est. 1996

When Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron met and captured a British fleet on Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, African American sailors were among the skilled seamen who made the victory possible. Their labor and seamanship were critical to one of the young United States' most decisive naval triumphs in the War of 1812. This marker at Erie, where much of that fleet was built and based, restores their names to the record of that day.

Storey County, NV

In the boomtown of Virginia City, free-born entrepreneur William A.G. Brown ran the Boston Saloon from 1866 to 1875, serving the town's small but vibrant African American community fine meals and the best cuts of meat — details archaeologists later confirmed digging through the site. Though rarely more than a hundred African Americans lived in the city, they worked as laborers, barbers, business owners, and a respected physician, and by the 1870s their children attended integrated schools. The great fire of 1875 destroyed the building soon after Brown sold it.

Washington, NC

During the 1863 siege of Washington, North Carolina, roughly 100 Black men took up arms to help Union forces hold the town. Their service came even before the formal organization of the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, making them among the earliest African Americans to fight for the Union in the state. They defended a community and a cause that promised their own freedom.

Austin, TX

Both free and enslaved African Americans supported the Texas cause during the 1835–36 War of Independence, though official recognition of their service was long withheld. Hendrick Arnold scouted and fought at the Siege of Bexar and San Jacinto; the Nacogdoches businessman William Goyens interpreted for Sam Houston in treaty talks with the Cherokee; the freeman Samuel McCullough, Jr. was among the first wounded in the Goliad campaign; and Joe, enslaved by Alamo commander William Travis, survived the fall and carried word of it to Houston. Others died at the Alamo and in the Goliad massacre or gave money and hauled supplies.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1990

In 1794, fifteen men and three women broke away from St. George's Church, under the leadership of the pioneering Black preacher Harry Hosier, to found African Zoar here. Through the turbulent decades that followed, the congregation became active in the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom-seekers in a city that was a crucial northern crossing point. Zoar moved to 12th and Melon Streets in 1883 and endures as United Methodism's oldest Black congregation.