Search Markers

Rockdale, TX

Daniel and Precilla Gilleland were among Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, the first Anglo-American families legally colonizing Texas, arriving from Arkansas Territory with their infant daughter in December 1821. Over the next decades they farmed their way across a half-dozen counties, Daniel helping plant Methodist congregations as they went, before settling in present Milam County. Parents of thirteen children — six sons of whom served in the Confederate army — the couple both died in 1873 after more than fifty years as Texas pioneers.

Brownwood, TX

Founded in 1888 and chartered in 1889, Daniel Baker College took its name from an early Texas circuit-riding Presbyterian minister and was led first by the Rev. Brainard Taylor McClelland, who had founded Brownwood's First Presbyterian Church. On land given by the Coggin brothers, it graduated its first class of eight in 1895 and fielded football, baseball, track, and basketball teams. Long troubled by finances, it was consolidated with Howard Payne College in 1953.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

Daniel Boone was born here in the Oley Valley on November 2, 1734, to a Quaker family, and spent his first sixteen years in the Pennsylvania backcountry before the family moved south. The hunting, tracking, and woodcraft he learned on this ground carried him into legend as the pathfinder of Kentucky's Wilderness Road. The homestead a few miles north is preserved as a historic site.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1957

Daniel Boone, born here in the Oley Valley in 1734, spent his first sixteen years on the family homestead before the Boones pushed south and west into the Carolina and Kentucky backcountry. Long before he became the legendary blazer of the Wilderness Road and a symbol of American frontier daring, he was a Pennsylvania farm boy hunting the woods of Berks County. The homestead a few miles north is preserved today as a state historic site.

Amity Township, PA · est. 1957

This plaque honors Daniel Boone (1734-1820), the famed pioneer and scout who was born just a few miles away in the Oley Valley and spent his earliest years there. The area's rolling Berks County farmland was Boone's first world before the family migrated south, launching the life of wandering and trailblazing that made him a household name. The nearby birthplace survives as a state historic shrine.

Frankfort, KY

Daniel Boone was already a legend in his own lifetime, and this monument in Frankfort marks the final resting place a grateful Kentucky claimed for him and his wife Rebecca. Born in Pennsylvania in 1734, Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail, founded Fort Boonesborough in 1775, and helped open the trans-Appalachian frontier to settlement even as he served as surveyor, legislator, and sheriff. Though he lost his vast Kentucky land claims and moved on to Missouri, the Commonwealth brought his remains home in 1845 and raised this tribute in 1860.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1948

On the rolling farmland of Berks County stood the log dwelling where Daniel Boone was born in 1734 to a Quaker family of English and Welsh descent. Boone spent his first sixteen years here, learning to hunt and range the Pennsylvania woods before the family pushed south and west, skills that would carry him into legend on the trans-Appalachian frontier. The homestead endured long after the Boones departed and is preserved today by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Frankfort, KY

Daniel Boone (1734–1820) was the frontier's most famous pathfinder: he entered eastern Kentucky in 1767, explored the Bluegrass, and in 1775 blazed the Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap and raised Fort Boonesborough, which he helped defend against attack in 1778. Late in life he moved on to Missouri, still chasing the edge of the wilderness. In 1845 he and his wife Rebecca were reinterred here at Frankfort Cemetery, overlooking the river country he opened.

Rockcastle County, KY

This marker traces the path Daniel Boone helped open through the mountains from North Carolina into Kentucky. In the 1770s Boone blazed a route through the Cumberland Gap that became the Wilderness Road, the great overland gateway that carried tens of thousands of settlers into the trans-Appalachian frontier. Rockcastle County lay along that hard, rugged corridor into the Kentucky wilderness.

East Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1947

Around 1738, Daniel Brodhead pushed into the upper Delaware frontier and planted the settlement first known as Dansbury, the seed of today's East Stroudsburg. He lived here through the uneasy years before the French and Indian War drove many settlers out. His son of the same name would go on to serve as a Revolutionary War commander and later as Pennsylvania's Surveyor General.

Covington, KY

Daniel Carter Beard—known affectionately as "Uncle Dan"—was an illustrator, author, and tireless champion of the outdoors who spent his boyhood in Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from his native Cincinnati. In 1905 he founded the Sons of Daniel Boone, an early woodcraft youth organization, and when the Boy Scouts of America formed a few years later he became one of its first National Commissioners, shaping its outdoor ethic for decades. His illustrations and books on woodcraft made him a household name, and Kentucky honored him with its first medal for outstanding citizenship.

Exeter, NH

This marker in Exeter honors Daniel Chester French, born here in 1850, who grew up to become one of the most celebrated American sculptors of his age. Though his family soon moved to Concord, Massachusetts, French returned to art after an early bent for the practical, and his career carried him from small-town New England to the grandest public commissions in the nation. He worked in the classical, dignified idiom that defined American civic monuments at the turn of the twentieth century.

Baltimore, MD

Daniel Coit Gilman was the first president of Johns Hopkins University and the first director of its hospital, positions from which he reinvented American higher education. Championing original research and graduate study, he built an institution modeled on the pursuit of new knowledge rather than rote instruction. His example reshaped universities across the country.

Village of Scarsdale, NY

In 1774, near this spot in the countryside that would become Scarsdale, Daniel D. Tompkins was born into a New York on the eve of revolution. He rose to serve as the state's governor from 1807 to 1817 — the demanding War of 1812 years, when he pledged his own credit to keep New York's troops supplied — and then two terms as Vice President of the United States under James Monroe. The Westchester County Historical Society placed this marker, funded by Charles Butler, to fix the memory of where his life began.

Houston, TX

D.D. Cooley, born in upstate New York in 1850, came to Texas in 1892 to oversee a land company's tract northwest of Houston and helped shape what became the Houston Heights community. As general manager of the Omaha and South Texas Land Company, he laid out its main artery, Heights Boulevard, and built his own home on this site in 1892–93, earning the title 'Father of the Houston Heights.' A civic leader with interests in banking, insurance, railroads, and oil, he served as an alderman after the Heights incorporated in 1896; his home was razed in 1965.

Collinsville, IL

Daniel Dove Collins built this house in 1845, a cousin of the family whose name the young village of Collinsville would carry. As the settlement's first Board of Trustees president, Collins ran early town business from his own home, its parlor serving as an informal town hall. The house survives from the formative years when Illinois prairie crossroads were organizing themselves into governed communities.

Lower Allen Township, PA · est. 1965

Daniel Drawbaugh, born in this village in 1827, was a self-taught mechanic who claimed to have devised a working telephone and sought a patent in 1880. Bell Telephone contested his claims, and in 1888 the courts decided in Bell's favor, leaving Drawbaugh a fascinating footnote in the contested history of the telephone. He worked on his inventions here until moving to nearby Camp Hill in 1904, where he died in 1911.

University Park, TX

When Frances Sims Daniel brought her family to the young farmlands of Dallas County in 1849, she could not have known that the orchard beside her home would become one of the county's earliest burying grounds. The cemetery began in 1850 with the grave of a man the family called "Old Frank," enslaved by the household for decades, and grew to hold Daniel kin, the people they enslaved, and descendants who served in four American wars. An 1851 headstone for young Isabella Harwood is thought to be among the oldest surviving in the county.

Washington, NC

Daniel G. Fowle, whose home stood on this spot, packed a lifetime of public service into the turbulent decades around the Civil War. He served as a Confederate officer and as the state's Adjutant General in 1863, later sitting as a superior court judge and state legislator before winning the governorship, which he held from 1889 to 1891. His career traced North Carolina's arc from secession through Reconstruction to the New South.

Austin, TX

Daniel H. Caswell arrived in Austin from Nashville about 1895 and made his fortune in cotton — buying a cotton-oil company, trading the crop, and building a cotton gin in 1899. In 1900 he completed this exuberant house on what was then the city's far northwest edge, blending late Victorian, Colonial Revival, and Chateauesque touches beneath a corner turret. Its rusticated porches and lavish detailing announced the prosperity a booming cotton economy could bring.

Lamar Township, PA · est. 1950

Daniel H. Hastings was born in 1849 on a farm a few miles from here and rose to become governor of Pennsylvania from 1895 to 1899. During his single term, the state created its Department of Agriculture and set in motion the plans for the grand State Capitol that stands in Harrisburg today. Though he made his home in Bellefonte for most of his life, his career carried him to the height of Gilded Age state politics.

Hollidaysburg, PA · est. 1989

Daniel Hale Williams spent his boyhood in Hollidaysburg before rising to the front rank of American medicine. In 1891 he founded Provident Hospital in Chicago—one of the nation's first interracial hospitals and a training ground for Black nurses and doctors barred from white institutions. Two years later he performed one of the earliest successful operations on the human heart, and he went on to lead Freedmen's Hospital in Washington and help charter the American College of Surgeons.

Jarrell, TX

Daniel Harrison came to Texas from Tennessee in 1835 and served with Texan forces during the Revolution, later fighting in the 1839 Battle of the Neches as a militia volunteer for the young Republic. Settling in what became the Corn Hill community, he worked as a blacksmith on the stage route from Austin to Fort Gates—vital labor for a military road—while also farming and raising livestock. He later served in Central Texas' 27th Brigade during the Civil War, and he and his wife Nancy were eventually reinterred at Corn Hill Cemetery.

Granbury, TX

William B. Daniel came to Granbury as a boy of ten in 1867 and grew into one of the city's leading grocers, building this ornate Victorian home in the early 1890s. Trimmed with intricate Eastlake detailing, it was a hub of social life and even hosted early funeral services for family and friends. The house stayed in the Daniel family after his death in 1940.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2010

Daniel J. Flood represented northeastern Pennsylvania's coal country in Congress for much of the mid-20th century, rising to power on the House Appropriations Committee. A flamboyant former actor with a waxed mustache, he used his mastery of the legislative process to steer landmark programs — Medicare, Appalachian economic aid, and coal mine health and safety law — while championing Cold War military strength. His long career ended in scandal and resignation.

South Middleton Township, PA · est. 2002

For more than a decade beginning in 1835, Daniel Kaufman risked ruin to help enslaved people fleeing north through Cumberland County. His barn and the dense woods nearby sheltered fugitives to whom he gave food and transport. In 1852 a Maryland slaveholder won a widely watched lawsuit against him, and Kaufman was fined the enormous sum of $4,000 for his defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law. He also founded the village of Boiling Springs.

Midway, TX

A Pennsylvania-born fur trapper who had served under Zachary Taylor in the War of 1812, Daniel Larrison became one of the earliest Anglo settlers of what is now Madison County, receiving a Mexican land grant in 1833. He and his wife Sarah settled around 1828 near the junction of the La Bahia Trail and El Camino Real—a natural waystation for travelers—and raised twelve children while hunting, trapping, and farming corn and cotton. Larrison Creek still carries the family name.

Bartlett vicinity, TX

Born in Maine in 1814, Daniel McKay came to Texas in 1834 with Sterling C. Robertson's colony and settled near Nashville, on the edge of a dangerous frontier. In 1836 he fought at the Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas its independence, and in 1845 he married Jane Bryant, daughter of a government Indian agent and fellow San Jacinto veteran. The family lived at fortified "Bryant's Station" until moving to a Bell County land grant in 1853, and McKay later served the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Weches, TX

Daniel McLean and his brother-in-law John Sheridan were among the earliest Anglo settlers of this part of East Texas. McLean first came in 1813 with the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition seeking to free Mexico from Spain, then returned to claim land when Stephen F. Austin opened Texas to colonists in the 1820s. Both men were killed by Indians in 1837 while chasing stolen horses, and Mrs. Sheridan recovered their bodies with a boy's help so each could be buried on his own land.

Fairfield, TX

Moved by the plight of homeless and underprivileged children, Freestone County businessman J. B. Daniel and his family chartered this orphanage in 1947 on a sprawling 1,140-acre tract of hills, valleys, and creeks. He repurposed surplus military barracks from nearby Camp Fannin and an Army chapel from Oklahoma, and the home flourished, sheltering sixty-five children by 1950 under policies of regular worship and keeping siblings together. Deeded to the Assemblies of God in 1970, it continues today as the Pleasant Hill Children's Home.

San Angelo, TX

Daniel Millar reached Texas in 1831, during the last years of Mexican rule, and joined the fight for Texas independence. As a member of Captain William J.E. Heard's company of citizen-soldiers, he stood on the field at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the swift and decisive clash that won the Republic of Texas its freedom. He lived on until 1894, and the state raised this marker to his memory in 1956.

Millersburg, PA

Millersburg was laid out along the Susquehanna in 1807 by Daniel Miller, and this fountain, marked "Centennial 1857," commemorates a milestone in the young river town's growth. Public fountains like this one were both civic ornaments and practical gathering places on a nineteenth-century main street, offering water to residents, travelers, and horses alike. It stands today as a memorial to the community's namesake founder and its early days.

Arcola, TX

Born in Mississippi in 1791, Daniel Perry brought his family to Texas in 1832 and settled on land along the Brazos as Anglo colonization spread through Stephen F. Austin's grants. He served as a captain and recruiter in the Texas Army, fought at San Jacinto in 1836, and then joined the Republic of Texas Navy before signing the 1837 petition that created Fort Bend County. A rancher and farmer who ran cattle under the "7P" brand, he died in 1869 and was buried at Duke Cemetery.

Stephenville vicinity, TX

Daniel Roberts Thornton, from Mississippi, married Mary Anna Garland—daughter of a frontier fighter—and the couple settled in Erath County in 1857 to raise cattle on a still-dangerous frontier. Mary Anna served as midwife and doctor to her neighbors while the family reared eight children; Thornton later fought for the Confederacy, served as county commissioner, and donated land for a school and the Hannibal Cemetery. Their lives trace the arc from open range to settled community.

Austin, TX

Daniel Shipman took part in the earliest sparks of the Texas Revolution, joining the 1832 disturbance at Anahuac and the storming and capture of Bexar in December 1835. Born in North Carolina, he was among the settlers who turned frontier grievances into open rebellion against Mexican rule. His grave records a life bound up with the birth of the Texas Republic.

Irving, TX

Mississippi-born Daniel Webster Gilbert came to Texas in 1874 and, after earning his medical degree in Missouri, practiced in the small communities around Dallas County. He farmed 1,500 acres at Sowers—planting a peach orchard and running a dairy—before settling in Irving in 1903 as one of its first physicians and a civic leader. He is buried here among his family.

Stratton, VT · est. 1915

This rock marks where the great orator Daniel Webster addressed a crowd said to number some 15,000 at a Whig convention on July 7–8, 1840, high on Stratton Mountain. The gathering was part of the raucous "log cabin" campaign that swept William Henry Harrison into the presidency. The Stratton Mountain Club set the stone in 1915 to remember the extraordinary spectacle of mass politics on this remote height.

Granbury, TX

Granbury merchant and saloonkeeper Robert Randolph Daniel had this house built about 1892, and in 1899 sold it to Wesley Smith Harris, a prominent local furniture dealer and undertaker. With its ornate square tower and intricate detailing, the residence blends Italianate and Eastlake influences, a fine example of the elegant homes that graced Granbury at the turn of the century.

Kennard, TX

Isaac 'Ike' Daniel was a leading figure in turn-of-the-century Houston County—sheriff, state legislator, and owner of a general store, gristmill, cotton gin, and sawmill—who even helped string a telephone line from Crockett to Coltharp. In 1905 he built this early Victorian farmhouse from pine milled at the nearby 4C Mill, living here until 1909. The Merriwether family bought it in 1912 and made it home for more than fifty years, preserving its gingerbread trim and outbuildings.

Lincoln County, NC

Daniels Church traces its Evangelical Lutheran congregation to 1774, when German settlers organized in the Carolina backcountry. J.G. Arndt served as its first regular minister, with Philip Henkel as assistant. The present sanctuary, built in 1888, is the third to stand on the site.

Sherman, TX

Trained in mortuary science in Chicago, John C. Dannel bought the Sherman Undertaking Company and by 1913 had moved his parlor to the courthouse square. When he introduced the area's first motorized hearse in 1917, the local livery stable sued him—a public feud he ultimately won in the newspapers and the courts. In 1923 he commissioned one of the region's earliest purpose-built funeral homes, and the business carried on through four generations of the Dannel family.

Grovetown, GA

In the small town of Grovetown, Georgia, just west of Augusta, a community recreation center carries the name of Danny Goodale, a local son born in 1948 who was killed in action in Vietnam in March 1969, still in his early twenties. His death came during some of the fiercest years of American involvement in Southeast Asia, when the war reached deep into towns like this one and returned young men home as names on plaques and monuments. Naming a place of gathering, sport, and youth after him turned everyday community life into a living memorial, ensuring his sacrifice stayed woven into the town he came from.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1947

About 1744, frontier founder Daniel Brodhead raised a building here for Moravian missionaries, part of the remarkable Moravian effort to carry their faith to settlers and Native peoples along the Pennsylvania frontier. The mission stood barely a decade: in 1755, as the French and Indian War set the backcountry aflame, it was destroyed in the raiding that emptied the region. Its site lay beside what is now the cemetery.

Kilgore, TX

Settled around 1847 and named for Danville, Kentucky, this crossroads community drew families from across the Southeast to a spot near old Bighead Village, a Nadaco Indian site. With a Presbyterian church, a Masonic lodge, stores, and a cotton gin, Danville thrived through the Civil War era—until the International-Great Northern Railroad bypassed it in the 1870s and its people drifted to the new town of Kilgore along the tracks. It remains one of the oldest settlements in what became Gregg County.

Danville, KY

Founded in 1784 by the Reverend David Rice, this was one of the earliest Presbyterian congregations west of the Alleghenies, planted as Kentucky's frontier filled with settlers. Its pews held figures who shaped national politics: abolitionist James G. Birney, whose 1844 presidential run helped cost Henry Clay the election; John C. Breckinridge, whose 1860 candidacy split the Democrats and aided Lincoln; and Samuel D. Burchard, whose 1884 'Rum, Romanism and Rebellion' remark helped sink James G. Blaine.

Sunbury, PA · est. 1947

In the 1830s, hauling anthracite out of Pennsylvania's coal country meant improvising, and this early line did exactly that—opening in 1835 with cars rolling on wooden rails behind horses before a steam locomotive arrived in 1838 and iron rails in 1853. Its terminal near Sunbury was a transfer point where coal was loaded onto canal boats bound for Philadelphia and Baltimore, stitching the interior mines to distant markets.

Indianapolis, IN

Placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, this obelisk honors the pioneers who traveled the old roads into the Indiana country and built a new state out of the wilderness. Indiana entered the Union in 1816, and in the following decades settlers streamed westward along trails and early roadways to clear farms and found towns. The marker fixes one of those historic routes in public memory.

Las Vegas, NM

In 1910 the Daughters of the American Revolution, working with the Territory of New Mexico, placed a series of stone markers along the historic Santa Fe Trail. The great commercial road linked Missouri to Santa Fe from 1821 until the railroad reached the city, carrying wagons, traders, and soldiers across the plains.

Darby, PA · est. 1952

Set aside in 1682 as William Penn's Quaker colony was taking root, the Darby Friends Burial Ground has received the dead of this community without interruption for well over three centuries. The land was donated by John Blunston, an English Quaker who founded Darby and rests here himself. The grounds also hold the grave of John Bartram, the largely self-taught colonial botanist whose plant collecting and famous garden near Philadelphia earned him fame on both sides of the Atlantic.

Houston, TX

Kentucky-born Darius Gregg reached Texas in 1827 and received a land grant in Stephen F. Austin's second colony. He took up arms in the 1835 Siege of Bexar, including the famous Grass Fight, during the Texas struggle for independence. Later a surveyor in and around Houston—working for the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad—he held land across several counties and gave to Methodist causes, with Gregg Chapel named in his honor.

Grapeland, TX

Illinois-born Darius H. Edens came to Texas in 1831 and served in Thomas J. Rusk's infantry during the 1836 revolution that won Texas its independence. A surveyor, he helped plat the town of Palestine and became Anderson County's first Chief Justice before chasing the 1849 California gold rush. Returning home, he and his wife Nancy Rice ran the stagecoach station and inn at Augusta on the road between Rusk and Crockett.

Green Township, NJ

Long before European settlers reached the upper Delaware Valley, Munsee-speaking Lenape people known as the Minisink lived in villages scattered across these hills and river flats. The Dark Moon Site preserves the remnants of one such small settlement dating to the Late Woodland period, roughly six centuries ago — an era when Native communities here farmed maize, beans, and squash and returned to favored village sites season after season.

Rostraver Township, PA · est. 1994

On December 19, 1907, an explosion tore through the Darr coal mine near Van Meter, killing 239 men and boys — many of them Hungarian immigrants who had come to America for the promise of steady work underground. It was the deadliest blow in the deadliest month American coal mining has ever known: more than 3,000 miners died that December, including 34 in the nearby Naomi mine weeks earlier. In Olive Branch Cemetery, 71 Darr miners lie together, 49 of them never identified.

Darrouzett, TX

Darrouzett began in 1917 as a station on the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway, first called Lourwood and then renamed by the railroad for a Galveston legislator. By its 1920 incorporation more than four hundred people lived there, supporting stores, a school, two churches, and a post office. When the community finally opened its own cemetery in 1939, families reinterred loved ones from older graveyards, and its ground now holds many veterans, including two men killed in Vietnam.

Victoria, TX

Darwin M. Stapp took up arms in the Texas War for Independence, taking part in the 1835 Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio in the opening months of the revolution. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1962 to honor his service. He belongs to the generation of volunteers whose fighting won the Republic of Texas its independence.

Dare County, NC

Near here stood Dasemunkepeuc, an Algonquian village on the mainland across from Roanoke Island at the time of the English voyages of the 1580s. It was the home of Wingina, a Native leader who was slain by a colonist in 1586 amid the mounting tensions of first contact. The village was abandoned in 1587 as English and Algonquian relations collapsed.

San Francisco, CA · est. 2005

In this apartment building the former Pinkerton detective Dashiell Hammett turned his investigative years into a new kind of American fiction, writing Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon here between 1926 and 1929. His own fourth-floor rooms became the model for Sam Spade's apartment, blurring the line between the writer's life and the noir world he invented. These few years established the lean, unsentimental style that reshaped crime writing.

San Francisco, CA

This San Francisco plaque commemorates not a real killing but a fictional one—the murder of detective Miles Archer in Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. Hammett knew these downtown streets intimately from his years as a Pinkerton operative, and he wove real alleys and corners into the hard-boiled world of Sam Spade. Fans and the city alike have long treated the novel's geography as a kind of literary map of the town.

Carson City, NV

Louisa Keyser — known as Datsolalee — was a Washoe weaver whose spherical degikup willow baskets, decorated with bracken fern and redbud, elevated a thousands-of-years-old utilitarian craft into internationally celebrated fine art. Working under the patronage of the Cohn family from 1895 until her death in 1925, she produced more than 120 documented major baskets now prized in museums nationwide. Her success came as the Washoe were recovering from the mid-19th-century loss of their homelands, and it inspired renewed basketry across the tribe.

Saint Paul, MN

Raised by the Daughters of the American Revolution, this monument honors the men and women of Saint Paul and Ramsey County who died in the First World War. When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, communities across Minnesota sent volunteers and draftees to the Western Front, and the losses were felt in every neighborhood. The scriptural line "Greater love hath no man than this" frames their deaths as the ultimate sacrifice.