Search Markers

Houston, TX

On November 6, 1891, seventeen women gathered at Mrs. Andrew Briscoe's Houston home to form an auxiliary to the Texas Veterans Association, electing Mrs. Anson Jones president and soon renaming themselves the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Their aims—honoring Texas Revolution heroes, teaching patriotism, and preserving historic sites—drove a long record of preservation work. Members such as Clara Driscoll famously wrote personal checks to save the Alamo, while the group also protected the San Jacinto Battlefield and Austin's old General Land Office and French Legation.

Cuero, TX

Founded in 1892 as a one-room wooden schoolhouse, Cuero Colored High School was the town's first school for Black children, drawing pupils from farm families who could attend only when field work allowed. Principal Eugene Daule guided Black education in DeWitt County for four decades, stretching meager, unequal resources as far as they would go; the school was renamed in his honor in 1937. Under later leaders it built a celebrated band and a broad curriculum before closing in 1965 when Cuero's schools finally integrated.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 1982

Established in 1785 from Lancaster County, Dauphin County took its name from the eldest son of France's King Louis XVI, a nod to the French alliance that had helped win American independence. Its seat, Harrisburg, was laid out that same year at a strategic crossing of the Susquehanna River. In 1812 Harrisburg became Pennsylvania's capital, and it was chartered a city in 1860, growing into the seat of state government.

Selma, TX

William Davenport, Virginia-born and Kentucky-raised, settled south of Cibolo Creek in 1851, and when his first wife died the next year he buried her near their home, founding this community graveyard. A rancher, militia captain, and Mason, he helped establish Selma's first school in 1859 and a combined schoolhouse-church-Masonic hall in 1872; his second wife's father was a War of 1812 veteran also buried here, and burials continued until 1934.

Wichita Falls, TX

In 1926, at the height of the North Texas oil boom, Rall and Ora Davenport turned the front of their Wichita Falls home into a neighborhood grocery serving oil-field hands and railroad men. Generations later the store still stands, its original hardwood floors, counter, and decades-old oak butcher block intact, and it remains famous locally as the 'home of the hot links.'

Town of New Castle, NY

Hidden in the woods of Westchester County stands Elda, the stone castle built by David T. Abercrombie, the outdoorsman and co-founder of the sporting-goods outfitter Abercrombie & Fitch. In the early twentieth century Abercrombie made his name supplying gear to explorers, hunters, and adventurers, and he retreated to this rugged estate — its name drawn from his children's initials — as a private mountain fastness. The castle survives as an evocative ruin of the Gilded Age's taste for grand country retreats.

Glynn County, GA

This Blue Star Memorial marker on St. Simons Island carries a personal dedication, honoring Lt. David Anderson Everett of the U.S. Navy, a prisoner of war returned from Vietnam. Blue Star Memorial Highways began in 1945, named for the blue-star service flags of World War II, and garden clubs across the country later used them to honor individual servicemen as well as the armed forces at large. Here the St. Simons Island Council of Garden Clubs joined the Garden Club of Georgia to recognize a hometown POW.

Houston, TX

This American Foursquare house was built in 1910 for David Barker, a business, civic, and political leader who was then serving as mayor of Houston Heights. Its wraparound porch with Tuscan columns, denticulated cornice, and transom-and-sidelight entry mark it as a fine example of the style. The Barker family kept the home until 1971.

Lower Mount Bethel Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1744, the young Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd lived in a log house in this corner of the Forks of the Delaware, laboring to bring Christianity to the region's Native peoples. Racked by the illness that would kill him at 29, Brainerd poured his hopes and torments into a diary that, published after his death by Jonathan Edwards, became one of the most widely read spiritual journals in American history. His brief, feverish ministry left a mark on frontier Pennsylvania far larger than his short life would suggest.

Gonzales, TX

David Burkett came to Texas with his family in 1830 as a member of Green DeWitt's colony and took up the cause of Texas independence as a citizen soldier. In 1836 he served as a guard for the women and children fleeing Gonzales ahead of Santa Anna's advancing army — the desperate flight remembered as the Runaway Scrape. He is buried on his 4,428-acre land grant that once stretched south from this site.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

David Bustill Bowser, a self-taught Black artist, lived and worked here in 19th-century Philadelphia. He began painting signs, banners, and emblems—the everyday commercial art of the era—before turning to portraiture. Among his subjects were Abraham Lincoln, whom he painted several times, and the abolitionist John Brown, linking his brush to the great antislavery cause of his age.

Lumberton, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1811, David Choate Jr. joined a company of Beaumont volunteers and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, earning land bounties that he settled along Pine Island Bayou. There in 1856 he founded Concord, a steamboat shipping point whose busy ferry linked Beaumont to points north and drew farm goods and lumber from three counties. At its peak Concord held 300 residents—but when railroads reached the region, the steamboats fell silent and the town was abandoned by 1880.

Webberville, TX

David Crawford Edmiston came to Texas as a boy in 1835 and spent his life on its contested frontier—riding with the Texas Rangers in frontier defense, again during the Mexican War, and serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He and his wife Rhoda raised eleven children on their Webberville farm, whose surviving buildings still mark the land the family worked.

Colmesneil, TX

David Curlee Enloe raised this house in 1852 and brought his bride home the following spring, settling into a life at the center of young Tyler County. A teacher and trustee of Woodville College, he was elected sheriff in 1853 and ran a sawmill that cut the lumber for the county's first courthouse. His work touched education, law, and the very buildings of the new county seat.

Hawaiʻi County, HI

This memorial marks the place where Dr. David Douglas, the Scottish botanist, met his death in 1834 after falling into a wild-bullock pit on the slopes of Hawaii Island. Douglas had traveled the Pacific coast cataloging plants, and the towering Douglas-fir carries his name. His strange and untimely end closed a short but influential career of exploration.

Clarksville, TX

Born in New Jersey in 1788, David Gouverneur Burnet became a leading figure in Texas's fight for nationhood. He served as a convention delegate and judge before becoming interim president of the Republic of Texas from March to October 1836, in the tumultuous months surrounding independence. He later served as vice president and secretary of state of the young republic.

Jacksonville, TX

David Greene Templeton, a North Carolina native, reached newly organized Cherokee County soon after 1846 and settled in the Gum Creek community that became Old Jacksonville. He grew into a prominent landowner and civic leader, was named in 1850 one of the original trustees of the Presbyterian college at Larissa, and served in the Confederate home guard during the Civil War. His descendants went on to play a prominent role in the early growth of Jacksonville.

Houston, TX

David Grieves was a Scottish immigrant who cast his lot with the Texas struggle for independence, serving in Captain Henry Teal's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That short, decisive fight secured Texas's break from Mexico. Grieves lived only briefly afterward, dying in the raw new town of Houston in 1837.

Circleville, TX

David McFadin, a Tennessean who came to Texas in 1828 and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, built this sturdy house in 1850 with native stone walls more than two feet thick. Its cool, never-failing spring later drew Confederate soldiers who camped here on their way to the Civil War.

Fairfield, TX

David Hall Love (1816–1866), a Tennessee native, fought in the Texas War for Independence and, at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, helped capture a large body of enemy soldiers before carrying word of the Texan victory on foot to Harrisburg. For his service he received a bounty land grant, and from that land he later donated the townsite of Fairfield. He went on to serve his church and community as a precinct justice.

Town of Newcomb, NY

In the 1840s the high peaks around Newcomb were a rugged industrial frontier, home to the Adirondack Iron Works at Tahawus, where partners hoped to turn the region's rich ore into a fortune. David Henderson, one of those partners, was exploring the surrounding wilderness in September 1845 when he was killed in a sudden accident on this remote spot. His grieving children later raised this monument on the very ground where he fell, and the pond beside it has been known as Calamity Pond ever since.

Circleville, TX

This marker honors David Hutcheson McFadin, who took up arms in the Texas War for Independence and fought as a soldier at the Battle of San Jacinto. That decisive 1836 clash, where Texian forces routed the Mexican army in less than twenty minutes, secured Texas independence and made men like McFadin part of the founding generation of the Republic. The State of Texas erected the memorial in 1962 to keep his service in public memory.

Boston, MA

David Ignatius Walsh (1872–1947) broke a barrier in 1914 as the first Irish Catholic elected governor of Massachusetts, then spent decades in the U.S. Senate, where he chaired the Naval Affairs Committee. The son of Irish immigrants, he climbed through a Yankee-dominated political world to become one of the state's most powerful figures. His statue on the Charles River Esplanade carries the motto 'Not for self, but for country.'

San Antonio, TX

In 1904, as San Antonio was booming into a modern city, the prominent architect Atlee B. Ayres designed this stately Classical Revival house for the Woodward family. May Bock Woodward worked closely with Ayres on the plans while her husband David served as builder — a rare instance of a woman shaping a major residential commission of the era. After David's death, May sold the home in 1926 to the Woman's Club of San Antonio, giving it a second life as a center of women's civic life.

Chicago, IL

David Kennison was long celebrated as the last living participant of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the defiant night when colonists dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation. He was said to have lived to a remarkable age and died in Chicago, where admirers marked his grave as a tangible link to the Revolution's opening acts. The monument ties the young city of Chicago to a founding struggle a continent away.

Gonzales, TX

David L. Kokernot served the Texas cause during the war for independence from Mexico in 1835–36, acting as a soldier, officer, scout, and courier. This monument, erected by the State of Texas in 1962, honors his part in the revolution that created the Republic of Texas.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1985

Born in Pittsburgh in 1889, David L. Lawrence rose through the city's Democratic politics to become mayor and then Pennsylvania's governor from 1959 to 1963. He is best remembered for the postwar "Pittsburgh Renaissance," a sweeping effort to clear smoke, curb flooding, and rebuild the city's core. His push to redevelop the Golden Triangle helped turn the point where the rivers meet into Point State Park.

Granbury, TX

David Lee Nutt came to Texas from Missouri in 1857 and, in 1879, built this two-story plantation-style house of cypress lumber hauled by ox cart from East Texas. It soon became Hood County's first hotel — wryly dubbed "The Nutt House" — putting up the traveling salesmen, or "drummers," who called on Nutt's mercantile store, before reverting to a family home in 1900. Nutt also gave 40 acres for the original Granbury townsite.

Asheville, NC

David L. Swain (1801-1868) was one of North Carolina's most influential public men — a governor in the 1830s and then president of the University of North Carolina from 1835 to 1868, guiding the university through decades of growth and the trauma of the Civil War. He was born three miles east.

Leechburg, PA

In the 1820s Pennsylvania set out to bind its interior together with a state-built network of canals, and men like David Leech turned that ambition into ditches, locks, and towns. A Bucks County native and Allegheny College–trained engineer, Leech came to the Kiskiminetas valley in 1827 to build a lock and dam for the Pennsylvania Canal, then platted a town beside his work in 1829 and gave it his name. Leechburg grew up as a canal town, its fortunes tied to the boats, freight, and travelers moving along the waterway that Leech helped construct.

Georgetown, TX

South Carolina native David M. Love came to Williamson County as an early farmer and rancher before moving to Georgetown in the 1860s. A leading local merchant, he had this ornate Victorian commercial building raised in the mid-1880s for his mercantile trade. Its pressed-metal upper façade, square pilasters, and decorative cornice typify the confident storefront architecture of a growing Central Texas county seat.

Easton, PA · est. 1953

At "The Forks" where the Lehigh meets the Delaware, David Martin secured grants in 1739 and 1741 to run a ferry across the water — one of the vital crossings that stitched frontier Pennsylvania to the routes heading west. For decades travelers, wagons, and goods depended on it, and during the Revolutionary War it carried troops and supplies for the American cause. It served until 1806, when bridges and better roads finally overtook the old ferry.

Farmers Branch, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1797 to a Virginia family that had pushed west a generation before, David Myers became an ordained Baptist preacher in Illinois before the lure of free land carried him and three generations of his family across the Red River on Christmas Eve, 1845. Settling on a Peters Colony grant northwest of Dallas, he organized Union Baptist Church in May 1846 — the oldest continuing Baptist congregation in Dallas County — and helped plant several more before pneumonia took him after a cold ride home from preaching.

Houston, TX

David Porter Richardson served as private secretary to Sam Houston, the towering figure who led Texas to independence and became president of the new republic. Richardson died in Houston in August 1837, in the earliest days of the Republic of Texas. His close service placed him at the very center of the young nation's founding government.

Huntingdon, PA · est. 1955

David R. Porter made his home in this house while building a career that carried him from the iron furnaces of central Pennsylvania to the governor's chair, which he held from 1839 to 1845. Affectionately called "our own Davy R.," he embodied the era when ironmasters were both industrialists and political leaders. His son Horace, born here in 1837, went on to distinction as a soldier and diplomat.

Mount Pleasant Township, PA · est. 1950

In the 1780s the rolling country of Washington County was disputed ground, and David Reed led a band of Covenanter squatters who had settled on land the tract belonged to none other than George Washington. On September 20, 1784, thirteen of these Scotch-Irish pioneers gathered at Reed's log home to face Washington himself and refuse his demand that they leave. Their defiance captures the raw friction between eastern land titles and the settlers who had already cleared and worked the ground.

Corsicana, TX

David Reed Mitchell, a North Carolina–born surveyor, arrived in Texas in 1845 having already mapped the upper Trinity and Brazos country. As surveyor of the Robertson County Land District, he laid out portions of the Mercer and Peters colonies and the original plans of Navarro County and Corsicana. With partners Thomas I. Smith and James C. Neill, he donated the hundred acres on which Corsicana was founded, ran an early inn there, and remained until his death in 1853 — the only one of the three founding donors buried in the town.

Philadelphia, PA

David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) was one of early America's foremost men of science — an astronomer, clockmaker, and instrument builder who won fame for observing the 1769 transit of Venus and later served as the first director of the United States Mint. This sundial marks the site of his birth and honors his mastery of astronomy and horology, the precise measurement of time. A self-taught Pennsylvanian, he embodied the Enlightenment ideal of the patriot-scientist.

Orange, TX

David Robert Wingate moved his family from Mississippi to a large East Texas cotton plantation in 1852, having built his fortune in sawmilling. During the Civil War he supplied lumber from his Sabine Pass mill to build Fort Sabine and other Confederate posts, and Federal troops burned his home and business in retaliation. Undeterred, he rebuilt in Orange after the war, invested in a sawmill, took up rice farming, and served as county judge.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

David Salisbury Franks was among the small number of Jewish officers to serve the American cause during the Revolution, rising to major and serving as aide-de-camp to General Benedict Arnold. When Arnold's treason was exposed, suspicion inevitably fell on the men closest to him, and Franks endured investigation before being formally cleared and going on to diplomatic service. He died in Philadelphia's 1793 yellow fever epidemic and, having no coreligionists to bury him, was laid to rest at Christ Church by a Christian neighbor.

Shelby, TX

David Shelby, born in Pennsylvania in 1799, came to Texas in 1822 as part of Stephen F. Austin's first colony—the "Old Three Hundred" families who founded Anglo-American settlement in what was then Mexican Texas. His arrival at the very start of that colonization effort links him to the earliest wave of pioneers whose community later took his name. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936 during the state's centennial commemorations.

Waco, TX

David Smith Kornegay was a soldier of the Texas Revolution who fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 and later escaped the deadly Dawson Massacre of 1842. Born in North Carolina in 1810, he came to Texas in its founding struggle and died in 1856. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936 during the centennial of independence.

Longview, TX

Born in Virginia in 1869, David Sutton Meredith settled in Longview in 1895 and was elected sheriff of Gregg County in 1916. He served through the volatile summer of 1919, when he helped keep racial violence from erupting into full-scale riot during Longview's chapter of the nationwide "Red Summer." After leaving office he remained an influential figure, helping organize two of the city's national banks.

Longview, TX

Born in Longview in 1902, David Sutton Meredith, Jr. graduated from the University of Texas and returned home to practice law, winning election as Gregg County judge the same year, 1926. As a special district judge in the 1930s he prosecuted "hot oil" violators who illegally overproduced from the East Texas field. He volunteered for military service in World War II and served again in the early 1950s before rising to Texas Assistant Attorney General.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 2006

Born in Germany in 1728, David Tannenberg emigrated in 1749 to the Moravian religious community at Bethlehem, part of the wave of German-speaking settlers who shaped colonial Pennsylvania. Trained under organ builder Johann Gottlob Klemm at nearby Burnside Plantation, he went on to craft nearly fifty pipe organs prized for their tonal richness and beauty. He was still at work when he died in York in 1804.

Catasauqua, PA · est. 2001

David Thomas carried a hard-won secret across the Atlantic from Wales: how to smelt iron using abundant, slow-burning anthracite coal rather than scarce charcoal. Settling in the Lehigh Valley, he built the Crane Iron Works, widely credited as the first anthracite iron furnace to succeed both technically and as a business. His breakthrough transformed eastern Pennsylvania's hard-coal region into an industrial powerhouse and earned him the title "father of the American anthracite iron industry."

McHenry County, ND

David Thompson, born in 1770, was one of the greatest land geographers of his age, a fur trader who mapped vast stretches of the northern interior with astonishing accuracy. In 1797 and 1798 he passed through this region on a scientific and trading expedition, taking the astronomical observations that let him chart the country that would become North Dakota. Working for the fur companies of British North America, he ultimately surveyed and mapped nearly two million square miles of terrain.

Bethany, PA · est. 1947

In this house in Bethany, David Wilmot was born on January 20, 1814. A Pennsylvania congressman, he gave his name to the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, a proposal to bar slavery from any territory won in the Mexican War. Though it never became law, the Proviso set off one of the fiercest debates in American politics, hardening the sectional divide over slavery's westward spread in the years before the Civil War.

Barry, TX

David Wilson Campbell left Georgia for a still-young, still-contested Texas in 1835, arriving just as the fight for independence from Mexico was breaking open. He shouldered a musket with the Texas army in 1836, then traded soldiering for the plow, breaking ground as one of Navarro County's early farmers. In 1845 he deeded ten acres to the Harmony Methodist Church, and a corner of that gift became the family cemetery where generations of Campbells now rest.

Harrison Township, PA · est. 1947

In October 1767, the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger made his way through this unbroken wilderness on a journey from Bethlehem toward the Delaware communities of the west. A tireless figure of colonial Pennsylvania, Zeisberger spent decades living among Native peoples and learning their languages. His passage through these primeval forests marked one of the first recorded European crossings of the region.

Allegany Township, PA · est. 1947

In October 1767, Moravian missionary David Zeisberger traveled through this remote stretch of forest, bound from Bethlehem toward the Delaware communities to the west. Renowned for living among Native peoples and mastering their languages, Zeisberger devoted his life to missions on the frontier. His route through this untouched country was among the earliest recorded European journeys across the region.

Coudersport, PA · est. 1916

On an October night in 1767, the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger camped near this spot, guided by two Delaware companions, Anthony and Papunhank, as he journeyed from Bethlehem toward the Allegheny. The trip opened the way for the Moravian missions that would take root among the Delaware across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Tradition holds him the first European to travel the primeval forests of the upper Allegheny.

Gatesville, TX

Matt Davidson came from Tennessee to the Milam-era Texas frontier in 1852, married one of Coryell County's first couples, and after Confederate service built a log home on Coryell Creek. Land overlooking his homestead became the community burial ground, its earliest marked grave dating to 1862. Around it grew a whole settlement—schools, a post office, churches, and stores—and its more than 600 graves hold veterans of every war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Corsicana, TX

William and Jane Davidson brought their family from Mississippi to Texas in 1851, settling by the late 1850s on hundreds of acres in southeastern Navarro County. The Davidsons prospered as sheep farmers and ranchers in cattle country—earning the nickname "Grangers" for their likely ties to the farmers' fraternal order—while two sons rode off to serve in the 20th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War. Set aside in 1861, this fenced family plot with its stone obelisks holds the graves of the pioneer parents and several of their descendants.

Galveston, TX

Built in the years just after the Civil War by Norwegian immigrant and early Galveston settler Captain John Davidson, this house passed through a remarkable line of owners. Among them was Samuel Moore Penland, a grandnephew of Sam Houston who served in Galveston during the Civil War, became a businessman and customs official, and donated Houston artifacts and letters to the Rosenberg Library. Having survived the 1885 fire and the 1900 storm, the Greek Revival house is among the oldest of its kind in the East End district.

Catasauqua, PA · est. 2023

Founded in the iron-rich Lehigh Valley in 1865, the Davies and Thomas Company mastered a demanding new craft: casting the heavy iron plates that line tunnels bored beneath rivers and cities. Its segments went into landmark works of American infrastructure—the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and railroad bores—as well as projects overseas. A sample of its tunnel lining was proudly displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Owensboro, KY

In 1864, several hundred enslaved African American men in Daviess County left bondage to enlist in the Union army, a choice that promised eventual freedom for themselves and their families. They served in the 100th, 109th, and 118th U.S. Colored Infantry and the 5th and 6th U.S. Colored Cavalry, fighting at Richmond, Petersburg, and Appomattox and across the western theater. In a Kentucky where pro-slavery Unionists bitterly opposed Black recruitment, enlisting was an act of extraordinary courage and risk.

Davilla, TX

This congregation traces its roots to 1866, when a presbytery gathered at Mumford Springs to organize a Missionary Baptist church in what is now Davilla. After borrowing the Methodist meeting house, the members bought a town lot and raised their own sanctuary in 1871, baptizing early converts in nearby creeks. Known as Davilla Baptist Church since 1904, the congregation worshipped in that original building for 121 years before dedicating a new sanctuary in 1992.

Austin, TX

George W. Davis brought his family to Texas in 1835, on the eve of revolution. He fought in Captain Mosely Baker's company at the Battle of San Jacinto while his wife Emiline sheltered their children on the Sabine River during the Runaway Scrape. Davis received a large land patent in 1841 and built a home near this burial ground, which holds Davis family members and neighbors and is still cared for by descendants.

Grapeland, TX

Established around 1862, this Houston County burial ground took root in the heart of the Civil War, when East Texas was a Confederate homefront far from the fighting but bound up in its losses. Set among the farms and pine woods of Grapeland, it reflects the settlement of the region by families who had pushed into East Texas in the antebellum decades. Its Historic Texas Cemetery designation preserves that link to the war years.