Search Markers

Bastrop, TX

This Bastrop County home rose in stages on land the Mexican government granted in 1831 to a colonist of Stephen F. Austin's second colony — a reminder that Anglo Texas began as Mexican Texas. Farmer John Aldridge built the first portion in 1852, and after the Civil War a Confederate captain and plantation owner, J. W. Fitzwilliam, added the two-story section around 1872, naming the place 'Wexford' for his Irish birthplace.

East Columbia, TX

Raised between 1837 and 1841 for farmer and landholder William Aldridge, this East Columbia house passed through several owners, including J. H. Dance and Co., a firm that manufactured arms for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Businessman Thomas Masterson Smith and his wife Mary leased the home from 1908 and bought it in 1917, keeping it in the Smith family for generations. The dwelling survives as a local landmark from the earliest years of Anglo settlement in Brazoria County.

Winters, TX

This grave holds a Civil War soldier, Alec Simmons, who came from the small settlement of Lemon Gap a few miles to the northwest and was laid to rest here in an unmarked grave before 1897. The spare record is itself telling—of a frontier region where many who served and died left little trace beyond a name and a place. The state recorded the site in 1967.

Aledo, TX

This congregation traces its start to 1878, when Methodists acquired a share of a small frame hall in the settlement of Alma, considered the forerunner of Aledo. When the Texas & Pacific Railway crossed Parker County in 1879, the building was moved to the new town rising along the tracks, and the church grew through a century of expansions, mergers, and new sanctuaries. As the first congregation in town to own its own building, it became a cornerstone of Aledo's civic and spiritual life.

San Antonio, TX

Born in 1835, Alejo de la Encarnación Pérez was carried into the Alamo as an infant during the 1836 siege and lived to become its last known survivor. His long life bridged two Texas eras: he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, then spent decades serving San Antonio as a police officer and city marshal. When he died in 1918 at 83, the living memory of the Alamo's defenders died with him.

Dundee, TX

Alex Albright, born in Nebraska in 1861 and raised in the cattle business, came to Dundee in 1890 and opened a general store before building his 1,400-acre Elm Lodge Ranch. Starting with purebred Lincoln sheep, in 1910 he imported prized karakul sheep from Asia—reportedly with help from former President Theodore Roosevelt and the Czar of Russia—and bred a flock of 1,200 that won prizes worldwide. His second wife Marie assisted him in the ranching enterprise.

Gilmer, TX

Alex Earp followed his father into law enforcement in Upshur County, becoming sheriff in the 1880s just as the booming East Texas timber industry drew a rough, transient workforce to the area. A former Confederate cavalry captain born in Alabama, he later served as county commissioner. The marker credits him with keeping order under difficult conditions during a raucous chapter of the county's growth.

City of Ithaca, NY · est. 2020

In this Ithaca house, Alex Haley was born on August 11, 1921. He would go on to write 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X' and the landmark 1976 saga 'Roots,' which traced his own family back to slavery and reshaped how Americans confronted that history. The marker commemorates the birthplace of one of the nation's most influential writers.

Carrollton, TX

In 1844 Alexander Wilson Perry and his wife Sarah left Illinois to join the Peters Colony, buying this North Texas land and raising a simple frame house by the late 1850s. The Perrys became civic pillars, donating ground for a church, a cemetery, a school, and the railroad. Their son later reused the old home's lumber and stone to build the surviving residence, which his family gave to Carrollton as a museum and park in 1975.

San Antonio, TX

Completed in 1904, this imposing San Antonio residence was the home of Alexander Hart Halff — merchant, banker, and rancher — and Alma Oppenheimer Halff, both from prominent local families. Designed by C.A. Coughlin and the noted architect Atlee B. Ayres, it blends late-Victorian forms with early-twentieth-century modernism, down to its pressed-metal roof and boxed eaves. The Halffs lived here until 1963.

Corsicana, TX

A Scottish native, Alexander Beaton emigrated to the United States in 1843 and reached Texas in 1848 after serving in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. Settling in Corsicana in 1850, he practiced law and, in 1871, chaired the finance committee that persuaded the Houston & Texas Central Railroad to route its line through town — an effort that earned him the street bearing his name. A Mason, Methodist, and amateur geologist, he raised a family there with his wife, Elizabeth Jane McKinney.

Alexander, TX

This burial ground has served southern Erath County since the late 1800s, when the railroad town of Alexander—first called Harper's Mill—was thriving. Confederate veteran Thomas Pinckney Tidwell established the cemetery after a Mexican family's child was refused burial in a local graveyard; he opened it to all, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and his family donated an ornate cross to mark the child's grave. Among its burials are community leaders and veterans of conflicts dating back to the Civil War.

Bryan, TX

The ground here was part of an 1832 headright granted by Mexico to George W. Singleton, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colonists, and burials are said to have begun by 1854 near an early schoolhouse. In 1856 Singleton's heirs deeded ten acres for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Alexander Church rose beside the school as interments continued. With some three hundred marked graves, the cemetery remains open to burials and cared for by an association formed in 1941.

Alexander, NY · est. 2004

Erected in 1837, this cobblestone building served the village of Alexander as a classical academy at a time when secondary education was rare in rural America. Cobblestone construction — laying tens of thousands of water-rounded stones by hand — flourished in a roughly 65-mile radius of Rochester, NY, after Erie Canal masons settled the region.

Dallas, TX

Alexander Cockrell arrived in the Dallas area in 1845, fought in the war with Mexico, and by 1852 had bought the remainder of the townsite from Dallas's founder, John Neely Bryan, building brickyards, a sawmill, and a Trinity River bridge. When he was killed over a debt in 1858, his wife Sarah Horton Cockrell took the reins, finishing the St. Nicholas Hotel, running the ferry, and adding a flour mill — becoming the first woman in Dallas to wield real economic power.

Euless, TX

Alexander and Mary Dobkins came from Tennessee in 1852 as part of the wave of pioneers settling North Texas, taking up a 200-acre farm on this ground. Alexander was ordained a Baptist minister and served as postmaster for Estill's Station during the Civil War, and his 1869 grave is the earliest here. His son William, buried beside him, became a physician and civic leader for the growing community.

San Marcos, TX

Alexander Gates Thomas, an English professor and Texas folklore authority, and Lillian Johnson, an art professor, met as teachers at Southwest Texas Normal School and married late in life. Charmed on their honeymoon by the stone cottages of England's Cotswolds, they built this Tudor Revival house themselves from native stone quarried near San Marcos, giving it 14-inch walls, a swept gable roof, and pointed lancet windows. It is a small monument to two educators' shared imagination.

Orange, TX

An Irish immigrant who reached America in 1846, Alexander "Sandy" Gilmer built ships in Orange with his cousin and ran a mercantile before the Civil War, when he served the Confederacy as a blockade runner trading local cotton and lumber for scarce supplies and took part in the 1863 Battle of Sabine Pass. After the war he turned to sawmilling, and though fires destroyed four of his mills, he became one of the region's leading lumbermen, with holdings that included the town of Remlig—his name spelled backward. He died in 1906 while on business in New York.

Bellville, TX

Alexander Glenn and his wife Sarah left Georgia for Texas, settling first in the Mill Creek Forks area before moving to Bellville in 1854 and buying one of the community's earliest homes. Glenn served as Austin County surveyor through the 1850s, a key role in a young county still measuring out its land. This small burial ground on that original property holds the couple and their daughter, tended today by the local historical society.

Washington, DC · est. 1947

On June 3, 1880, Alexander Graham Bell transmitted speech through the air on a beam of light—not a wire—using his newly invented 'photophone,' sending a wireless voice message from the top of this building to a receiver blocks away. Bell considered the photophone among his most important inventions, though the world was not yet ready to use light for communication. The plaque was placed in 1947 to mark the centennial of his birth.

Boston, MA

Alexander Hamilton was one of the young republic's most consequential Founders — a Revolutionary War officer and aide to George Washington who became the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury. In that role he built the financial architecture of the United States, from a national bank to the assumption of state debts, setting the country on a path toward commercial and industrial strength. This statue, the inscription notes, was raised not by a government but by Thomas Lee, a private citizen of Boston, a reminder that Hamilton's legacy was championed by ordinary Americans who saw his hand in the nation's prosperity.

Dallas, TX

Alexander Harwood arrived in Dallas from Tennessee in 1844, when the settlement was little more than a river crossing, and spent the next four decades helping run it. Voters returned him as county clerk six times between 1850 and 1880, and he served the Confederacy as an assistant to Postmaster General John H. Reagan before representing Dallas County at the 1866 constitutional convention that followed the Civil War. His long public career threads through the town's rise from frontier outpost to established county seat.

San Augustine, TX

Alexander Horton came to Texas in 1824 and served as an aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. A pioneer, soldier, and state legislator, he bought this land in 1837 and built his home beside what became the family burial ground. By tradition the first grave was that of his brother, a Texas Ranger who died in 1849, and the small plot still holds Horton and his kin.

Victoria, TX

Built in 1883, this Victoria home belonged to Alexander Lowe — a veteran of the Mexican War who went on to serve as mayor and to work as a businessman and wheelwright. He was also a pioneer in refrigerated shipping, an innovation that transformed how perishable goods moved to distant markets.

Dallas, TX

Built in 1906 for $125,000 on what was then the far edge of Dallas, the Alexander Mansion was a showpiece of the city's early twentieth-century high society, hosting glittering social gatherings for businessman C.H. Alexander. In 1930 it was acquired by the Dallas Woman's Forum, a women's civic and cultural club, which restored and preserved the grand house. Recognized as a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark in 1968, it endures as a monument to a gracious era.

Waco, TX

Alexander McKinza left his native Alabama for Nacogdoches in 1834, arriving on the eve of Texas's fight for independence. He joined the Sabine volunteers under Capt. Benjamin F. Bryant and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Settling into civilian life, he married Clarissa Brewer, kept a store near Douglass, and served as a Nacogdoches County justice of the peace before moving to McLennan County around 1860.

Bryan, TX

Circuit rider Robert Alexander organized this Methodist congregation in 1854, and two years later early settlers raised its first sanctuary from hand-hewn logs on land donated by neighboring families. As the Brazos County community took hold, the humble log chapel gave way to larger frame churches in 1908 and again in 1939. The names recorded on its founding deed read like a roster of the district's pioneer households.

Exeter, NH

This plaque marks a house in Exeter, New Hampshire tied to Alexander Miller, remembered here as an engineer for Phillips Exeter Academy in 1875. Founded in 1781, the academy was by the Gilded Age a well-established New England preparatory school whose growing campus of brick halls and boarding houses depended on skilled tradespeople and engineers to keep its heating, water, and buildings running. A residence like this one reflects how an institution of that era housed and honored the working staff who made daily campus life possible.

Marietta, GA

In the mid-19th century, Cobb County was farm country, and it was on one of its farms that Alexander Stephens Clay was born in 1853. He read law, made his name in Georgia politics, and rose through the state legislature before Georgia sent him to the United States Senate, where he served from the late 1890s until his death in 1910. His life traced the arc of the New South era, when a generation of Southern lawyers-turned-statesmen worked to steer their region's rebuilding and its place in a reunited nation.

Caldwell, TX

Born in South Carolina in 1785, Alexander Thomson, Jr. became a leader in the Anglo colonization of Texas, partnering in 1830 with empresario Sterling C. Robertson to settle families in the Robertson Colony. When Mexican officials began requiring passports of immigrants, Thomson's party bypassed Nacogdoches and blazed a new route that became known as the Tennesseans' Road. He served as a convention delegate, colony surveyor, and executor of Robertson's estate, and fathered thirteen children whose descendants include a U.S. diplomat.

Marshall, TX

Alexander Travis Hawthorn rose from Arkansas lawyer to Confederate brigadier general, leading troops at Shiloh and earning commendation for gallantry at the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. After the war he turned from soldiering to business and then the pulpit, spending his final decades as a Baptist minister in Texas.

Maysville, KY

Born about five miles west of Maysville in 1808, Alexander W. Doniphan moved to Missouri and became a militia general known for restraint—famously refusing an order to execute Mormon leader Joseph Smith and others after the 1838 disturbances. His lasting fame came in the Mexican War, when he led the 1st Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers on a remarkable 3,600-mile campaign, defeating larger Mexican forces with a poorly equipped command. His march remains one of the epic feats of American volunteer soldiering.

Salado, TX

During the Civil War, the William R. Alexander Distillery on this site met a pressing wartime need. Governor Francis Lubbock ordered Texas distilleries closed in 1862 to conserve grain, but army demand for medicinal liquor—used for opiates and stimulants—soon reopened a select few, Alexander's among them. Amid drastic shortages, Texans across the state improvised bandages, lint, and homemade remedies for the troops.

Mexia, TX

Alfonso Steel fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the decisive clash in which Texian forces under Sam Houston routed the Mexican army in a fight lasting less than twenty minutes and won independence for the Republic of Texas. Wounded in that battle, Steel lived on for decades and became its last surviving veteran, a living link to the founding fight of the Texas Republic. The State of Texas honored him with this marker in 1962.

Culloden, GA

Born in Culloden, Georgia in 1899, Alfred Blalock rose to become one of the century's great surgeons. His research on traumatic shock saved countless lives during World War II, and on November 29, 1944 he performed the first 'blue baby' operation, a breakthrough that opened the era of modern heart surgery. As chairman of surgery at Johns Hopkins he trained a generation of leading surgeons — the achievement he prized above all his honors.

New York, NY

Alfred M. Butts, an out-of-work architect and artist, invented the word game Scrabble in 1931 while part of this Queens church congregation. His wife, Nina, and fellow parishioners helped create and perfect the game, and Butts himself designed the education building on which this marker stands.

San Antonio, TX

Alfred Giles, born in England in 1853, trained as an architect's apprentice in London before moving to Texas for his health in 1873. Settling in San Antonio, he opened his own firm in 1876 and designed grand residences for the city's leading families along King William Street. In 1883 he built two modest homes at 306 and 308 King William, living in the latter and later giving it, remodeled, to his daughter as a wedding gift.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2003

Alfred J. Reach was among the first men to play baseball for pay, starring at second base for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1865 to 1875 as the sport turned professional. He went on to become the Phillies' first owner and president and published the widely read "Official Base Ball Guide." His firm, A.J. Reach & Co., based here, grew into a major maker of baseballs and sporting goods.

Graford, TX

Tennessee-born Alfred Lane came to Texas with his family in 1836 and settled in Robertson's colony before moving to the Black Springs area of Palo Pinto County in 1856, where he raised horses on the open range after marrying Elizabeth Goodnight. Brother-in-law to the famed cattleman Charles Goodnight, who called him "a splendid brave man," Lane scouted for the Texas Rangers during the Civil War and helped drive Goodnight's cattle west of Fort Belknap. He was killed by Indians while returning home and lies buried in nearby Crawford Cemetery.

Houston County, TX

Alfred M. Hallmark (1817-1880), born in Madison County, Alabama, came to Texas with his parents in 1834 and settled in present-day Houston County. He enlisted in the Texas Army on March 6, 1836, and fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto that April, later farming and helping run the post office in the Mustang Prairie community. In 1842 he married his cousin Sarah, with whom he raised twelve children.

N.Richland Hills, TX

Alfred M. Hightower arrived near Smithfield from Illinois in 1858 to ranch, and though he opposed secession, he cast his lot with the South once war broke out. As a Confederate mounted rifleman he fought at Elkhorn Tavern (Pea Ridge) in Arkansas, one of the largest battles west of the Mississippi. He tried Kansas in the 1870s before returning to ranch here until his death, leaving his name on a nearby street.

New York, NY

Alfred Tredway White was a Brooklyn merchant and philanthropist of the Gilded Age whose name became synonymous with the idea that decent housing was a civic duty. In an era when the working poor of America's booming industrial cities were crowded into airless, unsanitary tenements, White financed model apartment blocks built around courtyards and open stairwells to bring in light and air, insisting they still earn a modest return so the model could be copied. A devoted supporter of parks, gardens, and public institutions, he lived by the creed carved here — a lover of nature and a helper of mankind.

Alice, TX

In the 1880s two rail lines crossed in what was then Nueces County, and a townsite sprang up at the junction. Known first as Bandana and then Kleberg, it settled on the name Alice when a post office was granted in 1888, and homes, schools, and churches followed. Texas Rangers based their south Texas operations here, and in 1911 Alice became the seat of the newly created Jim Wells County.

Boardman Township, OH

This memorial rock records a gift of land for Lake Newport, donated by Mary Baldwin Lewis in memory of her father, Jesse Baldwin, and her great-great aunt, Mary Newport. Such private donations helped assemble the public lakes and parkland that families in the Youngstown area still enjoy today, part of a broader turn-of-the-century movement to set aside natural spaces for the public good.

Andover, MA

In 1897, through what this memorial calls the "loving interest and untiring effort" of Miss Alice Buck, a tract of Andover woodland was secured for the people's permanent use. Her work belongs to the era when Americans, alarmed by rapid industrial growth, began setting aside parks and forests for public enjoyment. The stone honors one woman's quiet, lasting gift to her town.

Alice, TX

When two railroads crossed three miles from the old Collins community in the 1890s, a new town called Alice sprang up at the junction, and Frederic B. Nayer—who had helped sell its lots—donated ground for a burial place in 1903. First called the Alice Fraternal Cemetery, it was renamed after a cemetery association formed in 1925 under its first president, Martha Fawcus, who led the planting of a hundred oaks that still shade the grounds. Prominent citizens, veterans, and Texas Rangers rest among generations of South Texas families.

Fort Worth, TX

Built in 1927 to a design by Fort Worth architect Wiley G. Clarkson, this Spanish Colonial Revival school — with its tile roof and wrought-iron lamps — grew with its neighborhood, expanding in 1935 with Works Progress Administration funds and again in 1953. It was named for Alice E. Carlson, a teacher who became the first woman to serve on the Fort Worth School Board. For generations the school anchored the community and shaped its children.

Jefferson, TX

Built about 1868 in the late Greek Revival style and later dressed with Victorian details, this Jefferson home was purchased in 1898 by Alice Emmert, one of the first women elected to public office in Texas. She served as county superintendent of education from 1908 to 1920. In a further brush with history, young Claudia Taylor—the future Lady Bird Johnson—boarded here from 1924 to 1926 while attending school.

Salado, TX

Born in Mississippi in 1846, Alice Gray Hamblen moved with her husband to Salado in 1868 and threw herself into the life of Salado College, the local private school. A devoted champion of education, she boarded relatives' children so they could attend. When the old college building was condemned in 1924, she offered the Hamblen family homestead as the site for the new Salado public school.

Port Lavaca, TX

Education for African American children in Port Lavaca began in a late-19th-century one-room schoolhouse and grew under a series of dedicated teachers. In 1907 a sixteen-year-old Fisk University graduate, Alice Ora Crawford, arrived from Chicago and over three decades built the school from a handful of grades into a full institution, eventually serving as principal. When she died in 1942, the district named the school in her honor; it operated until full integration arrived in 1965.

New York, NY

In 1904, so the story goes, a circus elephant named Alice bolted from Coney Island and swam across the harbor to Staten Island — a piece of turn-of-the-century local lore from the era when traveling circuses and seaside amusement parks like Coney Island were among America's grandest popular entertainments. This plaque doesn't claim to be a solemn historical monument so much as a fond nod to that legend, celebrating an unlikely animal escape that has lingered in Staten Island memory. Its keepers pay tribute by giving their own elephant the same name, keeping the tale alive for a new generation.

Amarillo, TX

Built in 1906–1907 by local contractor J. D. Singleton, this home was raised for Alice Victoria Ghormley Curtis, widow of the prominent Texas Ranger and rancher W. R. Curtis. After her husband's death in 1901 she moved to Amarillo, where she raised her youngest child and a granddaughter in the house. A fine example of early twentieth-century classical revival, it features Tuscan columns supporting a classical entablature.

Village of Sands Point, NY

In an era when newspaper mastheads were almost exclusively male, Alicia Patterson launched Newsday from a Long Island garage in 1940 and built it into one of the nation's most respected dailies. Born into a storied newspaper dynasty, she made her own mark by championing tenacious local reporting and a crusading editorial voice that spoke to the fast-growing suburbs of postwar Nassau County. By her death in 1963 the paper she founded and edited had become a major daily and a force in American journalism.

Waco, TX

Rising 22 stories over downtown Waco in 1911, the Amicable Life Insurance Company's home office was built as much for publicity as for offices, announcing the ambitions of a new firm. Designed by Sanguinet & Staats with Roy E. Lane, its Beaux Arts form is crowned with rich terra-cotta detailing on the top four floors. For years the tallest building in the Southwest, the Alico famously stood firm through the deadly 1953 Waco tornado.

Houston, TX

The first permanent settlers here were Dr. John Magee and his wife Alief, who arrived in 1896; the community, briefly called Dairy, was renamed in 1897 for Alief Magee, its first postmistress. When the need for a burial ground arose in 1900, this property was deeded for a cemetery, and many of the pioneer settlers — including Alief herself — were laid to rest here. Roughly half the graves are those of infants, a stark record of the hardships of childbirth and disease on the early prairie, while the 1900 hurricane scattered many discouraged families before some returned to fight the area's floods.

Dayton, KY

This memorial in the Ohio River town of Dayton is dedicated to all American veterans, honoring military service without naming a single war. Such all-veterans tributes anchor countless town squares and riverfront parks across the country, offering a place for communities to gather on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. It speaks to the broad, enduring recognition of those who wore the uniform.

Newburg, WI

A memorial bearing the well-worn tribute 'All gave some, some gave all,' honoring the community's military veterans and its war dead. No single conflict is named; the words speak to service and sacrifice across generations.

Germantown Hills, IL

This memorial carries the familiar tribute "All gave some, some gave all," honoring those who served in the armed forces and those who died in that service. Placed in a small Illinois community, it stands for local sons and daughters who answered the nation's call across the generations. Without naming a single war, it speaks to the broad debt owed to American veterans.

Cameron, TX

Episcopal worship reached Cameron as early as 1860, but All Saints was not organized as a mission until 1901, and the Diocese of Texas bought this lot in 1906. The wooden T-plan church, completed in 1907 with its central entry tower and rear Palladian window, was consecrated by Bishop George H. Kinsolving that November. It remains a well-preserved example of small-town Texas church architecture.

Crockett, TX

Episcopal worship reached Crockett in 1850, and All Saints was formally founded in 1864 by Bishop Alexander Gregg during the depths of the Civil War, its special ministry bringing many enslaved people into the parish. By 1867 the church building had been lost—possibly to fire—and the local economy lay in ruins from the war, leaving the faithful to gather in homes with occasional priests for decades. Reactivated in 1947, the congregation built a new church in 1958.