15,117 markers in the database — showing 6,961–7,020.
Rockport, TX
In 1835–36, Texian volunteers gathered at Goliad — the presidio town of La Bahía — as the fight for independence from Mexico erupted. John Fagan was among the soldiers who served in that campaign, on the coastal plain that would become one of the revolution's most fateful grounds. The State of Texas set this marker in 1962 to honor his part in the struggle that birthed the Republic.
McKinney, TX
Built in 1854 by John Faires, a Tennessee man who had reached the young town of McKinney only three years earlier, this Greek Revival home reflected the skills that made him valuable on the Texas frontier. Faires kept a blacksmith shop nearby, working metal and wood with a craftsman's hand — a talent still visible in the hand-chiseled front door. The house stayed in the Faires family for more than a century, until 1975.
Richmond, TX
Born in South Carolina in 1757, John Foster pushed west across the Appalachians around 1781 to the Spanish-held Natchez District, where he became a landowner, founded the town of Washington, and helped establish Jefferson College. In 1822 he joined the Texas frontier as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred," receiving an 11,600-acre grant in what is now Fort Bend County. On Christmas Day 1835 he signed the Columbia Resolutions urging Texas independence, then retired to Mississippi, where he died in 1837.
Richmond, TX
John Foster arrived in Texas in 1822 as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred," the first Anglo-American families to colonize the region under a Mexican land grant. His roughly 12,000 acres passed to his ten children after his death, and a community that grew nearby took the family name. Over generations the land yielded cotton, rice, pecans, and sugar cane — and, in the twentieth century, oil, gas, and suburban housing.
Omen, TX
John Franklin Overton left Tennessee for Texas in 1845 with his wife and mother, accumulating some 1,600 acres through land grants in the Smith County area. Twice married and father of eleven, he supplied goods to the Confederacy during the Civil War and carried the courtesy title of 'Colonel.' In 1871 he donated land to the International Railroad Company, and the nearby town of Overton took his name.
Walker County, TX
Born in Tennessee in 1814, John Frelan Winters was among the volunteers who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the clash that secured Texas independence in 1836. He lived on in the young republic and later state, dying in January 1864.
Industry, TX
John Friedrich Ernst emigrated from Oldenburg, Germany, as a boy, and by 1831 his family had settled in what became Industry—one of the first families to make the area a center of German culture in Texas. His life spanned Mexican rule to the Civil War: the family fled in the 1836 Runaway Scrape, and Ernst later joined the Texas Rangers, served as a justice of the peace, and helped organize local militias. In 1861 he enlisted in a Confederate artillery company and died in 1863 after twice commanding it.
Liberty Hill, TX
John Giles Matthews came to the raw new town of Austin as a boy in 1839, when Texas was still an independent republic. He served as a Ranger, then fought in the war with Mexico and again in the Civil War, before settling into the quieter life of a Williamson County farmer and family man in 1870.
Liberty Hill, TX
John G. Matthews came to Texas as a teenager in 1840 and served in a Ranger company during the Mexican War before settling to farm in Williamson County. In 1872 he built this hand-hewn native-limestone house, a pioneer dwelling his family occupied and later enlarged. His son Joseph, a teacher and justice of the peace, extended the home that stayed in the family for generations.
Rockdale, TX
John Garner served in the fight for Texas independence and took part in destroying Vince's Bridge on April 21, 1836—the tactical stroke that cut off retreat and helped seal the decisive Texan victory at San Jacinto. The State of Texas placed this marker in 1962 to honor his role.
Panna Maria, TX
Built in 1858 by a stonemason who had emigrated from Upper Silesia, the John Gawlik House is the oldest stone home in Panna Maria, the first permanent Polish settlement in America. Its steep gabled roof with deep porch overhangs, tiny ventilation windows, and interior meat-smoking rooms carry the building traditions of rural Silesia straight to the Texas prairie. Gawlik also helped raise the settlement's Immaculate Conception church and other homes, and the house has passed through several families since.
Burkburnett, TX
John G. Hardin arrived in Texas in 1876 and began, of all things, in a dugout, before building a fortune through a store and vast landholdings. Rather than hoard it, he gave roughly six million dollars to orphanages, hospitals, churches, and colleges across the state—among them the schools that bear his name. This park was one more of his gifts to Texas children.
Dallas, TX
The son of a Methodist minister and a World War II veteran, John Goodwin Tower left a political-science classroom for the national stage in 1961, winning the special election for Lyndon Johnson's vacated Senate seat and becoming the first Republican senator from Texas since Reconstruction. Over 24 years he built influence through key committee chairmanships, later serving as chief U.S. negotiator at the Geneva arms-reduction talks and chairing the commission that investigated the Iran-Contra affair. He died in a 1991 plane crash while advising President George Bush.
Crockett, TX
John Gordon "Big Jack" Beasley, Sr. helped shape Crockett in the first half of the 20th century, organizing the Davy Crockett Federal Savings and Loan in 1928 and serving as mayor from 1936 to 1940. His term coincided with the city's centennial and brought paved, lighted streets and the Davy Crockett Memorial Building and Park. He was a fixture of local business and civic life in this East Texas town.
San Saba, TX
After time in Arkansas, John H. "Shorty" Brown brought his wife Jane Ann and children to the San Saba country, helping found the town in 1854 and becoming a civic leader. Though the county provided a public graveyard, the Browns set aside this plot near their home as a family burial ground, where Jane Ann—mother of 17 of Brown's 21 children—was likely the first laid to rest around 1874. Family members, including a son and son-in-law who were murdered, rest here with friends and kin.
Terrell, TX
A former shipbuilder named John Neilson raised this elaborate Victorian home in 1896, and the craft of his old trade shows in its curly pine and cypress stairway, which turns through three landings in an unusual design. Many of the building materials made a roundabout journey—shipped by boat to Jefferson, Texas, then hauled the rest of the way by rail. The result was one of Terrell's showpiece residences.
Palestine, TX
Born in Tennessee in 1818, John Henninger Reagan rose through Texas public life as a judge and congressman before resigning his seat in 1861 to serve as postmaster general of the Confederacy. Captured and imprisoned after the war, he returned to farm near Palestine and re-entered national politics, where he led the fight for the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act that first brought railroad monopolies under federal regulation. He capped his career as the first chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission.
Big Lake, TX
As a congressman in the 1870s and 1880s, John H. Reagan sponsored the bill that created the Interstate Commerce Commission, then resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1891 to lead the newly formed Texas Railroad Commission modeled on it. Charged first with regulating railway shipping rates, the Commission grew over the following decades to oversee pipelines, then oil and gas conservation — authority that let Texas discipline the enormous East Texas oil fields and, in World War II, keep the Allies supplied with fuel.
Big Lake, TX
John H. Reagan was a delegate to the Texas Secession Convention and, as a member of the First Confederate Congress, was named Postmaster General of the Confederacy in 1861 — a near-impossible assignment building a mail system from scratch amid war, blockade, and the loss of clerks to the army draft. Captured at war's end and imprisoned in Boston, he later returned to public life as a U.S. Senator and the first chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission. This memorial, erected by the state in 1963, honors Texans who served the Confederacy.
Palestine, TX
Born in Tennessee in 1818, John Henninger Reagan came to Texas, fought in the Cherokee War, and built a career in law and politics that carried him to the U.S. Congress by 1857. When war came he resigned over states' rights and served as postmaster general of the Confederacy, was captured and imprisoned, then returned to Texas and rebuilt his life. His greatest legacy came afterward: as congressman and senator he led the fight that produced the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, then became the first chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, pioneering government regulation of the railroads.
Canton, TX
Arriving in Nacogdoches in 1839, young John H. Reagan carried President Lamar's ultimatum to the Cherokees and rode with the Texas militia at the Battle of the Neches, the fight that killed Chiefs Bowles and Big Mush and drove the tribe from East Texas. He went on to survey and name new counties, judge East Texas courts including Canton's, and serve in Congress before becoming Postmaster General of the Confederacy, for which he was imprisoned in 1865. Rebuilding his career afterward, he helped frame the 1876 Texas constitution and became the state's first Railroad Commissioner.
Palmhurst, TX
Built in 1917, this home belonged to John H. Shary, the developer whose irrigation schemes and marketing turned the Lower Rio Grande Valley into a citrus empire in the early 20th century. Shary championed the region's canals and schools, and his family kept the house at the center of Valley life for decades. In 1953 his daughter and son-in-law, Governor Allan Shivers, hosted President Dwight D. Eisenhower here during the dedication of nearby Falcon Dam.
Orange, TX
Born in Louisiana in 1790 and a veteran of the War of 1812, John Harmon moved his family west in search of new land, settling along the Sabine River by 1826. In an extraordinary feat of frontier determination, he lashed together a massive raft of cypress logs to ferry his house, wagon, oxen, livestock, tools, and family to the site of present-day Orange on New Year's Day 1828. His arrival marked the beginning of permanent settlement there, and he went on to work as a saddler and civic leader.
Wichita Falls, TX
Trained as an electrical engineer at Purdue and hardened by service in World War I, John Hart Wilson found his calling in the Texas oil boom. After moving to Wichita Falls in 1926, he became a prolific inventor of drilling equipment, introducing a mechanical drilling rig in 1932 that helped retire the old steam-powered rigs and patenting well over a hundred devices, including a chain transmission that let bigger engines drill faster and deeper. During World War II he even retooled his shops to build barrage-balloon winches for the war effort.
Austin, TX
John Hawkins Singleton fought in three wars across half a century — the Texas Revolution in 1836, the Mexican War in 1846, and the Confederate Army from 1861 to 1865. Kentucky-born, he settled in Ellis County, where his family remained.
Canadian, TX
John Hemphill, born in 1803, sat as a United States senator from Texas on the eve of the Civil War and argued forcefully for his state's right to leave the Union. He was elected a delegate to the provisional Confederate Congress at Montgomery, which framed the new government's constitution and machinery, and he died in the Confederate capital of Richmond in 1862. This marker was raised by the State of Texas in 1963 to honor Texans who served the Confederacy.
Trinity, TX
Crowning a hill among magnolias and oaks, the John Henley Hill house rose between 1880 and 1882 on one of the earliest plantation sites in the Elisha Roberts Survey. Hill, an Indiana-born widower who married his late wife's sister, came to Texas after a chance meeting at the 1876 Centennial International Exposition led the family to a colony in Walker County before they settled in Trinity County. On 200 acres purchased in 1880, he built this two-story carpenter gothic home, rich with sawn brackets, arched openings, and limestone fireplaces. It survives as a fine example of rural Texas architecture and pioneer settlement.
Woodville, TX
Born in rural Tyler County in 1860, John Henry Kirby left the village of Peachtree to attend better schools in Woodville, studied law, and rose to found the Kirby Lumber Company in 1901. That enterprise grew into a regional powerhouse of sawmill towns employing more than sixteen thousand workers, earning Kirby the nickname "Prince of the Pines." Never forgetting his roots, he donated the land and funds for Kirby High School on this site in 1928, which graduated its last class in 1979.
La Grange, TX
John Henry Moore, a Tennessee-born settler remembered on the frontier as an Indian fighter, commanded the Texian volunteers at the Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835 — the clash often called the opening shot of the Texas Revolution. He and his wife Eliza lie in the family cemetery north of La Grange.
Wimberley, TX
Virginia-born John Henry Saunders served in the Confederate cavalry before making his way to the Texas Hill Country in 1870 by way of Tennessee and Indian Territory. At Purgatory Springs he became the community's first schoolteacher and married Calladonia Williamson, then built a store and served the growing Wimberley area as postmaster, county commissioner, and its first county school superintendent. The family lived in this modest c. 1870 house from 1888 to 1907 before moving on to San Marcos.
San Antonio, TX
Trained as an architect in Cologne and schooled in the building trades, John Hermann Kampmann fled the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 in central Europe and reached San Antonio that May, one of the German immigrants who reshaped the young Texas city. He rose from stonemason to leading contractor, leaving his mark on the Menger Hotel, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, the German-English School, and much else. Commissioned a Confederate captain in the Civil War, he recruited and equipped volunteers and managed army supplies before returning to his enterprises, ultimately buying the Menger Hotel he had helped build.
McDade, TX
John Herron marched from the Mina district as a volunteer in the Texas War for Independence and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That brief, furious campaign won Texas its separation from Mexico and established the Republic of Texas. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1962 to honor his service among the founders' generation.
Dallas, TX
Dallas businessman John Hickman Miller, son of pioneer settler William B. Miller of Millermore, had this house built in 1904 as a wedding gift for his wife Katherine. Its wide veranda, gabled roof, and shingled exterior make it one of the few surviving examples of shingle-style architecture in Texas. The home links a prominent city family to the distinctive building fashions of the turn of the century.
Hallettsville, TX
Pennsylvania-born John Himes Livergood came to Texas in 1837 and took up 640 acres near Gonzales, throwing himself into the defense of the young Republic's frontier. He joined the pursuit that ended in victory at the Battle of Plum Creek, scouted with Jack Hays's Texas Rangers, and endured the disastrous Mier Expedition—surviving the Black Bean Episode and imprisonment at Perote. Settling on the Lavaca River with his wife Sarah Ann and thirteen children, he became a county judge and justice of the peace before serving the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Cameron, TX
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, John Hobson came to Texas in 1835 and was received as a colonist in Sterling Robertson's colony, earning a league of land. When the Texas Revolution broke out he enlisted under Captain Jesse Billingsley and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, then served on as a Texas Ranger. Rewarded with further land grants, he became one of Milam County's largest landowners, one of its first commissioners in 1846, and helped choose Cameron as the county seat.
Bastrop, TX
This marker honors John Holland Jenkins, who as a young soldier fought in the San Jacinto campaign of the Texas War for Independence. The State of Texas erected the memorial in 1962 to commemorate his service. Jenkins later became known for his written recollections of frontier Texas life.
Brackettville, TX
Born in Spanish Florida in 1812 to a Black mother and a Seminole father, John Horse became a leading figure among the Black Seminoles during the Second Seminole War, fighting alongside Chief Coacoochee before serving the U.S. Army as scout, interpreter, and mediator. Repeatedly pursued after his people's freedom was stripped away, he led followers out of Indian Territory in 1849 toward sanctuary in Mexico, resting near Las Moras Spring in 1850 and later settling at Nacimiento in exchange for guarding the border against Apache and Comanche raids. He survived an ambush near this site in 1876 and died in Mexico City in 1882.
Victoria, TX
New York–born John Howland Wood came to Texas in 1836, fought in the Texas Revolution, and served as an army quartermaster at Victoria before settling on a ranch at Black Point (today Bayside) in the 1840s. He sold beef to the U.S. Army as Gen. Zachary Taylor's forces massed at Corpus Christi on the eve of the Mexican-American War, later captained coastal-defense patrols during the Civil War, and helped develop the town of Rockport.
Bayside, TX
A New Yorker trained in trade and painting, John Howland Wood crossed to Texas in 1836 in time to fight at San Jacinto, then settled as a quartermaster, merchant, and cattleman. With his wife Nancy he built a mercantile empire and vast landholdings on the coast, naming their ranch 'Bonnie View.' After lightning destroyed their first house, they raised this 1875 mansion on its foundations — a Greek Revival plan dressed in exuberant Italianate detail, complete with a widow's walk recalling Wood's native New York.
San Angelo, TX
John Ingram was born in Kentucky in 1808 and came west to join the fight for Texas independence, standing among the men at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He lived on through the years of the Republic and early statehood, dying in San Angelo in 1896 at the age of 87. His grave marks the long life of one of the ordinary soldiers whose victory won Texas its independence.
Austin, TX
Kentucky-born John Ireland came to Texas and served as an officer in the Confederate army during the Civil War, then climbed the ranks of postwar public life as a state senator and associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Elected governor, he led the state from 1883 to 1887, a tenure remembered for defending the public domain during the era of great cattle ranches and barbed-wire fence wars. He died in San Antonio in 1896.
Hamilton, TX
Alabama-born Jack Durham reached the Central Texas frontier around 1860, taught school, and built a fortune in land — famously trading 200 head of cattle for a store and hotel. He helped found and lead Hamilton College in the 1880s and was one of five men who each staked $5,000 to route a railroad through Hamilton in 1907. Father of seventeen children, he embodied the striving civic booster of the settlement era.
Victoria, TX
Born in Ireland in 1798, John J. Linn came to Texas as one of Martín De León's colonists and built a life as a merchant in Victoria. He served as alcalde and mayor and sat in the Congress of the Republic of Texas before his death in 1885. His marker, placed in 1936, honors a founding figure of the Victoria community.
Paris, TX
John James Culbertson grew up in the big cities of the Northeast before a salesman's eye spotted profit in Southern cottonseed oil. Moving to Paris in the 1880s, he built the town's first cotton mill and eventually a small cottonseed-oil empire, gaining a national reputation that led to seats on the new Dallas Federal Reserve board in 1914 and a wartime federal cotton bureau under President Wilson. After fire ravaged Paris in 1916, he and his wife Emily helped rebuild, giving the city libraries, monuments, and a marble fountain.
Kimble County, TX
Born in Illinois in 1822, John James Smith came to Texas in time to enlist for the Mexican War of 1846–48, then rode as a Texas Ranger guarding the frontier before serving in the Confederate Army and as city marshal of Greenville. He settled in Kimble County in 1881 and farmed there as a respected citizen until his death at the remarkable age of 102.
Dallas, TX
A Mississippi native who practiced law in Alabama, John Jay Good settled in Dallas in 1851 and quickly wove himself into the town's civic fabric, from early government to a charter membership in the local Odd Fellows' lodge. When the Civil War came he served the Confederacy as colonel of an artillery regiment, and afterward returned to public life as a district judge and, in 1880, mayor of Dallas. His path from frontier lawyer to wartime officer to city leader mirrors the arc of the town itself.
Wells, TX
John Joseph Bowman came to Texas from Tennessee in 1822 as a boy, settling with his family in Stephen F. Austin's colony on the Colorado River among the very first Anglo-American colonists. In 1835 he enlisted in the Texian Army and fought in the war for independence alongside his father and brother. He later put down permanent roots in Cherokee County, where he is buried near his brother James.
Center, TX
Born in Dublin and left behind as a child when his family emigrated, J.J.E. Gibson finally reached America around age sixteen and learned brickmaking from his father before settling in Center, Texas. There he worked as architect and master mason, and in 1884 won the contract to build the Shelby County Courthouse—the ornate 'Irish castle on the square.' When a winter wall cracked after the county overruled his advice to pause work, Gibson rebuilt it with $2,700 of his own money and spent years seeking a reimbursement he never received.
Mexia, TX
John Karner came to Texas in 1835, on the eve of its war for independence from Mexico, and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto — the swift, decisive 1836 engagement in which Texan forces secured their revolution. The state of Texas erected this marker to his memory in 1962.
Farmers Branch, TX
John Keenan lived only two months in the autumn of 1843, but he is remembered as the first child born to settlers in the area that would become Dallas County. He was the son of Farmers Branch founders Thomas and Sarah Keenan, who opened this cemetery to bury their infant. The tiny grave thus marks both a family's grief and the very beginning of settled life in the region.
Houston, TX
John Kirby Allen came to Texas from New York in 1832 and quickly threw himself into the affairs of the new republic, serving in its first Congress. In August 1836, just weeks after Texas won independence, he and his brother Augustus bought a league of land for five thousand dollars and laid out a new town on it, naming it Houston for Sam Houston, the victor of San Jacinto. Allen died young, in 1838, but the city the brothers founded endured.
Cleburne, TX
John L. Cleveland, a Georgia-born farmer and businessman, married Annie Hamilton Upshaw in 1884, and the couple settled in Cleburne, where they built this Queen Anne home with Eastlake details in 1892. John ran a cottonseed oil mill and hardware store and sold some of the town's first automobiles, while Annie led civic life—heading the local Red Cross canteen during World War I and helping found the city's parent-teacher associations and council of mothers. The house passed through their family before later owners preserved its ornate fishscale shingles and sunburst trim.
London, TX
Established around 1875 by Jim Ike and John L. Jones, this Kimble County ranch grew into a 25,000-acre operation as Jones drove thousands of cattle north to the Kansas railheads and bought out his brother's share by 1885. He later added sheep and goats and built a stone drift fence — possibly the county's first — portions of which still stand. Persuaded to run for sheriff in 1896, he cleared the county of cattle rustlers in a single term, and his descendants still hold much of the original ranch.
Pittsburg, TX
This house sheltered the Sheppard family from 1884 to 1891, while John L. Sheppard rose from district attorney to district judge and then to the U.S. Congress, where he died in office in 1902. His son Morris Sheppard succeeded him and went on to a long, distinguished Senate career from 1913 to 1951, becoming a national figure in Progressive-era reform. The eight-fireplace home, complete with a secret passage between floors, is a landmark of a remarkable political dynasty.
Greenville, TX
John L. Southall was assistant chief of police in Greenville when he was killed in the line of duty in 1912 trying to arrest a drunken gunman. His marker notes that he loaded soft-nosed bullets meant to wound and stop rather than kill—a practice that left him at a fatal disadvantage in the gunfight. Special Deputy Sheriff Emmett Shipp died alongside him.
San Antonio, TX
As a University of Texas student around 1903, John Lang Sinclair set new lyrics to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and produced "The Eyes of Texas." The refrain borrowed a phrase UT's president had adapted from Robert E. Lee, and the song was an instant hit at its Austin debut. Sinclair later moved to New York, but the anthem outgrew him — so beloved that many mistook it for the official state song.
Crockett, TX
A Maryland native who came to Texas in 1831, John Lawrence Hall soldiered through the tumultuous years of Texas independence and after, serving in the Texas Army during the revolution, again under the Republic, and in the war with Mexico in 1846. He parlayed the land grants earned for military service into a career as a successful land speculator. A Mason and friend of Sam Houston, he ran a thriving hotel in Crockett and helped petition for the creation of Houston County.
Leakey, TX
John Leakey left Tennessee for Texas in 1847 and pushed steadily westward into the rugged Frio Canyon, where he built a cypress-shingle business under the constant threat of raids during the frontier's most dangerous years. He hauled supplies for the Confederacy, then returned to run a sawmill, ranch, and even a school, and in 1883 the town that bears his name was laid out on land he donated. His story braids together settlement, industry, and the hard realities of the contested Hill Country frontier.
Temple vicinity, TX
An Illinois native, John Leggett Marshall came to Texas in 1829 and enlisted in 1836 to fight for independence, taking part in the San Jacinto campaign alongside four brothers in Captain Kuykendall's company. He joined the 1849 California Gold Rush and, on returning, settled in Bell County in 1853, where he farmed and worked as a blacksmith. He married three times and raised nine children.
Austin, TX
South Carolina-born John Litton took his place in the ranks of the Texian army that won independence at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He lived on in the young republic and then the state until his death in 1856. The State of Texas placed this marker over his grave in 1936, the centennial of the revolution he helped win.