HistoricSiteMarkers

Historic Markers in Texas

15,117 markers in the database — showing 7,021–7,080.

John Long

Crockett, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1792, John Long served in the War of 1812 before bringing his family to Texas between 1836 and 1842, where he and his sons took up land certificates in Houston County. He became the county's second chief justice and ran the Long Hotel and a general store on the Crockett courthouse square, helping shape the young county's political and commercial life. Twice married, he raised children by both wives before his death in 1859.

John M. Davenport

Sabinal, TX

John M. Davenport was a stock-raiser and captain of a volunteer company on the violent Texas frontier of the 1850s, where settlers and Comanche bands clashed over the same borderlands. In October 1859 he was killed near here by a raiding party, and the coroner's inquest that followed was said to be the first held in the area for a victim of such a raid. Settlers and soldiers from nearby Fort Inge trailed the band some 200 miles, recovering his gun after the fight.

John M. Dorrance House

Houston, TX

John M. Dorrance was an early Houston cotton broker and civic leader who commissioned this family home in 1914 from the prominent Fort Worth firm of Sanguinet and Staats. Its arched openings, tile roof, and stucco finish make it a fine local example of Mediterranean-revival architecture. The house stayed in the Dorrance family until 1941.

John M. Jones House

Galveston, TX

John Maxwell Jones left Delaware for the booming port of Galveston in 1839, opening a jewelry store on The Strand and helping found the First National Bank of Galveston. His wife Henrietta was a daughter of the celebrated French composer Jacques Offenbach, an unexpected European thread in this Gulf Coast merchant's life. Their Greek Revival home later passed to figures including philanthropist Henry Rosenberg and was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1979.

John M. King Log House

Cedar Park, TX

This modest one-and-a-half-story log house on Cypress Creek may date to as early as 1859, and a dwelling already stood on the land when Alabama-born farmer John M. King bought it in 1879. King and his family lived here until 1917; he reportedly lived to 102. The house was later owned by legislative lobbyist Jack Dies, who entertained many Texas politicians beneath its logs.

John M. Ramsey

Artesia Wells, TX

An Alabama native, John M. Ramsey served in the Confederate army during the Civil War before settling in Lee County, Texas, in 1870. After his first wife's death he moved with his eight children to La Salle County in 1889, acquiring extensive farm and ranch land. He became a pioneer leader in Artesia Wells, active in politics and serving as a school trustee.

John M. Vines

Jefferson, TX

Alabama-born John M. Vines joined the W. P. Lane Rangers of the Confederate Army in 1861, mustering out in 1865 as a farrier. He later served as sheriff and tax collector of Marion County, and in 1877 was sent by the state to Ohio to return Abe Rothschild for one of the century's most sensational murder trials — the killing of "Diamond Bessie" Moore. Vines also superintended construction of Jefferson's federal courthouse in 1888.

John M. Wade

Montgomery, TX

Born in New York City in 1815, John Marshall Wade came to Texas in 1835 on Sam Houston's advice and joined the Texas army, helping fire the famed "Twin Sisters" cannons at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. A printer by trade, he set type for Gail Borden's Telegraph and Texas Register, served the Republic's Senate, surveyed Montgomery County, joined the 1842 Somervell Expedition, and founded the Montgomery Patriot newspaper in 1845. He later served in the Confederate army and died in Austin in 1879.

John Marr Hardeman

Italy, TX

This marker honors John Marr Hardeman, a Tennessee-born settler who took up arms as a soldier in the army of the Republic of Texas during the pivotal year of 1836. He lived on into old age in the young state he had helped win, dying in 1891, and is remembered here alongside his wife Mary.

John Martin House

McKinney, TX

Local architect and builder John M. Martin erected this house for himself around 1880, showcasing the Queen Anne style then sweeping American towns. Its asymmetrical form, varied wall surfaces, and octagonal-roofed upper bay — said to be a Martin signature — reflect the fashionable eclecticism of the Gilded Age, finished with milled porch details drawn from the Eastlake style. Martin sold the home in 1908 and left McKinney.

John Mason Brewer

Goliad, TX

Born in Goliad in 1896, John Mason Brewer became one of the 20th century's most distinguished African American folklorists, encouraged toward scholarship by parents who prized Black history. After earning degrees from Wiley College and beyond, he published poetry, history, and—at the urging of colleague J. Frank Dobie—collections of Black folklore that earned him comparisons to Zora Neale Hurston. His acclaimed American Negro Folklore won national honors, and he broke barriers as the first African American member of the Texas Folklore Society and the Texas Institute of Letters.

John Matthew Cape House

San Marcos, TX

This late Victorian home was built in 1902 for John Matthew Cape, a San Marcos businessman who owned several cotton gins along the San Marcos River and helped organize the local utilities company and a bank. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Bales, raised seven children here amid its decorative woodwork and two-story wraparound porches. The house reflects the prosperity that cotton and enterprise brought to Central Texas at the turn of the century.

John Matthews McDonald

Athens, TX

John Matthews McDonald left North Carolina for the young Republic-turned-state of Texas in 1848, settling at last in the frontier town of Athens, where he worked as a teacher and lawyer and became its first mayor. When war came, he served in the Confederate Army with Hood's famed Texas Brigade. Returning home, he built a long career in public life as justice of the peace, county judge, and state representative.

John May Cemetery

Center, TX

John May came to Shelby County in 1836, among the pioneers settling near the Tenaha Bayou in the earliest days of the Republic of Texas, and this graveyard holds the May and Hooper families from the 1850s onward. Richard Hooper, who arrived the same year, served in the Republic's army, sat in its first congress, and worked as county surveyor. Vandalized and neglected after the land was sold in 1970, the cemetery was rescued by a preservation association in 2004 and renamed for its original owner.

John McNabb

Richmond, TX

John McNabb, born in Scotland, joined the ill-fated Texan Santa Fe Expedition of 1841, the young Republic of Texas's ambitious bid to extend its trade and claims toward New Mexico. The expedition ended in capture and hardship for its members, and McNabb, who survived to die in 1894, was remembered by his community for that early service. His grave marker preserves a small but genuine thread of Republic-era history.

John McNeese Graveyard

Independence, TX

This ground along the old La Bahia Road lay within an 1831 land grant to the brother-in-law and sister of empresario Stephen F. Austin. It was later purchased by John McNeese, a South Carolinian who settled in Texas in 1835 and whose grave lies here. By deed covenant the plot is reserved forever for the graves of the McNeese family.

John Milroy House

Houston, TX

When the Omaha and South Texas Land Company bought the land that became Houston Heights in 1891, John Milroy, an early investor, came to manage its office. He threw himself into civic life, serving as alderman and mayor of the new streetcar suburb, and in 1898 moved his family into this eclectic house of gables, bays, and fish-scale shingles. The home stands as an artifact of one of the nation's early planned suburban communities.

John Mitchell

Caldwell, TX

Born in Tennessee about 1836, John Mitchell reached Texas in 1846 and began buying Burleson County land in 1870. Serving in the 12th and 14th Legislatures, he championed education for African Americans, and as a delegate to the 1875 Constitutional Convention he defended Governor Davis and was among eleven who voted against the new constitution that closed out Reconstruction in Texas. He later farmed and ranched and gave land for a church and school bearing his name.

John Montgomery

Stoneham, TX

A native of Alabama, John Montgomery came to Texas about 1830 with his brother Andrew and joined the struggle for independence. Like his brother he served in Captain James Gillaspie's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the battle that secured the Republic of Texas. The state placed this marker in 1957 to honor his part in that founding moment.

John Myers McKinney

Lucas, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1781, John Myers McKinney spent his life moving ever westward — through Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas — before finally bringing his family to Texas in 1846. Barely settled on his Collin County land, he left almost at once to enlist in the Mexican War, joining a company of mounted volunteers, and died in the service in 1847, only a year after arriving. His short Texas chapter ended in a soldier's death on the nation's newest frontier.

John N. Sowell

Seguin, TX

John N. Sowell came to Texas around 1829 and served in the Army of Texas in 1836, the year of the revolution that won the region its independence. He belonged to a fighting family: his brother was the noted frontiersman Andrew Jackson Sowell, and their father took part in the Battle of Gonzales, the opening clash of the Texas Revolution.

John Nance Garner

Detroit, TX

John Nance Garner, the Texas statesman nicknamed "Cactus Jack," was born in this house on November 22, 1869. He rose from the Texas Legislature to a long career in the U.S. Congress, serving as Speaker of the House in 1931 before becoming Vice President of the United States in 1933. His marker records a career that carried a Red River County native to the second-highest office in the land.

John Nance Garner

Uvalde, TX

John Nance Garner, the Uvalde lawyer and rancher nicknamed "Cactus Jack," climbed from county judge in the 1890s through the Texas Legislature and nearly three decades in Congress, where he became Speaker of the House, to serve as Vice President of the United States from 1933 to 1941. A banker and benefactor of Southwest Texas Junior College, he married Ettie Rheiner and remained a fixture of his hometown throughout a long political life.

John Nance Garner Home

Uvalde, TX

John Nance Garner rose from the Texas Legislature to a thirty-year run in Congress, capping it as Speaker of the House before serving two terms as Franklin Roosevelt's vice president from 1933 to 1941. This 1920 Uvalde home hosted world figures during those years at the center of national politics, and Garner and his son gave it to the city in 1952. The marker frames itself as a tribute to Ettie Garner, who served as her husband's secretary throughout his long public career.

John Nance Garner Home

Detroit, TX

As a young lawyer, John Nance Garner lived in this Detroit, Texas, house owned by his parents from 1889 to 1892. From those beginnings he rose through Texas politics to the U.S. Congress, served as Speaker of the House, and became Vice President of the United States under Franklin Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941. "Cactus Jack" Garner remained one of Texas's most powerful national figures.

John Neely Bryan, 1810-1877 and Margaret Beeman Bryan, 1825-1919

Dallas, TX

In 1839 Tennessee lawyer John Neely Bryan chose this high bluff and shallow ford on the Trinity River for a trading post, and when he returned in 1841 he platted a town, installed a ferry, and named it Dallas. The Republic of Texas soon opened its Central National Road from here, drawing settlers with liberal land grants. Margaret Beeman, who married Bryan in 1843 and bore six children, and her Illinois-born family were staunch supporters of the man remembered as the "Father of Dallas"; she lived to age 94 and saw the city grow past 150,000.

John O. Meusebach

Cherry Spring, TX

John O. Meusebach gave up a German baron's title in 1845 to become a Texan, and as commissioner-general of the German Emigration Company he founded Fredericksburg in 1846 as a gateway to the Fisher-Miller grant deep in Comanche country. Rather than fight, he rode unarmed into a council and secured a treaty that opened the land to settlement without bloodshed — earning the Comanche name "El Sol Colorado," the Red Sun. He later served as a state senator and settled at Loyal Valley, adding "Texas forever" to his family motto.

John O'Byrne Home

Union Grove, TX

Irish immigrant John O'Byrne built this home in 1888 at the heart of the O'Byrne's Mill settlement, a busy little community of sawmill, planer, grist mill, and cotton gin. Father of thirteen, O'Byrne also raised the first Catholic church in Upshur County and started the community's first school. His home served as its social, cultural, and political center.

John Overton Trueheart

Galveston, TX

John Overton Trueheart came to the young Republic of Texas from Virginia around 1838 and earned a land grant for riding with Jack Hays' celebrated Texas Rangers. Settling in the booming port of Galveston, he built a general land agency with partner Memucan Hunt and brought his family west. The Trueheart name lingered in the city's Trueheart-Adriance Building and even in varieties of oleander named for family members.

John P. Cox

Hillsboro, TX

John P. Cox, son of San Jacinto veteran Euclid M. Cox, joined Parsons' Brigade of the Confederate Army in 1861 and after the war spent 25 years as commander of Hillsboro's Confederate camp. A Methodist and a Mason, he served Hill County as sheriff for sixteen years and as county clerk for four, earning a reputation as a firm lawman with a particular concern for reforming young offenders.

John P. Simpson

Bonham, TX

A Tennessee native, John P. Simpson reached the raw new county of Fannin about 1837 and signed the petition that created it, in a region named for a hero of the Texas Revolution. He farmed here and became one of its first officeholders, serving as sheriff and chief justice, and he donated the land that became Bonham's courthouse square and downtown. He also led the Fannin Guards, a citizen militia that guarded this stretch of frontier.

John Paney Bertrand

Purmela, TX

The son of French immigrants who reached Texas before the Revolution, John Bertrand grew up in Brazoria County and ran a mercantile business in Washington County before leaving to serve in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War he married, moved to Coryell County in 1875, and settled 312 acres, raising eight children in a log cabin while he farmed and ran livestock. His story mirrors the westward push of many Texans rebuilding their lives on the land after the war.

John Patterson House

Adamsville, TX

John Patterson was, by tradition, the first man to break ground for crops in the county back in 1854, and he later served as a frontier Minute Man during the Civil War, guarding the settlements while other men marched away. The home he built in 1879–1880 stands as a monument to that pioneering life. It marks the transition from raw frontier to established farmstead.

John Peter Smith

Fort Worth, TX

A Kentuckian who reached Fort Worth in 1853, John Peter Smith worked as teacher, clerk, surveyor, and attorney before the Civil War. Though he opposed secession, he raised a company of Tarrant County men for the Confederacy, rode with Sibley's Brigade into New Mexico and the recapture of Galveston, and was badly wounded in Louisiana. Returning home, he helped build the city—organizing a bank, gas company, and street railway, donating land for parks, cemeteries, and a hospital, and as mayor in 1882 founding the school and water systems.

John Peter Smith_Oakwood Cemetery Founder

Fort Worth, TX

Pioneer Fort Worth settler John Peter Smith, who arrived from Kentucky in 1853, donated twenty acres in 1879 to establish this cemetery. A teacher, clerk, surveyor, and attorney turned civic leader, he opposed secession yet raised Confederate troops and rode with Sibley's Brigade, suffering a severe wound in Louisiana. After the war he helped organize a bank, gas company, and street railway, gave land for parks and a hospital, and as mayor in 1882 launched the city's school and water systems; he is buried in the very ground he gave.

John Peter Tatsch Home, 1856

Fredericksburg, TX

John Peter Tatsch, a cabinet-maker who emigrated from Germany, built this sturdy stone house in 1856 in the young German colony of Fredericksburg, doing the woodwork himself and adding rooms and a rear gallery kitchen over the years. Like many of his neighbors he served as a local minute man during the Civil War, defending a frontier community far from the war's main theaters. The home stands as a well-preserved example of German Hill Country craftsmanship and daily life in mid-nineteenth-century Texas.

John Pettit Borden

Weimar, TX

Born in New York in 1812, John Pettit Borden came to Texas in 1829 and settled in Stephen F. Austin's colony, then fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 during the revolution that won Texas its independence. That same year he helped lay out the new town of Houston, and at just 24 became the first Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. He later practiced law, served as a county judge, and settled near Harvey's Creek in 1866.

John Prince Coles

Independence, TX

John Prince Coles, a North Carolinian, joined Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" and reached present Washington County on New Year's Day 1822, receiving a Mexican land grant in 1824. He founded Coles Settlement—later renamed Independence—and was appointed alcalde of the Washington municipality in 1828. After serving in the Republic of Texas Army in 1836, he sat as a senator in the First Congress.

John R. ("Sarge") Nasworthy

San Angelo, TX

Born in Georgia and a Confederate soldier in the closing years of the Civil War, John R. "Sarge" Nasworthy came west to Texas and helped build the institutions of a raw frontier region around San Angelo. He bought beef for the army mess halls at Fort Concho, served as deputy county clerk and sheriff and the city's first treasurer, and ran the town's first brick kiln, wagon yard, and livery stable. A county commissioner who promoted an early viaduct and a major Baptist encampment, he left his name on Lake Nasworthy, the area's first conservation lake, built on land he once owned.

John R. Banister

Santa Anna, TX

John R. Banister left Missouri as a boy in 1867 and grew up into the classic Texas frontier life — cowboy, trail driver, and Texas Ranger. Riding with his brother Will, he took part in the pursuit that ended the career of the outlaw Sam Bass. He later served the state as a railway officer, a livestock inspector for the Cattle Raisers' Association, and sheriff of Coleman County.

John R. Clute

Douglass, TX

John R. Clute, born in New York in 1803, joined the Army of Texas in 1836 during the revolution that won Texas its independence. He lived until 1874, and his grave, alongside that of his second wife Rebecca, is marked with a memorial the State of Texas erected in 1936 for the independence centennial. The stone honors an ordinary soldier who answered the call in the founding struggle of the republic.

John R. Dobie House

Wimberley, TX

Built about 1892 for Charles and Susannah Cock, this Hill Country house was bought in 1899 by John R. Dobie, a Scottish-born farmer, rancher, and Hays County commissioner. With its central-hall plan, board-and-batten walls, and classical touches, it is a fine example of Texas vernacular building, and it stayed in the Dobie family until 1977.

John R. Ralls Building

Ralls, TX

When the railroad bypassed nearby Emma and cut instead across John R. Ralls's land, he founded a new town in its place and donated ground for homesites, the square, the school, and every church. This bank building was the grandest of the two-plus blocks of business houses he raised between 1915 and 1919 as the town took shape.

John R. Reid

Houston, TX

John R. Reid served the young Republic of Texas at its highest levels, sitting as an Associate Justice of its Supreme Court in 1839 and as a member of its Congress in 1840 and 1841. He died in Houston on Christmas Day of 1841 and was buried under the auspices of Holland Lodge No. 1, the pioneering Masonic lodge of Texas. His brief public life unfolded during the Republic's earliest years of self-government.

John Rankin Alford

Hico, TX

Arriving in Hamilton County in 1860, Tennessee-born John Rankin Alford settled on Honey Creek, sold goods from his wagon, and ran cattle before helping the growing settlement win a post office, which he named Hico after his boyhood Kentucky home and served as first postmaster. He soldiered in a Texas frontier regiment during the Civil War, survived the Battle of Dove Creek, and in 1875 became a physician who practiced into his eighties. When the railroad arrived in 1880, Alford moved with the relocating town and opened a drug store, remaining a civic pillar until his death in 1928.

John Reagen Baker

Stockdale, TX

John Reagen Baker was a soldier of fortune in the turbulent borderlands of the 1840s — fighting for the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande, serving as sheriff of Refugio County, raising minutemen, and repelling Mexican raids into Texas in 1842. He joined the disastrous Somervell and Mier expeditions, was wounded, and afterward settled into the quieter life of a merchant. His career reflects the violent, unsettled decade before Texas found its footing.

John Reichle General Merchandise (Welcome Store)

Industry, TX

The John Reichle family opened this general store around 1890 in the aptly named town of Industry, one of Texas's oldest German settlements. After a storm damaged the original two-story building around 1900, it was rebuilt in the one-story form seen today, with gabled front, full-width porch, and a mix of horizontal and board-and-batten siding. The Faist family acquired it in 1964 and renamed it the Welcome Store.

John Rice Jones

Fayetteville, TX

Born in frontier Kaskaskia and arriving in Texas in 1831, John Rice Jones took up arms in the 1835 struggle before being tapped to organize the mail service of the new provisional government. As postmaster general of the Republic of Texas, he helped knit scattered settlements together with the most basic sinew of nationhood — a working post. The state honored him with this marker a century later.

John Richardson

Houston, TX

John Richardson came to Texas in 1834, on the eve of the revolution against Mexico. He served in Captain James Gillaspie's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the decisive victory that secured Texas independence. He died in Houston, the young republic's capital, in 1840.

John Robert Craddock

Rogers vicinity, TX

John Robert Craddock left Kentucky for Mexican Texas in 1833 and, three years later, took up arms in the Texas Revolution, fighting at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto that won the Republic its independence. He put down roots in Bell County, married Amanda Childers in 1840, and raised thirteen children on the land where the family—several of them in unmarked graves—still rests. His burial here in 1891, and his wife's beside him in 1900, closes a life that spanned Texas's passage from Mexican province to independent republic to state.

John Robin Heard

Linden, TX

Born in Georgia in 1794 to a family that had emigrated from County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1720, John Robin Heard came to Texas in 1853 and founded the nearby town of Cussetta, amassing large landholdings. In 1861 he donated the ground for this cemetery, and his home stood nearby into the 1940s. Twice married to sisters Martha and Mary Hopkins, Heard fathered twelve children — a sprawling family typical of the antebellum settlers who anchored northeast Texas communities.

John Robin Heard Cemetery

Douglassville, TX

John Robin Heard, who came to Texas in 1853 and founded the nearby town of Cussetta, donated the one-acre ground for this family cemetery, where the first burial in 1861 was his infant grandson Cornelius Floyd. Its twenty-three graves include Heard himself and his second wife, Mary Hopkins Heard, while a fence was later provided by another grandson, W.Q. Henderson. Descendants organized a cemetery association and perpetual-care trust in 1974 to preserve the family plot.

John Robinson Ralls

Ralls, TX

When the Crosbyton-South Plains Railroad pushed across the high plains of West Texas, John Robinson Ralls saw a town where others saw only ranchland. A Georgia-born storekeeper turned rancher, he traded a thriving general store for a 10,000-acre spread and in 1911 founded the town that still bears his name. He gave away the townsite itself, land for the first school, lots for every church, and built much of the early business district, seeding a community from the ground up.

John S. and Rachel W. Heard House

McKinney, TX

John Spenser Heard, an Arkansas native and Confederate veteran, joined his family in McKinney about 1865 and married Rachel Wilson in 1884. Business success let the couple support many local causes and, in 1921, build this grand classical revival home designed by the Dallas firm Ye Planery, with towering Corinthian columns and a dentiled pediment. The house remained in the Heard family until 1987.

John S. Chisum, Confederate Beef Contractor

Paint Rock vicinity, TX

Cattle baron John S. Chisum (1824–1884) grazed tens of thousands of Longhorns on the Concho after moving his "Jingle-Bob" herds here in 1863. During the Civil War he supplied beef to Confederate armies west of the Mississippi, driving cattle toward Louisiana camps through gauntlets of raiders, rustlers, federal patrols, and the deep, cold Brazos. After the war he built ranching empires in New Mexico and became a bystander to the Lincoln County War of Billy the Kid.

John S. D. Byrom

West Columbia, TX

John S. D. Byrom, born in Georgia in 1798, was among the delegates who gathered as Texas moved toward independence, serving in the 1835 Consultation and signing the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. He died the following year, in the earliest days of the Republic. His marker honors one of the founding signers who broke Texas from Mexico.

John S. Roberts

Nacogdoches, TX

Once a sheriff in Natchitoches, Louisiana, John S. Roberts threw himself into the Texas cause, helping lead the 1832 Battle of Nacogdoches and commanding the Nacogdoches company in the 1835 storming of Bexar. He served in the 1835 Consultation and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. A Virginia native, he lived out his years in the town he had fought for, dying in 1871.

John Sadler

Groesbeck, TX

Born in 1811, John Sadler came to Texas in 1833 and joined the fight for Texas independence, serving as a volunteer in Captain William Ware's company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He and his wife Bashie lived out their lives on the Texas land they helped win, dying within months of each other in 1885.

John Salmon "Rip" Ford

San Antonio, TX

John Salmon 'Rip' Ford lived nearly every role the Texas frontier offered: pioneer doctor and newspaper editor, Republic of Texas congressman, state senator, adjutant to Jack Hays in the war with Mexico, and a fearless Ranger captain in border and Indian campaigns. He served as a Confederate colonel during the Civil War and later as mayor of Austin and Brownsville, a constitutional convention delegate, and a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association. His grave marker, erected by the state in 1963, recalls his motto: 'Ready, ay, ready!'

John Shelburne Cemetery

Bleiblerville, TX

In 1837 the Pamplin family left Alabama for the young Republic of Texas, settling the next year along Mill Creek where they worked a plantation. When Mexican forces under General Adrian Woll marched into Texas in 1842, John Pamplin and his son-in-law took up arms with the Republic's army to help drive them back. The eight known graves here, marked by obelisks and rock-lined plots, hold members of the Shelburne and Minton families and stand as quiet reminders of the district's first Anglo settlers.