American Revolution

Carthage, NC

Benjamin Williams served his state and country across a remarkable career—first as an officer in the Revolution, then in Congress, and four separate times as governor of North Carolina. A leading figure of the early republic, he helped guide the young state through its formative decades. His grave lies to the north at the Alston House.

Bennington, VT

On August 16, 1777, New England militia under General John Stark and Vermont troops led by Colonel Seth Warner routed British and German forces sent by General Burgoyne to seize American supplies near Bennington. The victory stripped Burgoyne of men and provisions and helped set the stage for his surrender at Saratoga weeks later. A century afterward, Americans raised this 306-foot stone shaft to mark the ground where the tide turned.

Nashville, GA

Berrien County was created in 1856 and named for John MacPherson Berrien, "the American Cicero," a judge, U.S. senator, and attorney general. Its county seat, Nashville, honors General Francis Nash of North Carolina, a Revolutionary War soldier. The first county officers were commissioned that April.

Bethel Park, PA · est. 1951

Founded in 1776 in the Old Stone Manse by the Rev. John McMillan—a pioneering Presbyterian minister and educator who helped bring both religion and schooling to western Pennsylvania—Bethel Presbyterian became a mother church, giving rise to five nearby congregations and its name to the surrounding community. In its cemetery lie fourteen Revolutionary War soldiers drawn from these frontier settlements. The church stands as a landmark of how faith, education, and patriotism took root together on the western edge of the young nation.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2009

A working upholsterer in Revolutionary Philadelphia, Betsy Ross is remembered by tradition as the maker of the first stars and stripes. What is certain is that she was a skilled artisan who sewed flags for the government for more than fifty years, sustaining her family through war and the young republic's early decades. Her story stands for the countless women whose labor and enterprise kept households and a new nation afloat.

Wilmore, KY

Erected in 1976, this marker celebrates a rare double anniversary: the United States' 200th birthday and the town of Wilmore's own 100th, dating its founding to the 1876 arrival of the railroad through the Kentucky Bluegrass. Small as it is, Wilmore built an outsized identity around education, becoming home to Asbury College in 1890 and, decades later, Asbury Theological Seminary in 1923. Together those two institutions rooted in the Wesleyan-holiness tradition turned a modest Jessamine County crossroads into a nationally known center of Christian higher learning.

Rutherford County, NC

In October 1780, the tide of the Revolution in the southern backcountry had just turned at Kings Mountain, where Patriot militia known as the "Over Mountain Men" crushed a Loyalist force. Marching their prisoners back through the Carolina hills, the victors held a rough drumhead trial and, as this marker records, hanged nine captured Tories from a tree near this spot. It was a raw act of frontier justice in a war that, in the Carolinas, was as much a civil war between neighbors as a fight against the Crown.

Birmingham Township, PA · est. 1915

This Quaker meeting house, raised in 1783, sits amid the ground fought over at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. In the aftermath of that Revolutionary clash — the largest single-day land battle of the war — the building served as a hospital for the wounded. Its plain stone walls tie the peace testimony of the Society of Friends to the violence that swept across Chester County.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2026

On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, voted to bring the scattered colonial militias together into a single Continental Army. That decision created the first national military force of what would become the United States, more than a year before independence was formally declared. From it descends today's U.S. Army, the oldest and largest branch of the armed forces.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

This site held the home of General Ephraim Blaine, who as Commissary General kept the Continental Army fed through some of the Revolution's hardest campaigns — a thankless logistical task on which victory quietly depended. Years later, in October 1794, Blaine hosted President George Washington for a week here while Washington gathered a militia army at Carlisle to march against the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. It is a rare double witness to the war for independence and the young republic's first great test of federal authority.

Cambridge, MA

The Blue Anchor Tavern stood in Cambridge from 1737 to 1837, a gathering place where the town's selectmen conducted business. Its most dramatic moment came in 1777, when the captured British general John Burgoyne — whose army had surrendered at Saratoga — was briefly held here. Like many colonial taverns, it served as an informal center of civic and political life.

Buckingham Township, PA · est. 2003

Colonial taverns were more than watering holes — they were the meeting halls where revolution was organized in plain sight. Licensed in 1763, Bogart's Tavern became the headquarters of Bucks County's Committee of Observation and Inspection, the local engine of the resistance in 1775 and 1776. It was here that the county's first Revolutionary military companies mustered, and General Nathanael Greene made it his headquarters in 1776.

Wadesboro, NC

Built in the late eighteenth century by Patrick Boggan, a Revolutionary War soldier and one of Wadesboro's founders, this is among the oldest surviving houses in Anson County. It has since been preserved as a local history museum, two blocks south of the marker.

Lexington, KY

Daniel Boone surveyed this site in 1774 and by December 1779 was living here with other families in crude shelters, building cabins and a stockade the next year. By 1783 the fortified station sheltered fifteen to twenty families on the Kentucky frontier—but at a cost: Boone's brother Edward, his son Israel, and his nephew Thomas were all killed in the closing violence of the Revolutionary War. Boone remained until 1784, and in the 20th century the land was willed to the state, opening as Boone's Station State Park in 1992.

Monongalia County, WV

In 1779 the western Virginia backcountry—today's West Virginia—was a raw and violent borderland, caught up in the frontier fighting that raged alongside the Revolutionary War. Isolated cabins at settlements like Dunkard Creek stood exposed to sudden raids, and defense often fell to whoever was home when trouble arrived. This marker preserves one such account: a settler woman, Mrs. Bozarth, who by tradition seized an axe and fought off attackers in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle at her own door. Whether burnished by retelling or not, the story captures the peril that defined daily life on the far edge of American settlement.

New York, NY · est. 1964

Erected by the Common Council in 1771, this iron fence surrounds Bowling Green, New York's oldest park, leased back in 1733 for use as a bowling lawn at a token rent of one peppercorn a year. In 1776, patriots toppled the nearby equestrian statue of King George III and, by tradition, sheared the royal crowns from the fence posts. The fence itself has survived for more than two centuries.

Towanda, PA · est. 1982

Formed in 1810 and first called Ontario County, this region was renamed in 1812 for William Bradford, the second U.S. Attorney General. Its seat, Towanda, was incorporated in 1828 along the Susquehanna. The county remembers Sullivan's March—the 1779 Revolutionary campaign against the Iroquois that passed through the valley—and native son David Wilmot, whose 1846 Proviso to bar slavery from new territories helped ignite the national crisis over slavery.

Birmingham Township, PA · est. 2001

On September 11, 1777, the rolling farmland around Birmingham Township became the stage for the largest single-day battle of the Revolutionary War. Washington's Continentals tried to hold the fords of the Brandywine against Sir William Howe's advancing British and Hessian troops, but a wide flanking march turned the American position and opened the road to Philadelphia. The Commonwealth Treasure designation recognizes this preserved ground as hallowed to the founding struggle.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1964

The Moravians who founded Bethlehem built this stone house in 1748 to lodge their unmarried men, and it quickly became a hive of colonial-era craft — a bell foundry, silkworm raising, and other trades that made the community largely self-sufficient. During the Revolution it sheltered wounded Continental soldiers as a military hospital, and after 1815 it opened as a girls' school before becoming part of Moravian College and a museum.

Bridgeport, PA

This memorial rose in the small industrial borough of Bridgeport, tucked along the Schuylkill River across from Norristown in southeastern Pennsylvania. It was dedicated on Memorial Day of 1976 — the nation's Bicentennial year — a moment when countless American towns paused to honor their own who had worn the uniform. Rather than singling out one war or one soldier, the community chose to remember every local man and woman who served the nation, in peacetime garrisons and on distant battlefields alike, the living alongside the dead.

Campbellsville, KY

Elias Barbee (1763-1843) served in the Revolutionary War from Culpeper County, Virginia — as did all five of his brothers — before settling in what became Taylor County and rising through the Kentucky Militia to brigadier general. As a state senator he championed education for the disabled: in 1822 he introduced the bill, drafted by Judge John Rowan and signed by Gov. Adair, that on April 10, 1823, established the Kentucky School for the Deaf at Danville.

Concord, MA

In the decades surrounding the American Revolution, slavery persisted even in Massachusetts towns like Concord, and the men and women who won their freedom often built new lives on the margins of the communities that had once held them. Brister and Fenda Freeman were among these formerly enslaved residents, making a home near this spot and raising a family in the years of the young republic. The surname they carried — Freeman — was itself a quiet declaration of the liberty they had claimed.

Pembroke, GA

This marker commemorates Jonathan Bryan (1708-1788), the planter, patriot, and public leader for whom Bryan County is named, honoring him as a founder and 'father' of Georgia. It was placed in 1991 by the Adam Brinson I Chapter of the National Society, Colonial Dames of the Seventeenth Century.

Brokenstraw Township, PA · est. 1947

Buckaloons stood at the meeting of Brokenstraw Creek and the Allegheny River, a site so long inhabited that excavated burial mounds attest to its deep antiquity. In 1749 the French officer Céloron de Blainville passed through on his expedition to claim the Ohio Valley, and in 1779 the village was destroyed during Colonel Daniel Brodhead's Revolutionary War campaign against the Seneca. Its story spans centuries of Native life along these rivers.

Statesboro, GA

Bulloch County was carved from Bryan and Screven Counties in 1796 and named for Archibald Bulloch, a leading Georgia patriot who in early 1776 was chosen president of the colony's Executive Council and became its first provisional governor. He held that post until his sudden death in February 1777, at the height of the Revolution. The marker also records the county's first slate of officers, commissioned in 1796.

Burbank, CA

Sealed on July 4, 1977, by the Burbank Bicentennial committee, this time capsule was buried during the nationwide wave of celebration marking 200 years of American independence. Its makers addressed it to the citizens of Burbank in 2026, to be opened on Independence Day—a message across half a century. It captures a community's optimism at the height of the Bicentennial moment.

Middletown, PA · est. 1946

Col. James Burd was among the frontier soldiers who fought in the French and Indian War, the 1750s–60s struggle that pushed European powers and their Native allies across the Pennsylvania backcountry. From his estate "Tinian," Burd also helped author the Middletown Resolves in June 1774, one of many local declarations of grievance that swept the colonies on the eve of the Revolution. He and his wife, Sarah Shippen — of a prominent Pennsylvania family — lie buried near the entrance of the Middletown Cemetery.

Concord, MA

Near this spot, by Concord's Old North Bridge, lie British regulars who died on April 19, 1775 — the first day of the Revolutionary War. As the redcoats searched Concord for hidden arms, colonial militia confronted them at the bridge in the 'shot heard round the world,' and men fell on both sides. The graves quietly hold the memory of soldiers who died far from home at the war's very outset.

Waynesboro, GA

One of Georgia's original counties, Burke was created in 1777 from lands ceded by the Creeks, having earlier been organized as the colonial Parish of St. George. It was named for Edmund Burke, the British statesman and orator whose speeches in Parliament famously defended the American colonies' grievances. The marker lists the county's earliest sheriffs, tax collectors, and clerks from the 1770s and 1780s.

Waynesboro, GA

Historic Burke County, the former St. George's Parish, claims eight Georgia governors by birth, residence, or marriage. Among them were Revolutionary figures like John Houstoun, Declaration signer Lyman Hall, and Edward Telfair, along with later leaders including Herschel V. Johnson—Stephen Douglas's 1860 running mate—and Progressive-era senator and governor Hoke Smith. Together their careers span more than a century of the state's political life.

Westport, CT

Built in 1740, this Westport house went up when coastal Connecticut was a landscape of farms, ferries, and busy post roads. Its marker records that Capt. Thomas Nash raised it for Zachariah Burr, a member of the prominent Burr family, and that by the time of the Revolution it served as an inn—one of the taverns where travelers, news, and sometimes soldiers passed through. Roadside inns like this were the social hubs of 18th-century New England.

Springettsbury Township, PA · est. 2008

As the Revolution wound toward victory, the American army needed somewhere to hold the enemies it had captured, and in 1781 York County became that place. Camp Security, a stockade ringed by log huts, detained British soldiers surrendered by General Burgoyne at Saratoga, later joined by prisoners taken at Yorktown, along with their families. Guarded by local militia and Continental troops, it operated until the war's end in 1783; archaeologists later confirmed its location just south of here.

Leavenworth, KS

This cannon commemorates the crucial aid France provided to the American colonists during the Revolutionary War, from 1776 to 1782. French money, arms, troops, and naval power — decisive at the 1781 siege of Yorktown — helped secure American independence. The display honors that alliance between the young republic and its European ally.

Muncy Creek Township, PA · est. 1947

John Brady earned his reputation across the colonial wars and the Revolution as a hard frontier soldier, commanding a fortified post on the West Branch of the Susquehanna at present-day Muncy. On April 11, 1779, he was ambushed and killed by Native warriors near here, one of countless settlers and soldiers who fell in the running border warfare that consumed the region.

Liberty Township, PA · est. 1964

This memorial marks the graves of ten frontier militiamen of Captain Phillips' company, killed on July 16, 1780, during the brutal backcountry fighting of the Revolutionary War. Along Pennsylvania's western frontier, British-allied Native war parties raided isolated settlements, and local rangers like Phillips' men bore the danger of defending them. Their deaths were one small, bloody episode in a war whose frontier front is often overshadowed by the great eastern battles.

Woodford County, KY

In the small hours of June 4, 1781, Jack Jouett spurred his horse some forty miles through the Virginia backcountry to reach Charlottesville ahead of Banastre Tarleton's British dragoons, giving Governor Thomas Jefferson and the fleeing legislature the minutes they needed to escape capture. Often called "the Paul Revere of the South," Jouett later crossed the mountains to build a life in Kentucky. This was also home to his son, Matthew Harris Jouett, who became one of the young republic's most admired portrait painters.

West Chillisquaque Township, PA · est. 1928

John Brady settled this stretch of the Susquehanna frontier in 1769, working as a surveyor before the constant danger of raids drove him to the fortified Muncy Manor that took his name. A veteran soldier, he fought in the French and Indian War, led a company in Pontiac's War, and raised a company for the Continental Line in the Revolution, taking a serious wound at the Battle of Germantown. Home on sick leave in April 1779, he was killed in an ambush near Fort Brady, one of countless casualties of the unrelenting frontier war.

Martinsburg, WV

This memorial honors Captain John Kearney, who took up arms in the American Revolution during the long war that won the colonies their independence from Britain between 1775 and 1783. Born in 1745, he belonged to the generation that came of age fighting for the new nation, and he lived on into the early republic before his death in 1805. Markers like this one in the Shenandoah Valley town of Martinsburg remember the ordinary officers whose service, alongside their families, sustained the Continental cause far from the famous battlefields.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1947

Founded in 1751 as the seat of Cumberland County, Carlisle grew into one of Pennsylvania's key frontier towns, a staging point for movement into the interior. Its people supplied a contingent for the first regiment of the Continental Army in 1775, and in 1794 the federal march against the Whiskey Rebels set out from here. The town sat at the crossroads of the young nation's military and westward ambitions.

North Middleton Township, PA · est. 1947

Founded in 1751 as the seat of Cumberland County, Carlisle grew into one of Pennsylvania's key frontier towns, a staging point for movement into the interior. Its people supplied a contingent for the first regiment of the Continental Army in 1775, and in 1794 the federal march against the Whiskey Rebels set out from here. The town sat at the crossroads of the young nation's military and westward ambitions.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1947

Founded in 1751 as the seat of Cumberland County, Carlisle grew into one of Pennsylvania's key frontier towns, a staging point for movement into the interior. Its people supplied a contingent for the first regiment of the Continental Army in 1775, and in 1794 the federal march against the Whiskey Rebels set out from here. The town sat at the crossroads of the young nation's military and westward ambitions.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1947

Laid out in 1751 as the seat of the newly formed Cumberland County, Carlisle sat at the edge of British settlement, a jumping-off point for traders, soldiers, and settlers pushing into the Pennsylvania backcountry. Its people answered the Revolution early, sending men to the first regiment of the Continental Army in 1775. In 1794 the town became a staging ground again when President Washington's forces mustered here to march west and put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

North Middleton Township, PA · est. 1947

Founded in 1751 as Cumberland County's seat, Carlisle grew up on the frontier of British Pennsylvania, a gateway for settlers and armies moving west. The town supplied men for the first regiment of the Continental Army in 1775, and in 1794 troops gathered here to march against the Whiskey Rebels in the new nation's first challenge to federal power.

Stevens Point, WI

This memorial honors Casimir Pulaski, the Polish nobleman who came to America in 1777 to fight for independence and reorganized the Continental cavalry, earning the title 'Father of the American Cavalry.' He was mortally wounded leading a charge at the 1779 Siege of Savannah and died at just thirty-two. Erected on the 150th anniversary of his death, this monument reflects the deep pride Polish American communities take in his sacrifice.

Chadds Ford Township, PA · est. 1975

Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman exiled for resisting foreign rule, threw himself into the American cause and helped cover Washington's retreat from the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. Made a brigadier general, he became the first overall commander of the Continental Army's cavalry, earning fame as the "Father of the American Cavalry." He was mortally wounded leading a charge at the Siege of Savannah in 1779.

Goliad, TX

When Spain entered the American Revolution against Britain in 1779, Bernardo de Gálvez went to New Orleans to raise an army—and remembered the wild cattle of the Texas country where he had once been stationed. At his request the Spanish governor of Texas rounded up some 10,000 head from the missions and ranches, assembling them at Presidio La Bahía. Driven east between 1779 and 1782 to feed Gálvez's Gulf Coast campaign, this is regarded as the first major Texas cattle drive.

Calhoun, KY

Charles Hansford (1759–1850) enlisted in Virginia in 1775 and again in 1777 before going to sea as a privateer in Virginia's navy during the Revolution, sailing off the American coast, the West Indies, and Spain. Captured three times by the British, he endured a brutal three-month confinement aboard the prison ship Jersey—nicknamed "Hell Afloat"—which he survived along with only one of thirty-six fellow prisoners. He later settled in Kentucky and is buried on Mayo Hill near Calhoun.

Womelsdorf, PA · est. 1947

Charming Forge rose in 1749 as part of the iron plantations that made colonial Pennsylvania an industrial powerhouse of the British Empire. It was once held by the flamboyant ironmaster and glassmaker Baron Henry William Stiegel and later run for a half-century by George Ege. During the Revolution, Hessian prisoners were put to work cutting a rock channel to supply the forge with water.

Hartford, CT

In 1662 Connecticut secured a remarkably generous royal charter guaranteeing the colony broad self-government. When King James II's agent, Sir Edmund Andros, arrived in Hartford on the night of October 31, 1687 to seize that charter and fold Connecticut into the Dominion of New England, tradition holds that the colonists spirited the document away and hid it inside the hollow of a great white oak. The tree, ever after known as the Charter Oak, became a beloved emblem of Connecticut's stubborn defense of its liberties; it finally fell in an 1856 storm, and markers like this one keep its memory rooted to the spot.

West Chester, PA · est. 1982

Chester County was another of the three original counties William Penn laid out in 1682, its name drawn from Cheshire in England. West Chester has served as its seat since 1788 and was incorporated in 1799. During 1777 and 1778 the county became a theater of the Revolution, its fields and roads swept up in the campaigns around Philadelphia — the Battle of Brandywine, the Paoli affair, and the army's ordeal at nearby Valley Forge.

West Pikeland Township, PA · est. 1948

Long known for its mineral springs, this Chester County resort became a place of war in the autumn of 1777. Days after the Battle of Brandywine, George Washington made his headquarters here as his battered army maneuvered against the British. Through the hard winter of the Valley Forge encampment, the springs served as a hospital for his suffering soldiers, turning a genteel retreat into a refuge for the sick and wounded.

Edenton, NC

Built about 1767, the Chowan County Courthouse is the oldest courthouse still in use in North Carolina and one of the finest Georgian public buildings in the South. During the Revolution it served as a gathering place for local Whigs who backed the Patriot cause. For more than two and a half centuries it has remained a working seat of county government.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1954

Founded in 1695, Christ Church became the spiritual home of colonial Philadelphia's Anglican community, its present building begun in 1727 and crowned with bells brought from England in 1754. Its burial ground holds figures central to the nation's founding, including Declaration of Independence signers James Wilson and Robert Morris, along with Bishop William White.

New York, NY

On the site of the late-eighteenth-century City Arms Tavern, a group of patriotic citizens gathered on November 25, 1790 — Evacuation Day, marking the 1783 departure of the last British troops from New York. Veterans of the Continental Army's artillery corps met to plan for the young nation's defense and organized themselves into the Veteran Corps of Artillery of the State of New York. That military command has served continuously ever since.

Anderson Township, OH

When James Clark raised these stone walls around 1801, Ohio was raw frontier — barely settled country on the far edge of the young republic, where a durable stone dwelling was a rare mark of permanence among log cabins. Clark himself carried an older story in his bones: as a boy soldier he had beaten a drummer's cadence at Yorktown in 1781, the siege that effectively ended the Revolutionary War. Two decades later he was among the pioneers pushing west across the Appalachians into the Northwest Territory, trading a battlefield for a homestead in the Ohio wilderness.

Lock Haven, PA · est. 1982

Clinton County was carved from Lycoming and Centre in 1839 and most likely named for New York's Governor DeWitt Clinton, the champion of the Erie Canal. Its ground carries an older memory: the 1776 'Tiadaghton Declaration of Independence,' when frontier 'Fair Play' settlers reportedly declared their own independence in the same season as the Continental Congress. By the 19th century the county was a busy lumbering center, and Lock Haven, its seat, became a city in 1870.

Highspire, PA · est. 1946

From his home "Tinian" on the Susquehanna, Col. James Burd served the frontier in the French and Indian War, helping cut roads for Gen. Edward Braddock's ill-fated 1755 expedition and later commanding at Fort Augusta, a key defensive post upriver at Sunbury. When the Revolution came, the veteran soldier again took up the patriot cause. His house, the marker notes, still stood on the opposite hill.

Kelly Township, PA · est. 1952

John Kelly settled in the Buffalo Valley around 1769 on the Pennsylvania frontier and in 1775 built the log house that still stands nearby, later clad in weatherboard. When the Revolution came he served with distinction under Washington at Trenton and Princeton, the twin winter victories that revived the American cause in 1776–77. He lived on until 1832 and lies buried at Lewisburg.

Delaware Township, PA · est. 1949

Matthew Smith captained a company of Lancaster County militia in one of the Revolution's most grueling feats: Benedict Arnold's midwinter march through the Maine wilderness to attack Quebec in 1775. Surviving that ordeal, he went on to serve in 1779 as Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Council, part of the state's Revolutionary government. He died in 1794 and was buried here in a grave that long went unmarked.

Dauphin, PA · est. 1948

Timothy Green's life traced the whole arc of Pennsylvania's revolutionary generation. He first bore arms as an officer in the French and Indian War, then in June 1774 joined his neighbors in signing the Hanover Resolves, a bold early declaration of readiness to resist British authority. Through the Revolution that followed he stood out as a leader of this Susquehanna-region community, and he rests today in the graveyard just south of the marker.