American Revolution

Connellsville, PA · est. 1966

William Crawford was a frontier soldier and surveyor who settled near the Youghiogheny River after 1766, serving as George Washington's western land agent at a time when Virginia and Pennsylvania families were pushing across the Appalachians. During the Revolution he took up arms on the frontier, leading a 1782 expedition against Native villages along the Sandusky River in Ohio. The campaign ended in disaster: Crawford was captured and put to death, a killing that became notorious in the bitter borderland warfare of the era.

Whitley County, IN

This marker commemorates Colonel Augustin de La Balme, a French cavalry officer who came to America on Benjamin Franklin's recommendation to aid the Revolutionary cause. In November 1780, leading a force toward the British post at Detroit, La Balme's expedition ended in disaster in this region of the Indiana country when it was overwhelmed by Miami warriors under the leader Little Turtle. His defeat was one of the war's westernmost actions, far from the eastern battle lines.

Rostraver Township, PA · est. 1994

Edward Cook came to this corner of western Pennsylvania in the 1770s and rose to become one of its leading citizens — a large landholder, judge, and politician who sat in the Provincial Congress at Philadelphia in 1776 and helped shape the state's constitution. Though a moderate by temperament, when the Whiskey Rebellion swept the frontier in 1792–94 he cast his lot with the tax protesters and was chosen to chair several key rebel meetings.

Athens Township, PA · est. 1946

John Franklin was a leading figure in the Connecticut settlers' claim to lands in the Wyoming Valley, a bitter dispute with Pennsylvania over overlapping colonial grants. He served in the Sullivan Campaign of 1779, was imprisoned from 1787 to 1789 for backing a movement to carve a new state out of the contested territory, and later sat in the Pennsylvania legislature. He settled here in 1789 and died in 1831, with his homesite and grave just east of the road.

New Brunswick, NJ

John Neilson was a New Brunswick merchant who committed his fortune and standing to the Patriot cause, commanding New Jersey militia through the Revolution. Local tradition holds that he gave one of the earliest public readings of the Declaration of Independence in the state in July 1776. He lived on into the young republic as a civic leader in his home city.

Spartanburg County, SC

In the South Carolina backcountry the Revolution was a brutal civil war of neighbor against neighbor, and Colonel John Thomas commanded the Spartan Regiment of Patriot militia that fought it. His wife Jane Thomas earned her own place in local memory for her courage on the home front while the men were in the field. This granite tribute was raised in 1904 by the Spartanburg chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, part of a wave of turn-of-the-century monument-building that sought to honor the founding generation.

Connellsville, PA · est. 1918

Born in Virginia in 1732, William Crawford was a pioneer surveyor and friend of George Washington who built his cabin at Stewart's Crossing on the Youghiogheny in 1765. He first came west with Forbes's 1758 campaign, crossed the Delaware with Washington in 1777, and shared the victory at Trenton. Leading the Sandusky Expedition against Native towns in 1782, he was captured and burned at the stake in Ohio — one of the frontier war's most infamous deaths.

Boston, MA

On June 17, 1775, in one of the first pitched battles of the American Revolution, Colonel William Prescott led New England militia in throwing up hasty earthworks on the high ground above Charlestown, overlooking Boston. Though the outnumbered colonists were finally driven off after their powder ran low, they inflicted staggering losses on the British regulars who stormed the redoubt. Tradition credits Prescott with steadying his green troops to hold their fire until the enemy was nearly upon them. His statue stands watch here at the ground of the battle remembered as Bunker Hill, though the fighting fell largely on neighboring Breed's Hill.

Augusta, GA

When General James Oglethorpe's Georgia trustees ordered this fort raised in 1735, Augusta was the raw edge of Britain's youngest American colony—a fortified trading post on the Savannah River where deerskins moved between backcountry hunters and the coast. Within a generation the settlement had grown enough to build St. Paul's Church tucked beneath the fort's earthen curtain wall in 1750. During the Revolution the British renamed the strongpoint Fort Cornwallis and held it against Patriot forces, making this quiet churchyard ground the site of some of the war's hardest fighting in the Deep South.

Williamsburg, VA · est. 1934

As Virginia's colonial capital, Williamsburg was a center of revolutionary politics. Restored in the 20th century, it is now the largest living-history museum in the country.

Harford County, MD

This marker compresses nearly a century and a half of Maryland's founding story into a few lines. In 1634 the colony was chartered as a proprietary grant to Lord Baltimore, and in 1649 its Assembly passed a landmark act of religious toleration for Christians. The lines trace forward through the surveying of the Mason-Dixon Line, colonial defiance of the British Stamp Act, and the "Peggy Stewart" tea-burning at Annapolis on the eve of the Revolution.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2014

John Barry went to sea as a boy from Ireland and rose to command his own merchant ship in Philadelphia by his early twenties. During the Revolution he won a string of daring engagements, many along the Delaware River, and after independence President Washington named him the first commissioned officer of the new United States Navy, where he oversaw the building of its first frigates. Often called the 'Father of the American Navy,' he served until his death in 1803.

Morristown, NJ

Through the winter of 1779–1780, the Continental Army made its main encampment around Morristown, New Jersey — a season of brutal cold and short supplies remembered as even harsher than Valley Forge. Among the officers wintering here was Brigadier General Henry Knox, George Washington's trusted chief of artillery. This marker recalls that grim, pivotal season when the army held together against long odds.

West Cornwall Township, PA · est. 2005

Founded in 1742 by Peter Grubb beside a rich vein of iron ore and vast charcoal-making forests, Cornwall Iron Furnace grew into a self-sufficient industrial village complete with an ironmaster's mansion and workers' homes. Its furnaces poured pig iron, cast goods, and cannon for the Revolutionary War before passing to Robert Coleman in 1798 and running until 1883. Remarkably, the works survive fully intact nearby — a rare window into early American ironmaking.

Grover, NC

In January 1781 General Lord Cornwallis crossed into North Carolina near this spot, launching his second invasion of the state as he chased the American forces of Daniel Morgan and Nathanael Greene. The pursuit stretched his army thin and led toward the costly clash at Guilford Courthouse.

Cherokee County, SC

On this rolling South Carolina pastureland in January 1781, Continental and militia forces under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan sprang a masterful double envelopment on the feared British cavalry commander Banastre Tarleton. Morgan's plan turned his least-reliable militia into bait and shattered Tarleton's command in under an hour. The victory came at a low point in the southern campaign and helped set the stage for the war's end at Yorktown.

Hatboro, PA · est. 1965

Named for a tavern that once stood nearby, Crooked Billet was the scene of a sharp Revolutionary War clash in the spring of 1778, while the British held Philadelphia. General John Lacey's militia, tasked with choking off supplies flowing to the occupied city, camped here on May 1 when British troops surprised them at dawn, scattering the Americans with heavy losses.

Bethlehem, PA

In 1745, just four years after Moravian settlers founded Bethlehem on the banks of the Lehigh River, this two-story log building opened as the community's first public house. Standing beside the ferry landing on the main road into the young settlement, the Crown Inn became a natural stopping place for travelers, and over the decades it welcomed prominent political and military figures passing through eastern Pennsylvania. When a bridge finally supplanted the old ferry in 1794 the inn's fortunes faded; it closed its doors and was torn down in 1857.

Camp Hill, PA · est. 1948

In the autumn of 1775, as the newly rebellious colonies gambled on carrying the war north, Capt. William Hendricks raised a company of frontier riflemen from the Cumberland County countryside and marched them toward Canada. They joined the desperate assault on Quebec on the last day of the year, fighting under Gen. Richard Montgomery in a driving snowstorm. The attack failed, Montgomery was killed, and Hendricks fell with him.

Morristown, NJ

This homestead dates to 1799 and the farm of Silas Condict, a New Jersey patriot active in the cause of American independence. It later became home to the Cutler family, including Augustus W. Cutler, a congressman remembered as a champion of free public schooling in New Jersey. The site witnessed more than a century of the state's political and civic life.

Exeter, NH

This marker in Exeter honors Daniel Chester French, born here in 1850, who grew up to become one of the most celebrated American sculptors of his age. Though his family soon moved to Concord, Massachusetts, French returned to art after an early bent for the practical, and his career carried him from small-town New England to the grandest public commissions in the nation. He worked in the classical, dignified idiom that defined American civic monuments at the turn of the twentieth century.

Chicago, IL

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

Easton, PA · est. 1953

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

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

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

New Bern, NC

The Marquis de Bretigny, a French nobleman, served the Patriot cause as a state purchasing agent in Martinique in 1781–82, securing supplies for the Revolution. He also fought at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and later served as a Councillor of State. His home once stood near this spot in New Bern.

Delaware Township, PA

This memorial stands in the Delaware Cemetery near Dingman's Ferry, a Delaware River hamlet in Pennsylvania's Pike County that grew up around one of the region's early ferry crossings. It was raised in 1982 by American Legion Post No. 851 — part of the veterans' organization chartered by Congress in 1919 in the wake of World War I — whose posts are customarily named for local servicemen, here Tilghman, Angle, and Smith. Rather than marking a single battle or soldier, the stone deliberately gathers 'all veterans' under one dedication, the kind of collective remembrance found in small-town cemeteries across America.

Camden County, NC

Dempsey Burgess answered the Revolution on two fronts — in the provincial congresses of 1775-1776 that guided North Carolina toward independence, and in the field as a lieutenant colonel of militia. After the war he served in the U.S. Congress from 1795 to 1799. His grave lies about seven miles to the southeast.

Forty Fort, PA · est. 1972

Built in 1790 in the Wyoming Valley, this house was home to Colonel Nathan Denison, who had served as a Revolutionary War officer during a turbulent era of frontier warfare and land disputes in northeastern Pennsylvania. After independence, Denison became a Luzerne County judge, helping build the civic institutions of the young republic. The home stands as a tangible link between a soldier's wartime service and his later role in ordering a new nation's local government.

Denville, NJ

During the American Revolution, the Continental Army built a chain of signal fires on high ground across northern New Jersey and the surrounding region to relay warnings of British troop movements. When lit, one beacon would alert the next outpost, sending an alarm racing across the countryside far faster than any messenger on horseback. This replica in Denville recalls a single link in that network of 23 outposts spread across the Northeast, where sentries stood ready to set their pyres ablaze at the first sign of attack.

Derry Township, PA · est. 1948

This churchyard, the oldest pioneer burial ground in Dauphin County, holds the first generations of the region's Scots-Irish settlers. Among the graves lie the early pastors William Bertram and John Roan, alongside men who fought in the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution. One of them, Col. John Rodgers, put his name to the Hanover Resolves of 1774, an early pledge of resistance to Britain.

Belpre, OH

In 1791 the Ohio country was raw frontier, and the settlers clustered near Belpre—many of them Revolutionary War veterans who had come west with the Ohio Company—needed a reliable way to turn grain into flour. Jonathan Devol, a resourceful millwright, answered by mounting a gristmill on two boats anchored in the Ohio River, letting the current itself drive the stones. Sheltered beside Farmer's Castle, the fortified stockade built during the Indian wars of the early 1790s, his floating mill ground 25 to 50 bushels a day and served families scattered across some thirty miles of riverbank.

Birmingham Township, PA · est. 1915

Near the village of Dilworthtown, the Battle of Brandywine drew to its close on the evening of September 11, 1777. After Washington's line was flanked and driven back through the surrounding hills, the last fighting flared here as darkness ended the day. The marker fixes the point where one of the Revolution's largest engagements finally spent itself.

Reading, PA · est. 1951

On this Reading site stood the home of Dr. Jonathan Potts, who served from 1777 to 1780 as Deputy Director General of the Continental Army's Northern and Middle Departments. In an era when battlefield disease killed more soldiers than musket fire, Potts organized the army's overwhelmed medical service during the hardest years of the Revolutionary War.

Charleston, WV

This monument preserves the memory of Andrew Donnally Jr. and a cemetery once rooted in Kanawha City before being relocated here. Born in 1778 at Fort Donnally, a fortified frontier station in Greenbrier County during the era of the American Revolution, Donnally belonged to one of the pioneering families who pushed into western Virginia's Kanawha Valley and made their homes along the river opposite the salt-making community of Malden. When his old burying ground was moved, these stones came with it, carrying a family's story from the frontier generation into the settled 19th-century valley.

Reading, PA · est. 1951

This was the home of Dr. Bodo Otto, a military surgeon who served the Continental Army from 1775 to 1782. As surgeon-in-chief at Valley Forge during the brutal winter of 1777–78, the aging physician tended troops battling smallpox, exposure, and starvation in the encampment that became a symbol of American endurance.

Edenton, NC

Dr. Hugh Williamson wore many hats — physician, scientist, Revolutionary patriot, and scholar — but he is best remembered as one of North Carolina's signers of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. He also served in Congress and wrote an early history of the state. His Edenton home once stood four blocks to the southeast.

East Drumore Township, PA · est. 1921

This stone monument gathers the memory of four notable early Americans tied to the Drumore neighborhood of Lancaster County. Among them, Dr. David Ramsay won fame as a physician and one of the young nation's first historians, while Colonel Archibald Steele was remembered for his part in the Revolutionary era's daring frontier and Canadian campaigns. Together the four represent the Scots-Irish stock that filled Pennsylvania's southern townships and supplied leaders to the Revolution and the early republic.

Durham Township, PA · est. 1947

Built in 1727, Durham Furnace was one of colonial Pennsylvania's early ironworks, smelting local ore into iron through more than six decades of blast until 1789. In the colonial wars and again during the Revolution it cast cannon and shot for the fight, turning frontier iron into weapons of war. Among its owners were the prominent colonial statesman James Logan and George Taylor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Alexandria, VA

In the heady months after the Revolutionary War ended, a victorious George Washington made his way home to Mount Vernon, and the nearby port of Alexandria welcomed its most famous neighbor in style. On the last day of 1783, the town's leading men gathered at Duvall's Tavern to honor the general's return from the long fight for independence. Taverns like this one were the social and political heart of early American towns, doubling as banquet halls, meeting rooms, and stages for civic celebration.

Lower Merion Township, PA · est. 1972

Opened in 1704 and known by a string of colonial names, this roadside inn served travelers on one of the region's key routes for well over a century. It was familiar to Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and shortly after the Revolution it was renamed to honor General Anthony 'Mad Anthony' Wayne, who had lodged there. Taverns like this were the social and political hubs of colonial and Revolutionary America, where news traveled and plans were laid.

Philadelphia, PA

In the Philadelphia neighborhood of East Falls, a mill and riverside community strung along the Schuylkill, residents raised this monument in 1949 through the East Falls War Memorial Association to honor the local men and women who had gone off to fight. Its inscription reaches all the way back to 1776, tying the neighborhood's sacrifice to every American conflict from the Revolution onward. Erected in the years just after World War II, it reflects the postwar impulse of countless towns and city neighborhoods to gather their veterans' service into a single lasting tribute.

Edenton, NC

In October 1774 some fifty women of Edenton, led by Penelope Barker, signed a public pledge to boycott British tea and cloth in support of the colonial cause. Their coordinated stand — one of the earliest known political actions by American women — drew mockery in the British press but real admiration at home. It announced that women, too, would take sides in the coming Revolution.

Conshohocken, PA · est. 1976

Edward Hector served as a private in the Continental artillery and fought at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, one of the largest engagements of the Revolutionary War. He made his home in what is now Conshohocken. His marker honors him as a stand-in for the many Black soldiers whose service filled the Continental ranks but whose race went unrecorded in the muster rolls.

Chowan County, NC

Edward Vail was a colonial statesman who served as a brigadier general of the Edenton District militia and sat on North Carolina's Committee of Correspondence in 1768 and again in 1773-74. Those committees knit the colonies together in the years of mounting resistance to British rule, placing Vail among the local leaders who carried the Revolution forward. He lived about two miles southwest.

Seguin, TX

El Capote Ranch traces to Jose De La Baume, a French officer who came to North America with Lafayette, fought in the American Revolution, and later won a 27,000-acre Spanish land grant in 1806 that Mexico reaffirmed after independence. Virginia's Michael Erskine acquired it in 1840, raising cattle he drove to California and New Orleans and hosting notable travelers along the San Antonio–Gonzales road. Part of the land later passed to Edith Kermit Carow, Theodore Roosevelt's wife, and Roosevelt reportedly rode a ranch-bred horse at San Juan Hill in 1898.

Stanly County, NC

In July 1780, Patriot militia under Colonel William Lee Davidson defeated a Loyalist force led by Colonel Samuel Bryan a few miles southeast of here, at Colson's on the Pee Dee. The clash was part of the bitter civil war between Whig and Tory neighbors that raged across the Carolina backcountry during the Revolution. Such small, savage fights did much to determine who controlled the region.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

Begun in 1757 and reckoned the oldest public building in Carlisle, the First Presbyterian Church grew from a congregation organized at Meeting House Springs back in 1734. Its walls witnessed history twice over: in 1774 townspeople gathered here to declare for American independence, and in 1794 President George Washington worshipped within them while rallying troops against the Whiskey Rebellion. Stone-built and enduring, it stands at the civic heart of the old frontier town.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1984

This Lancaster congregation traces its roots to 1742, completing its first building here in 1770 with the current edifice dedicated in 1851. Its first regular pastor, the Rev. John D. Woodhull, was a Revolutionary patriot, and among its members was James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States. The church's long life spans the colonial era, the Revolution, and the antebellum decades of national growth.

New Bern, NC

In this town on August 25–27, 1774, seventy-one delegates gathered for the first provincial congress in America convened in open defiance of British colonial orders. Meeting despite the royal governor's objections, they chose delegates to the Continental Congress and voiced colonial grievances. It was a bold step toward organized resistance in North Carolina.

Easton, PA · est. 1953

Easton's First Reformed congregation gathered in 1745, and by 1776 — the very year of independence — its members had built and enlarged this church. In 1777 it hosted an Indian treaty council, one of the diplomatic gatherings that shaped relations between the young nation and Native peoples on the Pennsylvania frontier. During the Revolution the building also served as a military hospital, its pews and floors given over to the sick and wounded of the Continental cause.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2021

Organized in 1774 as the Philadelphia Light Horse, this volunteer cavalry troop rode into the Revolution almost at once, scouting for General Washington and crossing the icy Delaware with him on Christmas night 1776. Over the centuries it has served in every major American conflict while counting mayors, ambassadors, a Secretary of Defense, and an Apollo astronaut among its ranks. Now part of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, the Troop has kept this armory as its home since 1900.

Valdosta, GA

In the years after World War II, Korea, and amid Vietnam, American Legion posts across the country raised memorials to honor those who had served, and Valdosta's Post No. 13 was no exception. Dedicated on Veterans Day in 1969 as a gift to the city and Lowndes County, the Flame of Freedom stands not for a single battle but for the veterans of every American war. Its eternal-flame motif — popular in mid-century civic memorials — was meant as a perpetual reminder of sacrifice, a fixture of small-town South Georgia's public square.

Flemingsburg, KY

Kentucky's 26th county, Fleming, was cut from Mason County in 1798 and named for Col. John Fleming, a Revolutionary War officer who came to mark and improve land here in 1776 and built the area's second station in 1788. He worked alongside fellow pioneers John Finley, Michael Cassidy, and his half-brother George Stockton, who owned the land and laid out Flemingsburg in 1796.

Rockaway Township, NJ

This 18th-century stone house sits in the heart of the Morris County iron district, a region whose forges and furnaces made northern New Jersey one of early America's most important sources of iron. The dwelling is tied to the ironmasters who worked these hills, whose furnaces supplied the material of everyday life—and, during the Revolution, cannon shot and hardware for the Continental cause.

Hempfield Township, PA · est. 1946

A little to the south once stood a fortified post raised in 1774 by Pennsylvania German pioneers of the Brush Creek and Harrold's settlements. In an era of frontier violence, such a stockade offered ordinary farm families a place to shelter during Dunmore's War and the American Revolution. It was a small but vital node in the network of refuges that let settlement cling to this exposed edge of colonial Pennsylvania.

Hempfield Township, PA · est. 1929

Fort Allen, also known as Truby's Blockhouse, was built and commanded by Col. Christopher Truby to shelter the scattered settlers of Westmoreland County on the exposed western frontier. It stood through the turmoil of Dunmore's War in 1774, later Indian conflicts, and the Revolution, when frontier families lived under constant threat of raid. From here in 1774, eighty inhabitants led by Wendel Oury petitioned Governor John Penn for aid against a feared uprising.

Jersey Shore, PA · est. 1947

Colonel Henry Antes built this stockade in 1776 at the mouth of Antes Creek on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, near the region's first gristmill. When the frontier collapsed in the panic of 1778 known as the Great Runaway, settlers fled downriver and the abandoned fort was burned by Native raiders—leaving the valley emptied of the families who had briefly tried to hold it.

Manorville, PA

In the summer of 1779, as the American Revolution raged along the western frontier, Continental soldiers threw up this small outpost on the bank of the Allegheny River. It was a staging point for Col. Daniel Brodhead's expedition northward against the Seneca — one arm of the wider campaign that year to break the power of the Iroquois nations allied with the British. The fort's usefulness was brief: raised in June and given up by autumn, once the campaign had passed through. It honored Maj. Gen. John Armstrong, a veteran Pennsylvania frontier officer.

Derry Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1777, as the Revolution raged and the Pennsylvania frontier grew dangerous, settlers along the forks of Chillisquaque Creek fortified Bosley's mill, stockading and garrisoning it against raids. Such improvised frontier forts were the everyday reality of the backcountry war, where mills, farms, and blockhouses doubled as refuges. The site reflects a conflict fought not only on famous battlefields but in the woods and clearings of the northern branch of the Susquehanna.

New Kensington, PA

This marker commemorates Fort Crawford, a frontier stockade from the era of the Revolutionary War when the Allegheny Valley was a dangerous borderland of raids and militia defense. The four-ton stone and bronze plaque were placed by the Massy Harbison Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and dedicated on May 13, 1942, during the 150th anniversary of the Logan's Ferry Presbyterian Church, on whose land the fort once stood. The chapter's namesake, Massy Harbison, was herself a famed survivor of frontier captivity in the region.