American Revolution

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1928

This marker honors Joseph Elliot, a Revolutionary War soldier of the embattled Wyoming Valley frontier. He fought at Trenton on the night of December 25, 1776, and by tradition was given a sword by George Washington for his bravery. He survived the Wyoming Massacre of 1778 — breaking free at the Bloody Rock and swimming the Susquehanna with a bullet in his shoulder — and later, at the 1782 Battle of Lime Hill, helped rescue captured children.

Edenton, NC

Joseph Hewes built his fortune as an Edenton merchant and shipowner before politics carried him to the Continental Congress, where in 1776 he became one of North Carolina's signers of the Declaration of Independence. Overseeing naval matters, he is often remembered for helping lay the groundwork of an American navy. His store once stood a few blocks south of here.

Bern Township, PA · est. 1947

Joseph Hiester rose from Revolutionary War soldier—captured and held on a British prison ship—to a long career in public life, serving in Congress and then as governor of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1823. A son of the Pennsylvania German community, he lived at the Hiester Mansion here in Berks County. The property later became part of the county welfare farm.

Lancaster, PA · est. 2006

In the mid-1700s, Lancaster sat on the edge of the British colonies' expanding frontier, a bustling inland hub where traders outfitted expeditions toward the Ohio country and beyond. Joseph Simon, a Jewish merchant, built a far-reaching network of trade and land ventures that reached as far as the Mississippi, and when the Revolution came he helped arm the Continental cause. His home doubled as one of the earliest gathering places for Jewish worship west of Philadelphia.

Moon Township, PA · est. 2008

Joshua Meeks took up arms as a militia captain during the American Revolution and stayed to help build the new republic on the western Pennsylvania frontier, petitioning in 1787 to create Allegheny County. A farmer by trade, he opened his home to serve as a fort in times of danger, a polling place for elections, and a schoolhouse for the community. Through these acts he wove the habits of citizenship into the fabric of a frontier settlement.

Cleveland County, NC

On October 7, 1780, Patriot backwoodsmen crushed a Loyalist force at Kings Mountain, just over the line in South Carolina, in a decisive Revolutionary War victory. The battle broke Britain's grip on the southern backcountry and turned the tide of the war in the Carolinas; the national military park lies a few miles southeast.

Prince George's County, MD

This Latin inscription marks the spot in the Maryland countryside where Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant lay for more than eighty years. A French-born military engineer who volunteered for the Continental Army during the Revolution, L'Enfant went on to draw the sweeping grand plan for the new federal capital on the Potomac — the radiating avenues and ceremonial vistas that still shape Washington, D.C. He died in obscurity and near-poverty in 1825 and was buried on a private estate here in Prince George's County. As the inscription records, in 1909 a grateful nation finally reinterred his remains with honor at Arlington National Cemetery, leaving this cenotaph to mark his first resting place.

Whitley County, IN

In the autumn of 1780, during the Revolutionary War, the French officer Colonel Augustin de La Balme led an expedition against the British-allied Miami towns of the Wabash country. On November 5, near this place, his force was overwhelmed and destroyed by Miami warriors under Little Turtle. The defeat was one of the first great victories for the young war leader who would trouble American armies for years to come.

Nash County, NC

On February 28, 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette — the French hero of the American Revolution — spent the night at Henry Donaldson's home near this spot during his triumphal farewell tour of the United States. Nearly a half-century after the war, aging veterans and grateful crowds greeted Lafayette wherever he traveled. His visit connected this community to the living memory of the Revolution.

Whitemarsh Township, PA · est. 1980

In May 1778, the young Marquis de Lafayette led 2,000 Continental troops to Barren Hill on his first independent command, scouting British movements out of Philadelphia. General Howe tried to trap him with an overwhelming force, but Lafayette skillfully extracted his men and slipped back toward the American camp. He reoccupied the position until his recall to Valley Forge on May 23, having passed a crucial early test of his generalship.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1987

After the young Marquis de Lafayette was wounded in the leg at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, he was brought to Bethlehem to recover. Here he convalesced at the home of George Frederick Beckel, superintendent of the Moravian community's farm, while the Continental Army fought on nearby. The Beckel house stood for over a century afterward, from 1762 to 1872.

Easton, PA · est. 2007

On December 27, 1824, citizens of Easton gathered at White's Hotel to found a new college, naming it for the Marquis de Lafayette. The timing was no accident: the aging French general was then in the midst of his triumphant 1824–25 tour of the United States, a journey that rekindled patriotic memories of the Revolution he had helped win. Local leader James Madison Porter, who had recently met Lafayette, helped rally support for the school that became one of the nation's foremost tributes to the statesman.

Fayetteville, NC

In 1825, during his triumphant farewell tour of the United States, the Marquis de Lafayette visited Fayetteville, the city that had honored him by taking his name in 1783. He stayed at the home of Duncan McRae, which stood where the present courthouse now stands. The visit joined a Revolutionary hero to the first American town named in his honor.

New Orleans, LA

Laid out in 1788 as the public square of Faubourg Ste. Marie, New Orleans' first suburb, this green honors the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who fought for American independence. He declined an offer to become the first governor of the Louisiana territory the United States had just purchased, but on his triumphal 1825 tour he was met here with cries of 'Vive Lafayette!' A French-American society dedicated the marker in 1985.

Clinton, CT

In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette — the French nobleman who had fought beside Washington a half-century earlier — returned to the United States as the 'Nation's Guest,' invited to tour the young republic he had helped create. Now an old man, he journeyed through all twenty-four states to rapturous crowds, and on August 21, 1824, that triumphal progress carried him along the old Post Road through this stretch of the Connecticut shore, then part of Killingworth. The town of Clinton would later be set off from Killingworth, but the memory of the day the Revolution's last great hero passed through, greeted with militia salutes and civic ceremony, stayed with the community.

Salem, MA

In 1824 the Marquis de Lafayette—the French aristocrat who had fought as a young major general in the Continental Army—returned to the United States for a 13-month triumphal tour as the nation's honored "Guest of the Nation." As he made his way through New England, towns competed to fete the last surviving general officer of the Revolution, and Salem was no exception, its citizens turning out in throngs to welcome him before he dined and pressed on to the next town up the coast. His arrival came as the republic neared its 50th birthday, drawing crowds of aging veterans and their children eager to glimpse a living link to the founding generation.

Sturbridge, MA

In 1824, a half-century after the Revolution he had helped win, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to America for a grand farewell tour and was greeted as a living link to the nation's founding. Traveling overland from Boston toward Hartford in early September, the aging general passed through Sturbridge, where townspeople escorted him to the Common and feted him at Porter's Stage House. Such welcomes—militia escorts, banquets, and cheering crowds at every town along the post road—were repeated in hundreds of communities during his thirteen-month journey through all twenty-four states.

Murfreesboro, NC

On the night of February 26, 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette lodged at the Indian Queen Inn, which once stood two blocks north of this Murfreesboro marker. The aging Revolutionary War hero was then near the end of his grand tour of the United States, greeted by adoring crowds in nearly every town he passed. His journey rekindled national memory of the Revolution as its founding generation was passing away.

Union Township, PA · est. 1947

On August 16, 1782, Major John Lee and his family were killed near this place in a raid by an Indian war party, with only his son Robert surviving. The attack came during the violent final years of the Revolutionary War on the Pennsylvania frontier, when British-allied raids terrorized isolated valley settlements. Such tragedies were a grim feature of life on the contested edge of the new nation.

Allentown, PA

Carved from Northampton County in March 1812 and named for the river that powered its early industry, Lehigh County anchored the Pennsylvania German heartland around Allentown. Its ground had already earned a place in Revolutionary lore: when the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777-1778, patriots spirited the State House Bell — later called the Liberty Bell — to Allentown, hiding it beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church. The county was also home to George Taylor, one of Pennsylvania's signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Tallahassee, FL

This marker honors the Revolutionary War veterans who, by the 1830s, had settled in and around Tallahassee in Florida's frontier territory. In 1832 and 1833 these aging men — like Zachariah Gherkins, who had served as a private with North Carolina forces — came forward to apply for the federal pensions Congress granted for their service in the War for Independence. Their applications, filed a half-century after the war, quietly document how the Revolution's soldiers dispersed across a growing nation into its newest frontiers.

Lexington, MA · est. 1949

At dawn, some 700 British soldiers marching to seize colonial arms confronted about 80 minutemen on Lexington's common. Eight Americans died — the opening casualties of the Revolutionary War.

Lexington, KY

In June 1775, frontiersmen led by William McConnell camped on a branch of Elkhorn Creek and, on hearing of the colonists' clash with the British at Lexington, Massachusetts that April, named their campsite Lexington to honor the Revolution's first battle. Fear of attack delayed permanent settlement until 1779, when Colonel Robert Patterson and his companions raised a blockhouse and stockade. The town of Lexington was formally established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1782.

Allentown, PA · est. 2022

In the anxious autumn of 1777, with the British army marching on Philadelphia, the Continental Congress ordered the city's bells spirited away so they couldn't be melted into cannon. The great State House bell traveled north by wagon and rested for months beneath the floorboards of Zion's Reformed Church here in Allentown before returning home in 1778. Decades later, antislavery reformers seized on its inscription—'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land'—and renamed it the Liberty Bell, turning a cracked colonial bell into an enduring emblem of freedom.

Upper Merion Township, PA

In the tense years before the Revolution, colonists across the thirteen colonies singled out great elms and other spreading trees as "Liberty Trees" — public gathering places where the Sons of Liberty rallied crowds against British rule. The tradition began with Boston's famous elm during the 1765 Stamp Act protests, where colonists hung effigies of royal officials from its branches, and the idea spread from town to town. Beneath these trees, ordinary people met, argued, and organized, turning a living landmark into a shared symbol of resistance. A memorial like this one in Upper Merion keeps that tradition of the patriot "tree of liberty" rooted in local memory.

San Francisco, CA

On April 19, 1894 — the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord — the Sequoia Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution planted this Liberty Tree in San Francisco. The name deliberately echoed the elms of the 1760s, beneath which colonists rallied against British rule. The planting was part of the patriotic-heritage movement that swept the country in the decades after the Civil War.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947

On April 14, 1782, a small party led by Sergeant Thomas Baldwin came to this ground trying to free a woman and her children held captive by Native raiders — a common and wrenching feature of frontier war. The rescue turned into a four-hour fight. Three of the children were saved, but the mother was killed before they could reach her. The episode captures the intimate violence of the Revolution's final years along the Susquehanna.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1928

On April 14, 1782, near this spot, Sergeant Thomas Baldwin's party tried to overtake a Native war band that had captured Mrs. Rosewell Franklin and her four children. After some four hours of fighting from hastily thrown-up breastworks, the rescuers freed three of the children, but Mrs. Franklin was killed. The skirmish was one of the last violent episodes of the Revolutionary frontier in the Wyoming country.

Newtown, PA · est. 2001

On February 19, 1778, with the British holding Philadelphia and Washington's army wintering at Valley Forge, roughly 40 armed Loyalists raided the tavern that stood here. The fighting left five American soldiers dead, four wounded, and eleven captured. Tailors working at the site had been sewing uniforms for the troops at Valley Forge, and some 2,000 yards of cloth were carried off.

Lincoln County, NC

Established as a Presbyterian burial ground in 1801, Machpelah Cemetery holds the graves of several figures central to the region's Revolutionary and early national history, among them Alexander Brevard and General Joseph Graham. It reflects the Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlement of the Carolina Piedmont.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

During the Revolution, Carlisle held British prisoners of war far from the fighting on the coast. For a short time in 1776, Major John Andre and Lieutenant Despard were detained in a tavern on this site. Andre was later exchanged, returned to service, and after his involvement in Benedict Arnold's treason was captured again and executed as a spy.

Robertson County, KY

On a nearby hilltop lie the home site and grave of Major George M. Bedinger (1756–1843), a Pennsylvania-born patriot who fought in the Revolution—helping defend Boonesborough in 1779 and serving at the siege of Yorktown in 1781. Returning to Kentucky in 1784, he was among the first to survey this region, later serving in the state legislature and in Congress. An opponent of slavery, he freed his enslaved people when each reached the age of thirty.

York, PA · est. 1949

When the Continental Congress fled to York in the fall of 1777, this quiet Pennsylvania town briefly served as the seat of a young nation at war. Major John Clark, who lived on this site, was a trusted Revolutionary officer who served as aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Greene and later as an auditor of the Continental Army — one of the many soldiers and administrators whose unglamorous labor kept Washington's army supplied and solvent.

Town of Caneadea, NY

In 1782, as the Revolutionary War's frontier violence dragged on in western New York, the American soldier Major Moses Van Campen was taken captive by the Senecas — the "keepers of the Western Door" of the Iroquois Confederacy. At their village along the Genesee River near Caneadea, he was forced to run the gauntlet, a customary ordeal, racing some thirty rods to the Seneca council house. That council house survived and was later relocated and preserved in Letchworth State Park, a tangible link to this dramatic moment.

York County, SC

On October 7, 1780, this ground near the North Carolina line saw the Battle of Kings Mountain, a turning point in the American Revolution's southern campaign. Frontier militia known as the Overmountain Men surrounded and crushed a Loyalist force under Major Patrick Ferguson in about an hour of fierce fighting. Major William Chronicle, a young Patriot officer leading his Lincoln County men, was killed early in the assault at the spot this stone marks.

Somerville, MA

In 1775 and 1776 the hills around Charlestown and Boston bristled with earthworks as the Siege of Boston opened the Revolutionary War. This map recalls the fortifications thrown up across the landscape—including the heights where the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought—while colonial forces hemmed in the British-held town. The ground it depicts is now Somerville and its neighbors, though the ridgelines that shaped the siege remain.

Greene Township, PA · est. 1961

Born on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1751, Margaret Cochran Corbin followed her husband into the Continental Army and was beside him at the defense of Fort Washington in November 1776. When he was killed at his cannon, she took his place and kept firing until she too was gravely wounded. Congress later granted her a soldier's pension and a place in the Invalid Regiment, and she was buried with honor at West Point.

New York, NY

During the British and Hessian assault on Fort Washington in November 1776, Margaret Cochran Corbin stepped into the gun crew when her husband John was killed at his cannon, keeping the piece firing until she too was gravely wounded. She is remembered as the first woman to take a soldier's place in combat during the Revolutionary War and later became the first woman to receive a military pension from the Continental Congress. This marker near the old fort's ground honors her stand.

New York, NY

This statue honors the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French nobleman who crossed the Atlantic to fight for American independence and became one of the Revolution's most beloved allies. The monument was itself a gift from France to New York City, offered in gratitude for the sympathy Americans extended during France's ordeal in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The paired inscriptions bind two moments together: Lafayette's pledge of 1776 that his 'heart was enlisted' the instant he heard of American independence, and France's answering thanks nearly a century later.

New York, NY

The Marquis de Lafayette was a young French aristocrat who crossed the Atlantic to join the American cause, serving without pay as a trusted general and confidant of George Washington during the Revolutionary War. This Brooklyn monument was the gift of Henry Harteau, a prominent local citizen, who wanted a lasting public tribute to Lafayette's role in helping win American independence. Lafayette's later triumphal tour of the United States in 1824–25 cemented his place in the national memory as the young republic's most beloved foreign friend.

New York, NY

On August 27, 1776, in the Battle of Brooklyn (also called the Battle of Long Island), the first major engagement after the Declaration of Independence, a small regiment of Maryland soldiers made a series of desperate charges against a far larger British force near the Old Stone House. Their stand held the enemy back long enough for George Washington to pull the battered Continental Army out of a trap and across the East River to fight another day. Roughly 250 of these men fell, and tradition holds that Washington, watching from a distance, lamented the brave fellows he was losing. This monument in what is now Prospect Park honors that sacrifice.

Maysville, KY

Established by Virginia's legislature in 1788 out of Bourbon County, Mason County once sprawled across the area of some sixteen present-day counties. It was named for George Mason, author of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights—a foundation for the U.S. Bill of Rights—and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Halifax County, NC

Chartered in 1767, this Halifax Masonic lodge erected its building in 1769, making it one of the oldest in North Carolina. Buried there is Joseph Montfort, appointed "Grand Master of America" — a title of unusual reach across the colonies. The lodge stood at the center of colonial Halifax's civic life on the eve of the Revolution.

Lancaster, PA · est. 2000

From 1740 to 1771 the gunsmith Mathias Roeser worked here in Lancaster, at the heart of colonial Pennsylvania's craft economy. His shop was central to the development of the Pennsylvania rifle, the long, accurate frontier firearm that became famous in American hands. Family members and his apprentice William Henry, Sr., went on to lead the trade and supply arms to the patriot cause during the Revolution.

Jackson Township, PA · est. 2018

In 1778, as the Revolution reached the Pennsylvania frontier, Col. William McAlevy — a pioneer settler and Revolutionary War officer — raised a blockhouse near this spot to shelter early settlers from raids. Decades later, in the 1840s, the entrepreneur Robert McBurney founded a village here and spent the following years developing it. Nearby 19th-century ironworks and mills fueled the community's growth, layering an industrial chapter atop its frontier origins.

York, PA · est. 1949

For roughly nine months in 1777–1778, York stood in for Philadelphia as the capital of the United States after the British seized the larger city. Archibald McClean, who surveyed lands for the Penn family and served as a county officer, was a committed patriot whose home is remembered as a place where the fledgling nation's treasury was kept during that anxious interlude.

Charlotte, NC

In the autumn of 1780, Lord Cornwallis and his British army occupied Charlotte, but the surrounding Mecklenburg County countryside was fiercely hostile — so much so that Cornwallis reportedly called it a "hornet's nest" of rebellion. On October 3, a small band of local Patriot militia ambushed a much larger British foraging party at the McIntyre farm north of town, harassing the redcoats with well-aimed fire from behind fences and trees and driving them back toward Charlotte. The skirmish was one of many stinging local resistances that made the British occupation of the region untenable.

Currituck County, NC

Thomas McKnight, a colonial merchant and legislator, operated a large shipyard that stood near this Currituck County marker in the years before the Revolution. When war came he remained loyal to the Crown, one of many Loyalists whose fortunes and communities were torn apart by the conflict. His shipyard reflects the maritime commerce that made the Albemarle region a colonial trading crossroads.

Charlotte, NC

On May 31, 1775, patriots meeting just southwest of here adopted the Mecklenburg Resolves, a bold set of resolutions rejecting British authority and reorganizing local government. Organized by Thomas Polk, the measures came only weeks after Lexington and Concord. They stand among the earliest formal repudiations of the Crown in the American colonies.

Guilford, CT

In the anxious second year of the Revolution, Continental forces sought ways to strike at British supply lines. On May 23, 1777, Lieutenant-Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs led about 170 men in whaleboats from Sachem's Head Harbor across Long Island Sound to Sag Harbor, New York, where they destroyed a British supply depot and took prisoners in a swift, well-executed raid. The daring operation became one of the war's celebrated small victories.

Marietta, OH

Marietta was founded in 1788 by veterans of the Continental Army, who carried their Revolutionary service into the wilderness of the new Northwest Territory. Raised by the Marietta Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, this memorial honors those soldiers laid to rest in the town, and the pioneering men and women who built the first organized American settlement beyond the Ohio River.

Bridgewater Township, NJ

During the American Revolution, the Continental Army made seasonal and winter camp at Middlebrook, in the hills near Bound Brook, New Jersey. Washington's troops encamped here in 1777 and again through the hard winter of 1778–79, using the rugged terrain to watch British movements while the army rested, drilled, and regrouped. The 'Washington Camp Ground' preserves the memory of these encampments.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1957

Founded in 1740, this is one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the United States and the resting place of some of colonial and Revolutionary America's most notable Jewish families. Among those buried here are Nathan Levy, whose ship carried the Liberty Bell across the Atlantic; Haym Salomon, the broker whose financing helped sustain the American Revolution; and the prominent Gratz and Levy families. Their graves testify to a Jewish community woven into Philadelphia life from its earliest colonial days.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

During the American Revolution, Lancaster was a bustling inland town far from the coast, which made it a natural place to hold prisoners of war. This building served as military stables, while across the street stood barracks where captured British regulars and Hessian mercenaries were confined. Thousands of such prisoners were marched into Pennsylvania's interior towns for safekeeping after battles like Trenton and Saratoga.

Concord, MA

On April 19, 1775, at the North Bridge in Concord, colonial militia—the famed Minute Men, ready at a moment's warning—turned to face British regulars and returned fire in one of the opening clashes of the Revolutionary War. The inscription is the first stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 "Concord Hymn," written to dedicate the battle monument that stands nearby; its "shot heard round the world" became the enduring phrase for that day's defiance. The statue of an embattled farmer laying down his plow for his musket marks the ground where ordinary townsmen stood against the era's greatest empire.

Westport, CT

In April 1777 a British column struck inland to destroy Continental supplies at Danbury, and Connecticut's militia and Continentals rushed to meet them. In the running fights that followed, General David Wooster was mortally wounded and Colonel Abraham Gould was among the more than one hundred who fell defending their state. This Minuteman statue in Westport honors those patriots and the citizen-soldiers who turned out to resist the raid.

Lexington, MA

On the morning of April 19, 1775, roughly seventy colonial militiamen faced British regulars on Lexington Green. Their captain is remembered for urging them to hold their ground but not to fire first — but if the enemy meant to have a war, to let it begin there. In the confusion a shot rang out, and the volley that followed opened the American Revolution. The Minuteman statue commemorates those citizen-soldiers.

Warwick Township, PA · est. 2006

In the tense summer of 1777, General Washington gathered some 11,000 Continental soldiers at the Neshaminy encampment and made this house his headquarters for two weeks in August. It was here that a young Marquis de Lafayette first served in the field as a major general, and where the Polish exile Casimir Pulaski met Washington for the first time. Pulaski would soon organize American mounted forces and earn lasting fame as the "Father of the American Cavalry."

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

Mary Hays McCauley, remembered in legend as "Molly Pitcher," became one of the Revolution's most enduring heroines for her courage at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, where women carried water to overheated soldiers and, by tradition, she took a place at the cannon. She is buried in the Old Graveyard just east of here, among many of Carlisle's distinguished early citizens.

Manalapan Township, NJ

In the sweltering heat of June 28, 1778, Continental and British armies clashed across the fields of Monmouth, New Jersey, in one of the largest battles of the Revolutionary War. Legend holds that when a soldier fell at his cannon, a woman who had been carrying water to the parched troops—remembered as Molly Pitcher—stepped forward and took his place at the gun. The name came to honor the many women who followed the army, hauling water to cool both throats and overheated cannon barrels during that brutal day.