American Revolution

Newton, NJ

During the Revolution, Newton sat in contested country raided by the notorious Loyalist partisan James Moody, whose daring strikes harried Patriot supply lines across northern New Jersey. The town also served as a supply depot under a Continental assistant quartermaster, and in October 1779 troops passed through in connection with the campaign against the Iroquois. This crossroads saw the war's shadow fall well behind the main battle lines.

Morgantown, KY

Founded as Funkhouser Hill, this Butler County seat was renamed Morgan Town in December 1810 to honor Daniel Morgan, one of the American Revolution's most gifted battlefield tacticians. The settlement grew from a nucleus of Revolutionary War veterans granted land for their service, mingling with pioneers streaming westward across early Kentucky. Morgan himself, born around 1735, rose from a French and Indian War teamster to the general whose double-envelopment of Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens in 1781 earned him a gold medal from Congress.

Prospect Park, PA · est. 1966

This riverside homestead was begun around 1654 by Morton Mortonson, part of the Swedish and Finnish settlement of New Sweden along the Delaware, and it is among the oldest European-built structures in the region. The family line ran forward to John Morton, the Pennsylvania delegate who cast a decisive vote and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Town of DeWitt, NY

In the years just after the American Revolution, surveyors and settlers pushed into the Military Tract of central New York—lands set aside to reward Revolutionary War veterans. Moses De Witt was among the earliest and most energetic pioneers of this frontier region, serving both as a major of militia and as a judge of the county courts. He died young, at only 27, in 1794, but left enough of a mark that the town of DeWitt carries his name today.

Hamilton Township, OH

In 1795 the Ohio country was raw frontier, freshly opened to settlement as the Northwest Indian War drew to a close. The lands here were part of the Virginia Military District, a broad reserve Virginia had set aside to pay its Revolutionary War veterans in acres rather than cash. William Mounts planted the first settlement of those military lands in Warren County just west of this spot, establishing a frontier 'station' — a fortified cluster of cabins where early families gathered for safety on the edge of American expansion.

Greenville, KY

Muhlenberg County, formed in 1798, takes its name from Peter Muhlenberg, the Pennsylvania clergyman who famously declared there was "a time to preach and a time to fight"—and shed his pastor's robes to raise the 8th Virginia Regiment. He served from 1776 through the victory at Yorktown, then entered Congress and the Senate. Many veterans of his regiment became pioneers in this corner of Kentucky.

Trappe, PA · est. 1960

This Trappe house was the home of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the German-born pastor often called the organizer of the Lutheran church in America, who lived here from 1776 until his death in 1787. His son Peter Muhlenberg — famous for reportedly shedding his clerical robes to reveal a Continental uniform — went on to become a general in the Revolution and later lived in the same house. Under one roof the family joined the story of American religion to the story of American independence.

Muncy Creek Township, PA · est. 1947

Around 1772 John Alward raised this valley's first gristmill, a cornerstone of any frontier settlement where neighbors brought grain to be ground into flour and meal. Burned by Native raiders in 1779 amid the Revolution's border warfare, it was rebuilt again and again—new mills rising in 1783 and 1800—and the last of them ground on until 1872, a full century of milling on one spot.

Murfreesboro, NC

The Murfree House was home to William Hardy Murfree, a North Carolina legislator who went on to serve in the U.S. Congress from 1813 to 1817 and cast a ballot as a presidential elector in 1812. He belonged to the founding generation of leaders who steered the young republic through its early decades. The nearby town of Murfreesboro bears his family's name.

Hillsborough, NC

On October 23, 1783, officers of North Carolina's Continental Line gathered in Hillsborough to form the state branch of the Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal order of Revolutionary War veterans. General Jethro Sumner served as its first president.

Lexington, NC

In the Piedmont of North Carolina, the town of Lexington took its name from the opening clash of the American Revolution. When word of the April 19, 1775 fighting at Lexington, Massachusetts reached the Carolina backcountry, local patriots honored the moment by attaching the name to their settlement. Lexington later became the seat of Davidson County when it was formed in 1822, and in 1928 residents set down this marker to record how their community came to be named.

New York, NY

In September 1776, with New York City fallen to the British, the young Continental officer Nathan Hale slipped behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and was captured. A Yale graduate barely into his twenties, he was hanged the next morning, reportedly declaring that he regretted having but one life to give for his country.

Charlotte, NC

On December 3, 1780, General Nathanael Greene took command of the battered Southern Continental Army at Charlotte, replacing Horatio Gates after the disaster at Camden. A self-taught Rhode Island Quaker's son, Greene rebuilt the ragged force and waged a brilliant war of maneuver against Cornwallis across the Carolinas. He never won a major battle outright, yet steadily bled the British toward defeat.

City of Rochester, NY

Colonel Nathaniel Rochester was a Revolutionary War veteran and Maryland landholder who, in the early 19th century, purchased a tract of land along the Genesee River and laid out the settlement that would grow into the booming flour-milling city bearing his name. This small park in the South Wedge neighborhood was dedicated in 2008 to honor that founder while celebrating the diverse community that thrives there today. The marker links Rochester's frontier-era origins to the everyday life of one of its historic close-knit neighborhoods.

Town of Huntington, NY

Nathaniel Whitman (1732–1804) served as an officer in the Huntington militia during the American Revolution, one of the citizen-soldiers who defended Long Island's towns in a war fought close to home. After the British victory at the 1776 Battle of Long Island, the region fell under a harsh occupation that made local militia service both perilous and essential. His home and grave mark the life of one of the many ordinary patriots whose service rarely reached the history books.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1999

When George Washington died in December 1799, Philadelphia was still the nation's capital, and Congress set aside December 26 for formal mourning. The national memorial service filled Zion Lutheran Church, which stood on this site from 1766 to 1870, with President John Adams among the mourners. It was here that Congressman Henry Lee delivered the immortal eulogy remembering Washington as 'first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.'

Crabbs Prairie, TX

Mark Manning was born in 1750 and served in the American Revolution from the Halifax District of his native North Carolina. Living to a remarkable old age, he came to Texas at the age of 97 to join sons who held large land grants and helped settle Walker County—sons who had themselves fought in the Texas Revolution. Manning was one of some twenty or thirty Revolutionary War veterans who followed the nation's westward movement all the way to Texas, and he is buried in a nearby family cemetery.

Pittsburgh, PA

Alexander Negley was among the German-speaking immigrants of Swiss descent who streamed into eastern Pennsylvania in the 1730s and later pushed west toward the Ohio country. After serving in the War for Independence, he brought his family to the forks of the Ohio in 1778 and took up land along the wooded ridges that are now Pittsburgh's Highland Park — frontier ground when the Revolution was still being fought. His homestead helped anchor one of the early European settlements in what was then the western edge of American reach.

Bardstown, KY

Nelson County, formed in 1784, honors Thomas Nelson (1738–89), a Virginia planter-statesman who served in the House of Burgesses, the first provincial convention, and the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. As commander of the Virginia militia and wartime governor, he is remembered for ordering American guns to fire on his own house at Yorktown when the British made it their headquarters.

Chevy Chase, MD

In 1774, on the eve of the Revolution, Thomas Johns—soon to serve as a colonel in the Continental cause—joined Georgetown merchant Thomas Richardson to raise flour mills along the reliable current of Rock Creek. Grinding grain into flour for the growing capital region, mills operated on this site for roughly a century, outlasting the men who built them and falling silent only in the 1870s. In an age before steam, a dependable creek was industrial infrastructure, and Rock Creek's waters turned the stones that fed Georgetown's wharves and tables.

Town of Elmira, NY

In the late summer of 1779, the Sullivan Expedition swept through the heart of Iroquois country in what is now western New York. The village referenced here, christened "Newtown" by General John Sullivan's troops, was a Loyalist and Native settlement that lay in the army's path. After the nearby Battle of Newtown on August 29, 1779 — the campaign's only major engagement — Sullivan's forces razed villages and crops as part of a scorched-earth strategy ordered by George Washington to break the power of the British-allied Iroquois nations.

Portsmouth, VA

Founded in 1767 on the Elizabeth River, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, is one of the oldest and largest shipyards in the United States. Despite its name, the yard sits in Portsmouth, and over two centuries it built, repaired, and outfitted vessels through the American Revolution, the Civil War — when the ironclad CSS Virginia was rebuilt there from the burned USS Merrimack — and both World Wars. This marker was unveiled in 1967 to commemorate the yard's 200th anniversary, dedicated by senior Navy officers including the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet.

Halifax County, NC

On December 18, 1776, months after the Declaration of Independence, delegates meeting at Halifax adopted the first constitution of the independent state of North Carolina, together with a declaration of rights. It established the framework of state government for the newly sovereign state. Halifax was already a hotbed of Revolutionary sentiment, having earlier produced the Halifax Resolves calling for independence.

Dundalk, MD

In the late summer of 1814, fresh from burning Washington, a British army pushed toward Baltimore, the young nation's third-largest city and a nest of the privateers that had harried British shipping. On September 12, Maryland militia under General John Stricker met the advancing column here at North Point, and in the opening skirmishing the British commander, General Robert Ross, was mortally wounded. The militia's stubborn delaying action bought precious hours for Baltimore's main defenses to prepare.

Town of Huntington, NY

During the Revolutionary War, British-occupied Long Island suffered under harsh Loyalist rule, and Huntington's old burial ground became the scene of one of its most notorious indignities. In 1782, after the fighting had largely ended, the Loyalist officer Benjamin Thompson—the brilliant, opportunistic scientist later ennobled in Europe as Count Rumford—ordered a fort built directly atop this hill of graves. Soldiers reportedly tore up headstones to raise the earthworks, and the grim outpost earned the biblical name Fort Golgotha, the 'place of the skull.' The desecration outraged townspeople and became a lasting emblem of wartime occupation on Long Island.

Vincennes, IN

This cemetery holds the mostly unmarked graves of some 4,000 early residents of Vincennes, among them Revolutionary soldiers who aided George Rogers Clark. On its ground stood the log church where townspeople swore allegiance to Virginia and the United States in 1778, and where in February 1779 Clark and British commander Henry Hamilton negotiated the surrender of nearby Fort Sackville.

Winchendon, MA

This plaque marks the resting place of Winchendon's earliest settlers, the families who cleared north-central Massachusetts' dense woodland into farmland in the decades before the town was formally incorporated in 1764. The first burial here in 1752 predates the Revolution, and the ground holds 34 veterans of the War for Independence — ordinary townspeople who left their fields to fight. Dedicated in 1976 during the nation's Bicentennial, the marker gathers a colonial frontier community and its Revolutionary generation into a single spot of remembrance.

Bridgeport, CT

In the crowded decades of colonial New England, a town set aside common ground where livestock could graze and neighbors could gather — and in 1740 the people of what was then Stratfield laid out this green as a perpetual common, shading it with elms whose descendants still stand. The inscription's 1635–1935 span marks three centuries of settlement along the Connecticut shore. Its proudest memory is the Revolution: the Pixlee House across the way is remembered as a stop for Generals Washington and Lafayette as the war moved through the region.

Concord, MA · est. 1936

Hours after Lexington, colonial militia massed at Concord's North Bridge and exchanged fire with British regulars, forcing their retreat to Boston. Emerson's 'Concord Hymn' immortalized the moment.

Shirley, MA

On the eve of the Revolution, Shirley was a young Massachusetts farming town, and its first settled minister, Phineas Whitney, made his home in this parsonage. In 1773 it welcomed a notable guest: John Hancock, one of Boston's most prominent patriots, who came to escort home his aunt, Madam Lydia Hancock, and Dorothy Quincy — the woman he would later marry. More than a century afterward, in 1906, the old house was moved to this site and given new life as the rectory of St. Anthony's Church.

Exeter, NH

On the eve of the American Revolution, colonial towns built small, thick-walled 'powder houses' set safely apart from homes to store the community's gunpowder and munitions. This one went up in 1771 in Exeter, a town that would soon serve as New Hampshire's Revolutionary capital, where its provincial congress met and governed once royal authority collapsed. A marker like this points travelers across the river to the surviving structure—a modest building that speaks to how seriously townspeople took the business of arming and defending themselves in a tense pre-war decade.

Boston, MA

This National Historic Landmark plaque honors Old South Church in Boston, whose congregation traces a long lineage in the city's civic and religious life. The present sanctuary, completed in 1875, is a celebrated example of Northern Italian Gothic architecture. The church's history connects to figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley, and to the ferment surrounding the Boston Tea Party.

Boston, MA

This plaque designates the Old South Meeting House, built in 1729, as a National Historic Landmark. As Boston's largest colonial building, it hosted the fiery mass meetings that preceded the Revolution — most famously the gathering on December 16, 1773, from which colonists marched to dump British tea into the harbor. The designation was made under the Historic Sites Act of 1935.

Chester, PA · est. 1954

This ground in Chester marks the site of the first St. Paul's Episcopal Church, built in 1702 in one of Pennsylvania's oldest settlements with roots in New Sweden. Just south lies the grave of John Morton, the Pennsylvania delegate whose vote helped tip the colony toward independence and who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Hampden Township, PA · est. 2018

A Scots-Irish immigrant, Oliver Pollock built a merchant fortune — in part through the slave trade — and poured the modern equivalent of millions into the American Revolution. Convinced that the young nation's future lay in the West, he worked to open trade along the Mississippi River, channeling arms and supplies to the frontier and financing George Rogers Clark's Illinois Campaign. The crushing debts he took on for the cause led to imprisonment and the loss of much of his wealth; he spent his later years, from 1792 to 1806, living here in Cumberland County.

New Haven, CT

The stern motto carved here — 'Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God' — echoes a Revolutionary-era American ideal, a version of a sentiment famously proposed for the national seal in 1776 and embraced by generations who held that resistance to unjust power was a sacred duty. Set on a monument dated 1896, the words carried that founding conviction into the Gilded Age, when Americans often looked back to the founders' language of liberty.

Birmingham Township, PA · est. 1915

From the height of Osborne's Hill, British commander General Sir William Howe watched and directed his army during the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. The ridge gave him a commanding view as his flanking column swung wide around Washington's right and struck where the Americans least expected. It was, in effect, the British headquarters for the day's decisive maneuver.

Grover, NC

On October 4–5, 1780, the Loyalist force commanded by Colonel Patrick Ferguson camped near this site as it moved through the Carolina backcountry. Two days later Ferguson was killed and his command shattered at the Battle of Kings Mountain, a few miles to the southeast.

Boston, MA

North Square was one of colonial Boston's most storied neighborhoods, home to the silversmith and patriot Paul Revere and his wife Rachel. Their neighbors included the British marine Major Pitcairn, royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and merchant families of the town. From here Revere carried the alarm that British troops were marching on Concord, and many local men joined the Boston Tea Party at Griffin's Wharf.

Boston, MA

The Granary Burying Ground, established in 1660, is one of Boston's oldest cemeteries and the resting place of some of its most famous citizens. Among those interred here are the victims of the 1770 Boston Massacre, the parents of Benjamin Franklin, the merchant Peter Faneuil, the patriot Paul Revere, and John Phillips, the first mayor of Boston. It sits along what is now the Freedom Trail.

Boston, MA

From this church's steeple on the night of April 18, 1775, signal lanterns flashed a warning that British regulars were on the move toward Lexington and Concord. The prearranged signal — famously tied to Paul Revere — set the alarm riders in motion across the Massachusetts countryside. Within hours, colonial militia were gathering for the fighting that would open the Revolutionary War.

Boston, MA · est. 1908

This tablet, placed by the Paul Revere Memorial Association, marks the 1908 opening of Revere's old house on North Square to the public. Dedicated on April 19 — the anniversary of the fighting at Lexington and Concord — it was meant to inspire visitors, and especially the young, with the patriot's example. The house is among the oldest surviving buildings in downtown Boston.

Lower Paxton Township, PA · est. 1947

When the Revolution called, a company of riflemen from Paxton Township answered. Under Captain Matthew Smith and Lieutenant Michael Simpson, they marched hundreds of miles north to join General Richard Montgomery's daring assault on Quebec on December 31, 1775. That midwinter attack — one of the war's first major campaigns — ended in bloody failure, but the sharpshooting frontiersmen of Pennsylvania had already earned a fearsome reputation.

Falmouth, KY

Pendleton County, established in 1798 from parts of Bracken and Campbell counties, honors the Virginia patriot-statesman Edmund Pendleton (1721–1803). A longtime member of the House of Burgesses, he served in the First Continental Congress, presided over Virginia's 1776 constitutional convention, and led the 1788 state convention that ratified the Federal Constitution. He capped his career as chief judge of Virginia's Court of Appeals until his death.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1947

This state-line marker distills Pennsylvania's founding story into a single boast worth unpacking. In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn a vast tract of North American land, which Penn envisioned as a haven for his fellow Quakers and a 'holy experiment' in religious tolerance and representative government. A century later, Philadelphia became the crucible where the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and where delegates drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

Frederick County, MD · est. 1948

This border marker salutes Pennsylvania, chartered to William Penn in 1681 as a Quaker 'holy experiment' founded on religious tolerance and fair dealing. Penn's colony grew into one of the most prosperous and diverse in British America, its capital of Philadelphia becoming the beating heart of the Revolution. There the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 and the Constitution framed in 1787 — the two documents that gave the United States its birth and its enduring form.

South Creek Township, PA · est. 1948

This marker greets travelers at the Pennsylvania line with the colony's founding story: chartered in 1681 to William Penn as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and fair dealing. A century later, Philadelphia became the cradle of the American nation, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were both debated and signed. Few places can claim so central a role in the birth of the republic.

New Garden Township, PA · est. 1948

In 1681 William Penn received a royal charter and founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and fair dealing. Within a century its chief city, Philadelphia, became the cradle of American nationhood, where delegates debated and adopted the Declaration of Independence and later framed the Constitution of the United States. This marker greets travelers entering a state that helped author the nation's founding ideals.

Cumberland Valley Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 William Penn received a royal charter and founded Pennsylvania as a "holy experiment" — a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and fair dealing. Less than a century later, its chief city, Philadelphia, would host the two gatherings that gave the nation its founding words: the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution of the United States in 1787. This commemorative marker distills that arc from colonial founding to national birth.

Morrisville, PA · est. 1949

This marker distills Pennsylvania's outsized place in the American founding into a few lines. William Penn secured his charter in 1681 and built a colony rooted in Quaker ideals of tolerance and self-government. A century later its capital, Philadelphia, hosted the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

Marcus Hook, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

Springfield Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

North East Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

Foster Township, PA · est. 1949

This keystone marker salutes the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania itself, founded in 1681 when William Penn received his charter and launched a Quaker "holy experiment" grounded in religious tolerance and representative government. A century later, Pennsylvania stood at the center of the nation's birth, hosting in Philadelphia both the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the framing of the United States Constitution in 1787. Few places carry so much of the American founding.

South Pymatuning Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker "holy experiment," a colony grounded in religious tolerance and self-government that drew settlers of many faiths and nations. That founding spirit ripened in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 and the United States Constitution was framed in 1787. This state commemorative marker salutes the commonwealth as the cradle of the nation's two founding documents.

Dingman Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn a vast American territory to settle a debt, and Penn used it to launch a bold experiment in religious tolerance and self-government rooted in his Quaker faith. That founding vision helped make Philadelphia a natural cradle for the young republic: within a century the colony hosted the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This state-line marker greets travelers with that heritage as they enter Pennsylvania.

Genesee Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn a sweeping American territory, which Penn shaped into a Quaker commonwealth built on religious freedom and representative government. That founding ethos helped make the colony the setting for the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This marker welcomes travelers into Pennsylvania with a reminder of that legacy.

Addison Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn received his American charter in 1681 and founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker commonwealth grounded in religious tolerance and self-rule. That heritage helped make the colony the birthplace of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Standing at the state's edge, this marker announces that founding story to arriving travelers.

Great Bend Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker commonwealth devoted to religious liberty and representative government. Within a century that spirit helped make the colony the setting for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This boundary marker carries that legacy to travelers entering the state.