Civil War

Longview, TX

Born in 1846, John Tyson Smith moved as a boy from Alabama to Upshur County and, after serving in the Confederate army, settled in Longview around 1872. He built a long career in public life—city tax assessor, justice of the peace, and five terms as Gregg County judge—while developing downtown real estate and running the Smith Upstairs Opera House in the early 1900s.

Salisbury, NC

John W. Ellis served as governor of North Carolina from 1859 to 1861 and was a forceful leader of the state's secession movement on the eve of the Civil War. He rejected President Lincoln's call for troops and helped steer North Carolina out of the Union, but died in July 1861 at just 40, only months into the war he had helped bring about.

Mount Pleasant, PA · est. 1951

John W. Geary was born in this Westmoreland County town in 1819 and lived one of the most far-flung public careers of his generation. He served as the first mayor of San Francisco in the Gold Rush year of 1850, was appointed territorial governor of a bitterly divided "Bleeding Kansas" in 1856, rose to major general in the Civil War, and finally served as governor of Pennsylvania from 1867 until his death in 1873.

New Cumberland, PA · est. 1995

John W. Geary lived one of the most eventful public lives of 19th-century America. He served as a colonel in the Mexican War, became the first postmaster and first mayor of San Francisco during the Gold Rush, and was appointed governor of the volatile Kansas Territory during the "Bleeding Kansas" crisis over slavery. He then won distinction as a Union major general in the Civil War before serving two terms as governor of Pennsylvania from 1867 to 1873. His home stood just east of here in New Cumberland.

Dallas, TX

Kentucky-born John W. Lane came to Dallas in 1859 as a trained printer for the Dallas Herald, then joined the 18th Texas Cavalry in 1861 to serve in the Civil War. Returning home, he was elected mayor before resigning to serve as secretary to Governor James Throckmorton, and as a state representative he reshaped Dallas's future by amending 1871 legislation that redirected the route of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. That single change helped secure the city's growth into a rail hub.

Warrenton, NC

During the Civil War, John White served as North Carolina's commissioner sent to England to purchase ships and military supplies for the Confederate war effort, braving the risks of transatlantic wartime trade. After the war, in 1870, General Robert E. Lee visited White at his Warrenton home, which stood one block east. White's mission reflected the Confederacy's heavy reliance on European goods.

Hallettsville, TX

John Wilkins Whitfield rose to brigadier general in the Confederate Army, leading the mounted command known as Whitfield's Legion. He fought at Pea Ridge and Iuka and commanded a brigade during the Vicksburg Campaign, later serving in the Texas legislature. His marker, erected by the state in 1963, records a career that spanned battlefield and statehouse.

Cleburne, TX

Johnson County was created in 1854 and named for Middleton T. Johnson, a South Carolina native and former Alabama legislator who became a leading figure in early Texas, serving in the Texas Rangers and fighting in the Mexican War and the Civil War. The county seat moved twice before settling at Camp Henderson, a Confederate recruiting camp beside noted springs, which in 1867 was renamed Cleburne to honor the Confederate general Patrick Cleburne. The frequent moves reflect the unsettled, fast-changing character of the North Texas frontier.

Arlington, TX

Johnson Station began in the 1840s as a ranger station and trading post on the North Texas frontier, and its cemetery remains the clearest reminder of that vanished settlement. The oldest marked grave dates to 1863, though older, unmarked burials likely lie among them; here rest pioneer families, Civil War veterans, and charter members of an early Masonic lodge, in a district long since absorbed into Arlington.

Cleburne, TX

This marker honors the two Confederate officers who gave their names to Johnson County and its seat. Colonel Middleton T. Johnson, a legislator and Texas Ranger who had fought in the Mexican War, raised the 14th Texas Cavalry for Confederate service. General Patrick R. Cleburne, an Irish immigrant lawyer from Arkansas, rose to major general and led Texans of Granbury's Brigade with such tenacity that he became known as the "Stonewall Jackson of the West" before falling at the Battle of Franklin in 1864.

Georgetown, TX

In 1902 a handful of community leaders bought two acres near the San Gabriel River so that area residents could bury their dead free of charge, founding Jonah Cemetery for a then-thriving rural settlement. Among its graves are Confederate veterans and twin sisters interred near many of their combined twenty-two children. As the community around it dwindled, the cemetery endured as one of its last physical traces.

Palo Pinto, TX

Virginia-born Jonathan Hamilton "Ham" Baker reached Texas in 1858 and settled in Palo Pinto County, where he opened what is believed to be its first organized school and helped found its first Methodist church. On the exposed frontier he led local defenders against Comanche raids, rode with Lawrence Sullivan Ross in the 1860 recovery of Cynthia Ann Parker, and captained the home guard during the Civil War. He was also a trail-driving cattleman and tireless local officeholder whose decades-long diary preserves a vivid record of frontier Texas.

Asheboro, NC

Jonathan Worth managed North Carolina's finances as state treasurer during the Civil War, then won election as governor in 1865 amid the wreckage of defeat. A former Unionist, he struggled to steer the state through federal Reconstruction before being removed from office in 1868. His home once stood a block south of here.

Utopia vicinity, TX

In 1879 the Rev. Irvin Jones deeded two acres of his homestead to the Utopia Methodist Church for a cemetery, and his wife Elizabeth was buried at its center in 1886. Early settlers of the Taylor and Utopia communities rest here, alongside several Civil War veterans and the Mexican War veteran and Texas Ranger Ben Highsmith. Also interred is George Barker, the teacher credited with giving Utopia its name.

Anson, TX

This corner of west Texas was crossed by an emigrant trail and a frontier military road guarded by Fort Phantom Hill, founded in 1851. The county was named for Anson Jones, a San Jacinto veteran and the last president of the Republic of Texas. Phantom Hill served as a Butterfield Overland Mail station in 1858-61 and then as a Civil War patrol point trying to curb frontier raids, before the county was fully organized in 1881 with Anson as its seat.

New Ulm, TX

Born on the Czech-Moravian border in 1806 and trained as a tailor, Josef Lidumil Leshikar became a voice for political freedom during the revolutions of 1848. In 1853 he led a party of immigrants to the new Czech settlements of Austin County, Texas. A committed opponent of slavery, he used Czech and American newspapers to argue against secession and civil war even as his adopted state marched the other way.

Wharton, TX

Ohio native Joseph Andrew Hamilton fought for the Union during the Civil War, then settled in Wharton around 1866 and took up a string of local political offices in a defeated but reorganizing South. He bought this property in 1885 and moved his family into an existing one-story frame house, which was dramatically enlarged in 1907 by raising the original structure and building a new floor beneath it. The result carries touches of the neoclassical style.

Newcastle, TX

Kentucky-born and Louisville-trained in law, Joseph Alfred Woolfolk came to frontier Belknap in 1858 to survey Peters Colony land grants and soon served as a Young County official. He joined a home-guard Ranger unit and then the Confederate army, was captured in West Virginia in 1863, and spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ohio. Back in Texas, he gained notoriety in 1871 when the court appointed him to defend the Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree at their murder trial after the Salt Creek raid.

Driftwood, TX

Joseph B. Rogers (1833–1912), son of settlers who reached Texas in 1831, rode with Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War before buying this Hays County land in 1869. In the early 1870s he hired local workmen to raise this native limestone house, built in the pioneer fashion with a central hall and a chimney at each end. His descendants preserved the home, replacing its wooden porch with concrete in 1916.

Round Mountain, TX

North Carolina native Joseph Bird brought his family to the land between Cypress Creek and the Pedernales around 1854, and for half a century helped build Blanco County as a frontier Baptist circuit minister, postmaster, rancher, and county judge. The settlement that grew up around him was first called Birdtown before being renamed Round Mountain, where a post office opened in 1857. Bird rode a preaching circuit, founded churches, and served as a Confederate first lieutenant during the Civil War.

Mexia, TX

Established in 1889, this 70-acre camp of the United Confederate Veterans hosted enormous annual reunions in an era when Texas still looked to its Civil War veterans for leadership. Each August, under the full moon, thousands gathered in tents and brush arbors for speeches, memorial programs, and feasts of barbecue and sweet potato pie, with special trains running from Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston; at its peak the encampment drew 5,000 people, and the Civil War cannon "Old Valverde" fired dawn and dusk salutes until 1940. The grounds remain dedicated to the memory of the Confederate veterans who once camped here.

San Marcos, TX

Tennessee native Joseph W. Earnest came to Hays County with his family in 1854 and grew up to serve in both the Texas Rangers and the Confederate army before making his mark as a merchant and cattleman. In 1892 he hired local builder Charles Sinz to raise this Victorian home in San Marcos, where his niece Mary Cock was reared and which later passed to her and her husband Irvin Rylander.

Newton, TX

Josephus S. Irvine came to Texas as a boy in 1830 and, at seventeen, took his place among the soldiers who won Texas independence at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He went on to serve as a major in a Texas regiment of the Confederacy during the Civil War and as a Masonic Grand Lodge chaplain. This state marker honors a life that spanned the founding of the Republic and the war that divided the nation.

Laredo, TX

This Laredo home traces to about 1840 and the family of Juan Francisco Farías, son of a Laredo alcalde and himself an alderman, mayor, and secretary to the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande. Built of locally fired brick clad in stucco, with two-foot walls, four fireplaces, and Corinthian porch columns, it stayed in the family for five generations until 1974. During the Civil War, Colonel Santos Benavides and Mayor Farías reportedly gathered here to plan Laredo's defense against Union forces.

Haltom City, TX

Benjamin Franklin Barkley, a Kentucky-born physician turned lawyer, settled at Birdville in North Texas in 1855. A Republican who spoke openly against slavery and secession in the heart of the Confederacy, he treated wounded Confederate soldiers and aided their families even as his Union loyalty put his life at risk. During Reconstruction he headed the county registration board, served as county judge, and used federal troops to protect the rights of freed people before Democrats swept the county in 1873.

Corsicana, TX

Eldred James Simkins came to Corsicana from South Carolina in 1871, a Confederate veteran of four years' service whose brother was credited with firing the first shot on Fort Sumter. Building the first rooms of this house in 1873, he rose to prominence as a lawyer, University of Texas regent, state senator, and judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. He helped draft the law creating the Texas Railroad Commission and authored a respected work on jurisprudence.

Wharton, TX

A native of Dublin, George E. Quinan emigrated to Texas in the 1830s and by the mid-1840s had set up a law office in Wharton, where he was elected district attorney in 1845. He served two terms in the Texas Senate on the eve of the Civil War, fought in the Confederate army, and later sat on the Commission of Civil Appeals. In 1879 he was among the founders of the state bar association.

Indianola, TX

Educated in Germany and seasoned as a young merchant in London, Henry Joseph Huck sailed to America in the 1840s and made his way to Indian Point—soon the booming Gulf port of Indianola. He opened lumber yards, became one of Calhoun County's first probate judges, promoted railroads, and served as a Confederate quartermaster during the Civil War. Twice hurricanes battered Indianola, and the catastrophic 1886 storm destroyed his business and the town itself, driving him at last to Austin.

Devine, TX

Nova Scotia–born Thomas L. Devine came to Texas in 1843 and rose to the district bench, then threw himself into secession, helping seize federal property and forcing the surrender of U.S. troops in 1861. Through the Civil War he served as one of only two Confederate judges in Texas, ruling on blockade prizes, contraband, and citizens accused of Union loyalty. Twice indicted for treason after the war—an ignominy shared only with Jefferson Davis—he was pardoned in 1867 and later sat on the Texas Supreme Court, with this town taking his name in 1882.

Paducah, KY

For six years in the 1890s, Judge William Sutton Bishop presided over this district's circuit court—and unknowingly earned a kind of literary immortality. His friend, the writer Irvin S. Cobb, transformed him into the beloved fictional "Judge Priest," hero of a popular series of stories and films. A Confederate veteran of the 7th Kentucky Infantry, Bishop was remembered by the local bar with the epitaph "This was a man."

Paris, TX

Judge William Henry Lightfoot built this Paris, Texas home in 1876, hauling the lumber from Jefferson and using square nails and pegged pine floors in the fashion of the day. A Confederate veteran who rode with Forrest's Cavalry, Lightfoot later practiced law in partnership with General and U.S. Senator Sam B. Maxey. The house was restored in the 20th century and recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Galveston, TX

Though Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in the rebelling states free as of January 1863, the news—and the Union power to enforce it—did not reach Texas until the Civil War was over. On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and read General Order No. 3, informing the people of Texas that all slaves were free. Freed African Americans began marking "Emancipation Day" the very next year, and the celebration grew into Juneteenth, which became a Texas state holiday in 1979 and is now observed around the world.

Sabine Pass, TX

Georgia native Kate Dorman ran the Catfish Hotel at Sabine Pass from the late 1840s, weathering widowhood and remarriage before turning her hotel into a hospital during an 1862 yellow fever epidemic. A fierce Confederate supporter, she braved enemy fire to carry food to Lt. Dick Dowling's men during the 1863 Battle of Sabine Pass. Her wartime courage made her a local legend of the Texas coast.

Kempner, TX

Founded in 1882, this town honors Harris Kempner, a Polish immigrant who became a Texas banker, railroad magnate, and philanthropist. After arriving in America he joined Parson's Brigade in the Confederate Army and was wounded in the Red River Campaign, left for dead on the battlefield before recovering to serve out the war. He went on to help rebuild Texas in the decades that followed.

Whitewright, TX

First settled in the 1830s as Annaliza, this Grayson County community was renamed by Kentucky emigrants in 1858 and laid out in an unusual pattern meant to guard against raids on the frontier. A stop on freight and stage routes, it became a cradle of "Sacred Harp" shape-note singing and, during the Civil War, a rendezvous for the notorious Quantrill guerrilla band. Its layered history packs settlement, culture, and wartime lawlessness into one small crossroads.

Fort Worth, TX

A Tennessee-born major in the 7th Texas Infantry, Khleber Miller Van Zandt came to Fort Worth in 1865 and threw himself into building the frontier town. As merchant, banker, and rancher he helped make the city a rail hub and had a hand in founding its newspaper, public schools, streetcars, and First Christian Church. He served in the state legislature and the 1875 Constitutional Convention, and late in life led the United Confederate Veterans nationally.

Hanover, PA · est. 1954

On June 30, 1863, as Confederate cavalry struck the Union rear southeast of town, Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick set up the headquarters of his Third Cavalry Division in this Hanover building. From here he directed the Union response during the fighting that briefly gave Stuart's troopers the town. The episode came just days before the armies met at Gettysburg.

Kingsville, TX

Founded in 1853 by Capt. Richard King, the King Ranch became a vital way-station on the wartime "cotton road" — the Confederacy's lifeline to the outside world. As the Union blockade choked Southern ports, wagons hauled cotton across South Texas to King's operation, then on to Matamoros, Mexico, where it was traded for guns, medicine, and coffee. The ranch fed and sheltered teamsters and Confederate troops alike, and drew both bandits and Federal raiders determined to cut the trade.

Kittrell, NC

During the last, desperate years of the Civil War, the Kittrell Springs Hotel was pressed into service as a Confederate hospital, and the men who died there were laid to rest nearby. Fifty-two soldiers, each grave individually marked, rest in this cemetery a short walk to the northeast. Their deaths in 1864–65 speak to the sickness and wounds that filled the war's makeshift hospitals far from the famous battlefields.

Kittrell, NC

In the nineteenth century, Kittrell's Springs drew visitors as a fashionable health resort and social retreat, its mineral waters promising restoration. When the Civil War came, the resort took on a graver role as the site of North Carolina's first Confederate General Hospital, operating from 1861 to 1865. The springs themselves lie a half mile west.

Silsbee, TX

August Knupple, a Prussian immigrant who came to Texas in 1846 to farm, established this cemetery on his land around 1870, though the earliest marked grave dates to 1871. Its stones — including Woodmen of the World markers and the graves of Civil War veterans — record at least sixteen nineteenth-century burials. Since the 1930s, family, volunteers, and a cemetery association have kept watch over the resting place of the pioneering Knupple family and their neighbors.

La Vernia, TX

Founded about 1846–47 by Claiborne Rector, who built a stage stop and blacksmith shop to serve travelers on the Chihuahua Road, this Wilson County settlement grew up along one of early Texas's major trails—still traced by Main Street today. First called 'Post Oak,' it was renamed for the green oaks of the area when mail service began in 1856. Settled largely by Southerners seeking fertile land, it became a Civil War recruiting and officer-training center.

Nordheim, TX

Born in Germany, H. W. Laging joined the great mid-century wave of German immigrants who settled the Texas Hill Country and coastal plains, arriving in 1860 and marrying a fellow German settler. He took up arms for the Confederacy in a Texas infantry unit, then returned to build a successful life as a farmer and businessman. Beloved as "Papa Laging," he lived on as the last surviving Confederate veteran of his community, a bridge between the German immigrant experience and the Civil War generation.

Cleburne, TX

Cleburne, the Johnson County seat, took its name from Patrick Cleburne, the Confederate general who led Texas troops in the Civil War. In the early 1960s the growing city approved a multimillion-dollar bond to dam its water supply, and by 1964 a 2,000-acre reservoir bearing the general's name stood ready to serve the community. The lake and its treatment plant reflect the postwar boom in municipal infrastructure across Texas.

Mandeville, LA

On the Mandeville lakefront, this site marks the Lake Shore Hotel, which served as a Soldiers' Home between 1854 and 1868. Spanning the Civil War years, it sheltered soldiers along Lake Pontchartrain during one of the most turbulent chapters in Louisiana's history.

Paris, TX

Lamar County sat on the uneasy northern edge of Texas during the Civil War, a farming and transport hub near the Red River and Indian Territory. Notably, its delegation cast the only unanimous vote against secession at the state convention, and county voters likewise opposed it—yet once war came, the county raised at least nine combat companies, including the 9th Texas Infantry that bled at Shiloh and later served in Hood's Texas Brigade. Local men rose to Confederate general's rank, and cattleman John Chisum supplied beef to the armies.

Lampasas, TX

Organized in 1856 with barely a thousand residents, Lampasas County voted narrowly for secession in 1861 and sent its men into Confederate and Texas state units during the Civil War. Those who stayed behind mustered as Minute Men to guard the home front, then returned to help wives and children tend the cattle and crops. All the while this remained a raw frontier, where the war overlapped with raids as Indians took horses and killed hunters.

Winnsboro, TX

This Winnsboro home was probably built in the early 1890s for merchant and civic leader J. M. Lankford, then remodeled in 1906 after Civil War veteran J. A. Stinson bought it. Stinson was father-in-law to Texas Governor James S. Hogg, and the house—kept in his family until 1956—shows Colonial Revival touches in its stately columns and front portico. It stands as a well-preserved example of small-town Texas domestic architecture from the Gilded Age.

Los Indios, TX

On June 25, 1864, in the far southern reaches of Texas along the Rio Grande, Confederate Colonel John S. "Rip" Ford's forces clashed with Union troops at Las Rucias and drove them from the field. The engagement was part of the seesaw struggle for control of the border cotton trade that funneled Confederate goods through Mexico. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1936 to remember the little-known Civil War fight on the Rio Grande frontier.

Brownsville, TX

On May 13, 1865—more than a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox—Confederate and Union soldiers clashed here on the Rio Grande in the Battle of Palmito Ranch. Colonel John S. "Rip" Ford's Confederates won the fight, a bitter irony given that the war was already effectively over and word of its end had not reached this remote corner of Texas. It stands as the last land engagement of the American Civil War.

Ayr Township, PA · est. 2021

In the summer of 1864, Confederate cavalry under General Bradley T. Johnson camped on this ground on July 31, just after McCausland's raiders had burned Chambersburg in retaliation for Union destruction in the Shenandoah Valley. They proved to be the last Confederate troops ever to camp on Pennsylvania soil. Union cavalry under General William W. Averell gave chase and routed the raiders a week later at the Battle of Moorefield in West Virginia.

Chatfield, TX

Confederate General Jo Shelby's Missouri cavalry — the storied 'Iron Brigade' — wintered in Texas in 1864-65 and, refusing to surrender as the Confederacy collapsed, bivouacked near Chambers Creek south of Chatfield. On June 2, 1865, the last organized Confederate unit lined up here for what became known as the 'last review of the Confederacy' before Shelby led hundreds of his men south to offer their swords in Mexico.

London, KY

Laurel Seminary grew from an 1826 act of the Kentucky legislature that set aside land to fund education in Laurel and other counties. The land was eventually sold and the seminary opened in 1858, only to be pressed into service as a hospital during the Civil War. In 1900 Governor W. S. Taylor even convened a special session of the legislature here, and the institution carried on as a common, private, and public school into the twentieth century.

McKinney, TX

From this McKinney law office practiced James W. Throckmorton, who served as governor of Texas in 1866 and 1867 during the fraught early years of Reconstruction before military authorities removed him from office. The building's front has been remodeled, but its interior survives much as he knew it. It stands as a tangible link to Texas politics in the turbulent aftermath of the Civil War.

Raleigh, NC

Lawrence O'Bryan Branch built a public life across business and politics before the Civil War, serving as president of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad and three terms in Congress. When war came he became a Confederate brigadier general. His home stood near this marker, and his grave lies to the east.

Willow Park, TX

Born into slavery in 1839 on a Kentucky plantation, Lawson Daniel Gratz enlisted in the Federal army in 1864 and rose to first sergeant in the 114th U.S. Colored Infantry, serving at the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond and standing at Appomattox when Lee surrendered. He later reenlisted with the 10th U.S. Cavalry — the Buffalo Soldiers — and kept serving even after an explosion cost him the sight in one eye. Settling at last in Parker County, he raised fourteen children and was remembered for his leadership and unbending devotion to duty.

Murchison, TX

The Leagueville community grew from the Aaron York survey, and tradition holds its cemetery began beside an early schoolhouse on land donated by B.T. and Annie Roberts. That pioneer schoolhouse also hosted worship, and in 1880 the congregation that became Leagueville Baptist Church organized there. The oldest marked grave, that of Alabama native Jacob Colvin, dates to 1863, and pioneer families like the Reagans, Adairs, and Colvins rest among many unmarked early burials.

Burton, TX

Virginia-born Leander H. McNelly served as a Confederate soldier before Reconstruction Governor E. J. Davis named him one of four captains of the Texas State Police in 1870. Later, as a Texas Ranger, McNelly commanded a special force—the Washington County Volunteer Militia—sent to quell the violent Sutton-Taylor feud. He then took his men, who proudly called themselves the "Little McNellys," to the Rio Grande to fight cross-border cattle raiders in the so-called Las Cuevas War.

Gilmer, TX

During the Civil War this East Texas site hummed with the unglamorous but vital work of keeping an army moving. A shoe factory turned local leather into footgear for Confederate soldiers, while a nearby harness shop produced the bridles, saddles, and rigging that hitched horses and mules to gun carriages, wagons, and ambulances. Fed by a tanyard that processed over 2,000 hides a year, East Texas plants supplied the South hundreds of saddles and harness sets each month.

Albany, TX

Discovered by trail drivers in 1861 and developed by W. H. Ledbetter beginning in 1862, this Hubbard Creek salt works answered the desperate Confederate need for salt — the only means, before refrigeration, of preserving meat. Large furnaces and kettles hauled in from East Texas turned out salt for Confederate troops west of the Mississippi, state militia, ranches, and settlers who traveled up to 200 miles to fetch it. Frontier cavalry guarded the works from raids, and after nearby Fort Griffin was established in 1867 a cannon was even loaned for its defense; production continued until 1880.