Civil War

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by survivors in 1888, this monument honors the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry — a regiment of the Bucktail Brigade — for its stand in the First Corps on July 2 and 3, 1863, holding its position under heavy fire until the close of the battle. Among its officers, Henry Huidekoper was wounded and Colonel Langhorne Wister took command amid the desperate first-day fighting. That the veterans themselves raised the stone a quarter-century later speaks to what the ground meant to the men who survived it.

Straban Township, PA

This tablet marks the ground held on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, by the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the mounted fighting east of Gettysburg. As the battle reached its final day, Union cavalry guarded the army's flanks against Confederate horsemen probing for an opening.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the fields south of Gettysburg in early July 1863, this brigade of New York infantry was fed into the fighting that decided the battle's second and third days. Its first commander, Colonel George Willard, was killed on July 2; command then passed to Colonel Eliakim Sherrill of the 126th New York, who fell the following day as Union lines held against Pickett's Charge. Their division commander, General Alexander Hays, summed up the unit's cost in a single grim line about a history 'written in blood.'

Cumberland Township, PA

A short distance from here, on June 26, 1863 — days before the great battle opened — Private George M. Sandoe of Captain Robert Bell's independent Adams County cavalry company was shot and killed as Confederate forces advanced on Gettysburg. His unit was later folded into Company B of the 21st Pennsylvania Cavalry, and Sandoe is remembered as the first Union soldier killed at Gettysburg.

Cumberland Township, PA

The 28th Pennsylvania Infantry took this position around 8 a.m. on July 2, 1863, spreading out as skirmishers and trading fire with the enemy through the day before rejoining its brigade that evening. Skirmishers fought ahead of the main line, probing the enemy and screening the army's movements — dangerous, often overlooked work. The regiment's day here formed part of the wider struggle on this side of the Gettysburg field.

Cumberland Township, PA

This battlefield marker at Gettysburg remembers a young officer of a New York infantry regiment who was killed on July 2, 1863, the ferocious second day of the fight. That afternoon the Union line was battered across the Wheatfield and the rocky ground nearby, where regiments were fed piecemeal into some of the most confused and costly combat of the three-day battle. Small stones like this one are scattered wherever a soldier or unit fell, turning the whole field into a landscape of memory.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker records where Captain Jedediah Chapman of Company H, 27th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, fell during the Battle of Gettysburg. The small 27th Connecticut was heavily engaged in the Wheatfield on July 2, 1863, suffering severe losses in the back-and-forth fighting there. Chapman was among the officers killed as the regiment held its ground on the second day.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where Colonel Charles Frederick Taylor, commander of the 'Bucktails' — the First Rifle Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps — fell on July 2, 1863, at the age of twenty-three. Erected by his comrades in 1905, it honors an officer killed leading his celebrated regiment during the Union counterattack near the Wheatfield. The Bucktails were known for the deer tails worn on their caps and their reputation as skilled riflemen.

Cumberland Township, PA

This memorial marks the spot where Colonel George H. Ward, commanding the 15th Massachusetts Volunteers, was mortally wounded on July 2, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg. His comrades and fellow citizens of Worcester raised the stone in tribute to his valor. Ward had already lost a leg to an earlier wound yet returned to lead his regiment into the second day's fighting.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors Francis Channing Barlow (1834–1896), who commanded the First Division of the Eleventh Corps on the first day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, in the fighting north of town where his line was overwhelmed. A Harvard-educated lawyer who enlisted as a private in 1861, Barlow rose rapidly to major-general and became one of the Union's hard-driving young division commanders. The knoll where his division fought that first afternoon still bears his name.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors Brevet Major General James S. Wadsworth, who commanded the First Division of the First Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, his troops — including the famous Iron Brigade — were among the first Union infantry to meet the Confederate advance west of town, buying precious hours with heavy losses before falling back through Gettysburg to the high ground beyond. A wealthy New Yorker who served without pay, Wadsworth was mortally wounded in Virginia the following year.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors Brevet Major General John C. Robinson, who commanded the Second Division of the First Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, his division held the Union right north and west of town against mounting Confederate pressure, staging a stubborn defense — and a costly fighting withdrawal — that helped keep the army intact for the days ahead. A career soldier, Robinson later lost a leg in Virginia and received the Medal of Honor.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by the State of Connecticut on the Gettysburg battlefield, this monument honors Major General John Sedgwick, the Connecticut-born commander of the Union Army's VI Corps. Sedgwick force-marched his corps some thirty miles to reach Gettysburg in time for the battle's later days in July 1863. Beloved by his men as 'Uncle John,' he was killed the following year at Spotsylvania.

Cumberland Township, PA

Samuel Wylie Crawford was a Union general whose path to the Civil War was unusual: an Army surgeon, he was present at Fort Sumter when the war's opening shots were fired in 1861. By July 1863 he commanded the Pennsylvania Reserves at Gettysburg, and on the battle's second day he led their charge across the Wheatfield and up the slopes near Little Round Top, helping blunt the Confederate assault on the Union left. This monument stands on that ground in the fields south of Gettysburg where his division fought.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Second Division, First Corps, Army of the Potomac, under Brigadier General John C. Robinson, and lists the brigade commanders — including Gabriel Paul and Henry Baxter — who led its regiments at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, this division anchored the Union defense north and west of town, and several of the officers named here were wounded in the desperate fighting. The rapid succession of names on the stone hints at how heavily the leadership was thinned that day.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Eleventh Corps' First Division at Gettysburg, led by Brigadier General Francis C. Barlow until he was severely wounded, after which Brigadier General Adelbert Ames took command. On July 1, 1863, the division held the far right of the Union line on the rising ground north of town — a spot still known as Barlow's Knoll — where its brigades under Leopold von Gilsa, Ames, and Andrew L. Harris were overrun by a Confederate flanking attack. The survivors fell back through Gettysburg to Cemetery Hill.

Gettysburg, PA

This headquarters marker locates the First Brigade of the Second Division, Eleventh Corps, Army of the Potomac, commanded by Colonel Charles R. Coster at Gettysburg. Its regiments — the 134th and 154th New York and the 27th and 73rd Pennsylvania — were thrown into action on July 1, 1863, to cover the Union retreat through the town. Markers like this map the command structure of the vast army that fought here.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the Second Brigade of the Eleventh Corps' Third Division, commanded by Colonel Wladimir Krzyzanowski, a Polish-born officer whose brigade drew together New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin regiments rich in German and immigrant volunteers. On July 1, 1863, the brigade was posted on the plain north of Gettysburg, where it met the Confederate advance before falling back through the town. The listed regiments — the 58th and 119th New York, 82nd Ohio, 75th Pennsylvania, and 26th Wisconsin — reflect the diverse, foreign-born character of the Eleventh Corps.

Gettysburg, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Eleventh Corps' Third Division, led by Major General Carl Schurz, on the fields north of Gettysburg where the battle's first day unfolded on July 1, 1863. Schurz's division — with brigades under Alexander Schimmelfennig and Wladimir Krzyzanowski — was thrown into line to hold the open ground north of town against advancing Confederate forces. Heavily German-American in makeup, these troops fought hard before being driven back through Gettysburg to the safety of Cemetery Hill.

Gettysburg, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the entire Eleventh Corps, commanded at Gettysburg by Major General Oliver O. Howard, whose divisions under Barlow, Ames, von Steinwehr, and Schurz held the northern approaches to town on July 1, 1863. When the Union First Corps commander fell, Howard took overall command of the field and made the fateful decision to fortify Cemetery Hill. Though his corps was overwhelmed and pushed back that afternoon, the ground he chose became the anchor of the Union defense.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Union Eleventh Corps under Major General Oliver O. Howard, which held the ground north of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Overwhelmed by Confederate attacks that opening day, Howard's divisions — led by officers including Carl Schurz, Francis C. Barlow, Adelbert Ames, and Adolph von Steinwehr — fell back through the town to the high ground of Cemetery Hill, where they helped anchor the Union defense. Many of the corps' soldiers were German-born immigrants.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the position of the 1st Volunteer Brigade of the Army of the Potomac's Artillery Reserve at Gettysburg. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Freeman McGilvery, these reserve batteries were fed into the fighting on July 2, 1863, and helped plug a dangerous gap in the Union line near the Plum Run valley. The Artillery Reserve gave Union commanders a pool of guns to rush wherever the battle grew hottest.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker denotes the headquarters position of the 1st Regular Brigade of the Artillery Reserve at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Artillery Reserve was a pool of batteries the Army of the Potomac's commanders could rush to any threatened point on the field, and its regular-army brigade was among the best-drilled gun crews in the force. From posts like this, officers fed fresh cannon into the fighting during the three-day battle of July 1863.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters position of the Second Brigade of the Second Division, Second Corps, Army of the Potomac, led at Gettysburg by Brigadier General Alexander S. Webb. Webb's brigade of Pennsylvania regiments held the low stone wall at 'the Angle' on Cemetery Ridge, the very point where Pickett's Charge struck and broke on July 3, 1863. The fighting here reached the fence line and became the closest thing to a Confederate breakthrough in the whole battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Second Brigade, First Division, Third Corps at Gettysburg, commanded by Brigadier General J. H. Hobart Ward with Colonel Hiram Berdan of the famed U.S. Sharpshooters. Its regiments — drawn from Indiana, Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania — fought in the punishing action across the Wheatfield and Devil's Den on July 2, 1863. The sharpshooters listed here were among the war's most specialized marksmen.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker records the headquarters position of the Third Brigade of the First Division, Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Led first by Colonel Strong Vincent and then by Colonel James C. Rice, the brigade included the 20th Maine, 16th Michigan, 44th New York, and 83rd Pennsylvania — regiments thrown onto Little Round Top to secure the Union left. It is one of the many positional tablets that map the battle's order of battle across the field.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the headquarters of the Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, under Major General George Sykes during the Battle of Gettysburg. It lists his division commanders — Barnes, Ayres, and Crawford — and the corps artillery under Captain Martin. The Fifth Corps was rushed to the Union left on July 2, 1863, where its regiments helped hold Little Round Top and the ground around it.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the field position of the Reserve Brigade of the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Corps, First Division, commanded by Brigadier General Wesley Merritt, on the southern flank at Gettysburg. Made up of regular U.S. Cavalry regiments together with the 6th Pennsylvania, the brigade pressed the Confederate right on July 3, 1863.

Cumberland Township, PA

This War Department tablet traces the First Brigade of the Union Third Cavalry Division on July 3, 1863, as it moved to strike the Confederate right and rear at the southern end of the Gettysburg field. Arriving around 1 P.M. and later supported by the Reserve Cavalry Brigade, its regiments — among them the 18th Pennsylvania, 1st Vermont, and 1st West Virginia — pressed the fighting into the late afternoon. The marker preserves the precise choreography of the day's cavalry combat.

Cumberland Township, PA

This War Department tablet records the movements of the Union Third Cavalry Division under Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick on July 3, 1863. Ordered against the Confederate right and rear, its brigades became engaged on both flanks of the Gettysburg field, with Farnsworth's men entering the fight on the far left early that afternoon. The dry, official language preserves the day's maneuvers in the army's own words.

Hardin County, TN

This marker fixes the spot in Hardin County, Tennessee where General Ulysses S. Grant made his headquarters on the rain-soaked night of April 6, 1862, during the Battle of Shiloh. After a brutal first day that nearly broke his army, Grant famously sheltered under a tree and resolved to attack at dawn — and the next day drove the Confederates from the field. The quotation from his memoirs preserves the general's own memory of that grim night.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012

For three weeks in June 1864, Logan Square filled with exhibits, goods, and crowds as the U.S. Sanitary Commission's Great Central Fair raised more than a million dollars for Union soldiers and their families. The Commission had grown out of the vast, largely female volunteer effort to feed, nurse, and comfort the men at the front. On June 16, President Abraham Lincoln—making his only official public appearance in Philadelphia—stepped before the crowd to praise the work being done there.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the rocky slopes near Little Round Top, this marker remembers two Union officers cut down within moments of each other on July 2, 1863, during the second day at Gettysburg — Brigadier General Stephen H. Weed and Lieutenant Charles E. Hazlett, whose artillery and infantry helped hold the army's imperiled left flank. Weed fell mortally wounded, and Hazlett was killed as he bent over him. Their deaths came at the hinge of one of the war's most desperate defensive stands.

Davilla, TX

In 1875 eight members of the Davilla Baptist Church broke off to organize a congregation nearer their homes, with J. S. Mullins as first pastor. Charter member James Putnam Whittington, a Civil War veteran who had fought at the Battle of Val Verde in H. H. Sibley's New Mexico campaign, suggested naming the new church Val Verde, and later donated land for its sanctuary and cemetery. A surplus army chapel moved from Brownwood in 1949 became its later home.

Fairfield, TX

Six brass field guns captured by Lt. Joseph D. Sayers' company at the 1862 Battle of Val Verde in New Mexico were hauled back to Texas at great difficulty to arm a hand-picked Confederate battery. The Val Verde guns saw action in the recapture of Galveston in 1863 and the Battle of Mansfield in 1864, where the men seized longer-range pieces. Rather than surrender them at war's end, the crew buried four, and last commander T. D. Nettles brought this one home to Freestone County.

Del Rio, TX

Carved from Crockett, Kinney, and Pecos counties and organized in 1885, Val Verde County took its name from a Civil War battle fought in 1862 near Fort Craig, New Mexico. That fight was part of the Confederacy's ambitious campaign to seize the Southwest, and its memory carried west with the veterans who settled the region. Del Rio, on the Rio Grande, became the county seat.

Del Rio, TX

Organized in 1885 from parts of three surrounding counties, Val Verde County took its name from a New Mexico Civil War battle involving Texas Confederate forces, and it chose the booming railroad town of Del Rio as its seat. A limestone jail went up first on the public square, followed in 1887 by the limestone courthouse designed by Austin architects A. O. Watson and Jacob Larmour, with classical detailing and octagonal corner turrets. The complex was repeatedly enlarged as the region grew, gaining a separate sheriff's facility in 1956.

Fort Worth, TX

Built in the 1860s on the stage road to Weatherford, this cottage was the country home of Khleber Miller Van Zandt, remembered as "Mr. Fort Worth." A Confederate veteran, he became a merchant, banker, lawyer, railroad builder, and state legislator who helped open frontier lands to settlement and shape a growing city. The state restored the house during the 1936 Texas Centennial.

Statesville, NC

Now a historical museum, this house served as the temporary home of North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance in April 1865, after General William T. Sherman's forces captured Raleigh in the closing days of the Civil War. With the Confederate government collapsing, the wartime governor took refuge here in Statesville. The house stands about 350 yards southwest.

Frankfort, KY

Built before 1820, this Frankfort house sheltered two men who took opposite sides in the nation's greatest crisis. It was the childhood home of orator George Graham Vest, later a three-term U.S. senator from Missouri and a member of the Confederate Congress, and also home to Daniel W. Lindsey, a Union brigade commander who became Kentucky's adjutant general.

Victoria, TX

Victor M. Rose (1842–1893), son of a Victoria County judge, left college to join the Confederate Army, serving in Ross' Brigade through some of the war's hardest fighting; he was wounded twice and held as a prisoner of war. Afterward he edited the Victoria Advocate and other Texas papers and became a noted author, writing a history of Victoria County and of Ross' Brigade. His story sits alongside a striking account of Civil War journalism in Texas, where soldier-correspondents like Rose supplied most war news across a state whose press was starved of paper and manpower.

Victoria, TX

Martín de León founded Victoria in 1824 as the seat of his colony, a Mexican outpost meant to buffer settlement against Comanche country. Its residents rallied to the Texas War for Independence in 1836 and later to the Confederate cause during the Civil War. Through it all Victoria grew into a hub of trade, cattle, oil, and industry on the coastal plain.

Victoria, TX

During the Civil War, Victoria County served the Confederacy as a transportation, military, and supply hub, sitting on a branch of the "cotton road" that carried Texas cotton to Mexico to be traded for guns, medicine, and other scarce goods. Its 1861 vote favored secession more than three to one, and its men filled cavalry companies and marched in famous units like Terry's Texas Rangers and Hood's Brigade. On the home front residents improvised cloth, candles, and coffee substitutes, and in 1863 they sank boats in their own river harbor to block a feared Federal invasion.

Cheltenham Township, PA · est. 1973

Laid out at the close of the Civil War, the village originally called Camptown rose on the grounds of Camp William Penn. From 1863 to 1865 the camp trained African American soldiers—among the largest such training stations in the North—preparing thousands of United States Colored Troops for service in the Union Army. The community that grew here carried forward the legacy of those who fought for freedom and their own citizenship.

Calvert, TX

This Central Texas park began as railroad land given to Calvert in 1868, but its ground had already seen the Civil War's end, when a company of Hood's famed Texas Brigade mustered nearby in 1865. During Reconstruction it held the curious "Sky Parlor," a room built atop a pole to jail Southern sympathizers, and by the 1890s its Victorian pavilion and gazebos hosted concerts, reunions, and dances.

Tarboro, NC

William Dorsey Pender graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1854 and rose to become one of the Confederacy's youngest major generals. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 and died at age 29. Pender is buried four blocks east of this marker in Tarboro.

Leroy, TX

Kentucky native and Civil War veteran W. H. Janes built this board-and-batten house overlooking Tehuacana Creek in 1885, settling into life as a rancher and businessman. He won a term as county commissioner in 1898, moved to nearby Leroy in 1902, and later founded a bank there with his son. The house still rests on its original foundation of oak and cedar blocks.

Tarboro, NC

William L. Saunders wore many hats in 19th-century North Carolina: Confederate colonel, historian who edited the monumental "Colonial Records of North Carolina," and secretary of state from 1879 to 1891. His scholarly editing preserved the documentary record of the colony's earliest history. His grave lies four blocks east of this marker in Tarboro.

Gainesville, TX

William Thomas Green Weaver came to Texas as a boy in 1840, taught school, studied law, and by 1860 was district attorney for the 20th Judicial District. After Confederate service he resumed practice, and as a delegate to the 1875 Constitutional Convention he argued for a woman's right to vote — decades ahead of his time. He was also a published romantic poet read across the state.

Fairfield, TX

Beginning in 1891, aging Confederate veterans of Freestone County gathered at these grounds for three-day reunions of speeches, music, and dances, opened each year by the firing of a Valverde cannon. Named for Col. William Lewis Moody, who raised a local company of the 7th Texas Infantry, the site drew as many as 8,000 attendees before the reunions ended in 1933 as the old soldiers passed away. In 1947 the Moody family dedicated the grounds as a memorial park to veterans of all American wars.

Doylestown, PA · est. 2001

For 51 years this was the home of William Watts Hart Davis (1820–1910), a lawyer and soldier who rose to the rank of general during the Civil War. A man of many roles, he served as acting governor of the Territory of New Mexico, wrote ten books, and founded the Bucks County Historical Society in 1880. His life bridged soldiering, statecraft, and the preservation of local history.

Waco, TX

Founded in 1849 and named for the Waco Indians who had lived along the Brazos, the city grew from a frontier settlement into a hub of Central Texas. In the Civil War it sent men to both state frontier defense and the Confederate Army and counted five Confederate generals among its residents. Today it anchors the region as home to Baylor University, Paul Quinn College, and the Heart O'Texas Fair.

McKinney, TX

Kentucky-born Judge R.L. Waddill arrived in the young town of McKinney in 1853 with his stepson George S. Morris, buying land and putting down deep roots as the Collin County seat took shape. A circuit-riding district judge, Waddill also made an early gift to local education by building a schoolhouse in his own backyard and importing a teacher from West Virginia. The family's story stretches through the Civil War — Morris served in the Confederacy — and the home built after a fire remained in the family for over a century.

Brookshire, TX

Wade Cemetery began in 1846 on the sprawling plantation of William Wade, a Mississippi planter who came to Texas in the 1820s and amassed over 11,000 acres of Republic of Texas land along the Brazos. His wife Hulda's grave is the oldest here; later generations—including a son who fought for the Confederacy—and neighbors from the Brookshire and Fulshear communities were laid to rest alongside the family.

Reklaw, TX

This cemetery grew from Walker's Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, South, founded by John Walker, who reached this Cherokee County vicinity by 1839. Harvey N. Cooper deeded the church its site in 1879, and the congregation became the heart of a rural community that took the chapel's name. The oldest legible grave dates to 1879, and among the burials are veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War. A memorial service still gathers here each July.

Richards, TX

This family burying ground began on land the Wallers bought in 1872, when young Alexander Waller became its first grave shortly after helping choose the site. His father John, a veteran of the 15th Texas Cavalry, and other Confederate veterans of the Sulphur Branch community lie here, alongside two African American families and many neighbors. The cemetery still serves the descendants of those early residents.

Lampasas, TX

Walter Acker joined the Confederate Army at sixteen in Paulding, Mississippi, then came to Lampasas in 1875 as a young attorney. He built a long public career in Texas — district attorney, state representative, and mayor — before moving to Harris County and serving three more terms in the legislature. In 1930 he was honored as the last Confederate veteran to sit in the Texas Legislature, and he died at the Confederate Home in Austin.

Marshall, TX

Walter Paye Lane's life traced the whole arc of nineteenth-century Texas at war. He fought as a soldier in the Texas War for Independence, rose to major in the Mexican War, and served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. The State of Texas erected this marker in his honor in 1962.

Fayetteville, NC

Warren Winslow rose quickly through North Carolina politics, serving as acting governor in 1854 and then in Congress through the secession crisis. As the state joined the Confederacy in 1861, he helped negotiate the transfer of the U.S. Arsenal at Fayetteville into Southern hands—an act that would make the town a Confederate manufacturing center. He died in 1862, early in the war he had helped bring to his doorstep.

Annona, TX

George Washington Warthan came from Tuscaloosa, Alabama with his brothers in 1852 and, after marrying Amanda Johnson, settled in the Red River Valley in 1855. In 1861 he mustered into Company E of the 32nd Texas Cavalry, seeing action in more than thirty Civil War battles before being captured and held prisoner until 1865. Returning home, he expanded his landholdings and in 1881 set aside this cemetery, whose graves are believed to predate even the Republic of Texas.