Civil War

Longview, TX

On this site from 1861 to 1865, settler Joseph M. Sparkman ran a shop making shoes for the Confederate Army, directing the work from his cot because arthritis had left him unable to stand. The actual shoemaking was supervised and taught by "Uncle Ben," an enslaved craftsman who had come with him from Georgia and who trained the boys and old men left behind by the war. Both men are buried in the family plot nearby.

Taylor, TX

Built in 1853 on an 1838 Republic of Texas land grant, the "Washington Bower" is remembered as the area's first frame house, raised by farmer and mason Henry Inlo Layne. The home hosted Robert E. Lee in 1857, and Layne went on to serve in the Civil War. A veteran of the Texas Revolution, Adam Lawrence, died here in 1878.

Washington, NH

In the years between 1861 and 1865, even the smallest New England hamlets emptied their households of young men to fill the ranks of the Union Army. Washington, a hill town in New Hampshire's Sullivan County, was no exception, and this monument gathers the memory of its sons who did not come home from the conflict its own generation called the 'Great Rebellion.' Raised by neighbors who had known the fallen personally, it reflects the wave of local Civil War memorials that spread across the North once the guns fell silent.

Brenham, TX

During the Civil War, Washington County was the most populous in Texas and a vital Confederate hub, with a quartermaster depot, factories turning out wagons, kettles, and army ambulances, and one of the state's four government cotton depots in Brenham. Wagons hauled that cotton to Mexico for scarce supplies while troops, stagecoaches, and a pony express carrying war news filled the county seat. Local units fought on every front, and Gen. Jerome Robertson led the famed Hood's Texas Brigade.

Nacogdoches, TX

When the Republic of Texas chartered Nacogdoches University in 1845, three settlers donated 21.5 acres that came to be called Washington Square. A two-story Greek Revival building rose here in 1858, and during the Civil War it served as a Confederate hospital, then afterward as the U.S. Army's East Texas headquarters. Over the decades the square hosted churches, a Masonic lodge, and a succession of schools, including the first site of what is now Stephen F. Austin State University.

Brenham, TX

In the spring of 1862 Thomas N. Waul recruited some two thousand men from Washington and surrounding counties into a legion of infantry, cavalry, and artillery for Confederate service, drilling them here along New Year's Creek before they departed for active duty that August. Part of the legion was caught up in the defense of Vicksburg and surrendered after the siege, while other units served in Arkansas, Louisiana, and along the Texas Gulf Coast through the end of the war.

Weir, TX

Weir Community Cemetery began when John Breneke, a Confederate veteran from Fayette County, bought 365 acres here in 1875 and set aside two acres for a graveyard — perhaps after his sister-in-law died in childbirth in 1889, the earliest dated burial. Many soldiers rest here, and the ground preserves the memory of a community once known by names like Towns' Mill, Townsville, and Buffalo Springs.

Wheeling, WV

This Wheeling landmark — now a National Historic Landmark — is where the movement to create West Virginia took shape during the Civil War. In conventions held here in the early 1860s, delegates from Virginia's western counties rejected secession, formed a loyal 'Restored Government,' and set in motion the birth of a new state, admitted to the Union in 1863. Originally built as a federal custom house, the building became the cradle of the only state formed by breaking away from the Confederacy.

Milano, TX

Ervin Westbrook and his wife Rachel, joined by her brother John Walker, left the Deep South in 1858 to build new farms on the Texas prairie near present-day Milano. Their family graveyard opened in 1864 with the burial of John Walker's wife and served the two clans and their neighbors into the 1920s. Among the two to three dozen laid to rest here are three Civil War veterans of the founding families.

Charleston, SC

In a cramped three-room house on a Charleston back lot, two brothers born into slavery began lives that would carry them to the front ranks of the fight for Black equality. Archibald and Francis Grimké were the sons of an enslaved woman, Nancy Weston, and grew up amid the hard aftermath of the Civil War before finding their way to Northern educations and national influence. Archibald became a lawyer, writer, and civil-rights leader, while Francis grew into one of the era's most respected ministers and moral voices. From this modest Charleston lot rose careers that shaped African American advocacy well into the 20th century.

Lancaster Township, PA · est. 1947

Wheatland was the gracious country home of James Buchanan, the only U.S. president from Pennsylvania, who lived here from 1849 until his death. Before reaching the White House in 1856, Buchanan had built a long career as congressman, senator, secretary of state, and minister to England — a seasoned diplomat whose single term nonetheless foundered on the sectional crisis that led to civil war.

Manheim Township, PA · est. 1971

Wheatland was the beloved country home of James Buchanan, the Lancaster lawyer and diplomat who became the fifteenth President of the United States. He bought the estate in 1848 and made it his base through a long career—minister to Russia and Britain, secretary of state, and finally president from 1857 to 1861, presiding over the nation as it slid toward disunion. He returned here after leaving office and died at Wheatland in 1868.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2006

When Henry Whitaker raised a waterwheel-powered textile mill on this spot in 1813, he was joining the young republic's first great industrial wave, when running water was the engine of American manufacturing. Whitaker's mill proved remarkably long-lived, operating for 157 years and turning out canvas and wool blankets for Union soldiers during the Civil War, the nation's first mill-made bed ticking, and patented chenille processes. Production ended in 1970, and arson claimed the buildings in 1975, though several originals still stand nearby.

Camp Hill, PA

In the years after the Civil War, Pennsylvania established a network of Soldiers' Orphan Schools to shelter and educate the children of Union soldiers who had died or been disabled in the conflict. White Hall was one of these institutions, blending classroom learning with vocational training. Decades later its former students — who called themselves the 'Sixteeners' — returned to honor the school that raised them, erecting this marker in 1926.

Whitney, TX

When Whitney Dam impounded the Brazos River in 1950, the rising waters of Lake Whitney threatened to submerge six pioneer graveyards scattered across Hill and Bosque counties. To save them, workers carefully relocated some 1,260 graves and their monuments to nearly 24 acres of higher ground here. Among the reinterred were settlers dating back to the 1850s and 1860s, including a Civil War veteran and legislator, several early officeholders, and whole families like the Dyers and Basyes whose descendants shaped the region.

Franklin Township, OH

Built in 1800–01 by Revolutionary War veteran Peter Wickerham, this sturdy inn stood as a stagecoach stop on Zane's Trace, the pioneering road that opened the Ohio country. Over the decades it sheltered a remarkable range of travelers, from freedom seekers escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad to Confederate cavalry under Gen. John Hunt Morgan, who lodged here during his daring 1863 raid across Ohio.

Marshall, TX

The oldest part of this Marshall house went up around 1856 and soon sheltered the family of Louis Trezevant Wigfall, one of the era's most flamboyant fire-eating politicians. A relentless champion of secession and states' rights, Wigfall served as a Texas legislator, a United States senator, and a Confederate senator. During the Civil War, Confederate officers were frequent guests here.

Richmond, VA

Wilfred Emory Cutshaw rose from a Virginia Military Institute graduate (1858) to a Confederate artillery officer during the Civil War, then turned his energies to rebuilding and modernizing the defeated capital of the Confederacy. As Richmond's long-serving city engineer from 1873 until his death in 1907, he shaped the postwar city through an ambitious program of civic planning—paving streets, laying out parks, and improving public infrastructure during the Reconstruction and Gilded Age decades.

Smithland, TX

This family burial ground served the people of the old Wilkinson Plantation and takes its name from Seaborn Jones Wilkinson and his wife, Elizabeth Ann. The earliest grave, from 1854, is an infant daughter of Confederate veteran Abner Pulaski Moseley. Also interred are the Confederate minister William Hilary Moseley and Samuel Fountain Moseley — a U.S.-Mexico War veteran, lawyer, and owner of the Jefferson Herald newspaper. A cemetery association formed in 1994 to maintain the site.

Felicity, OH

Felicity sits in Clermont County in southwestern Ohio, only a short distance from the Ohio River — the line that separated the free state of Ohio from slaveholding Kentucky. In the tense decades before the Civil War, this borderland became a frontline of the Underground Railroad, where freedom seekers who crossed the river depended on a hidden network of conductors and safe houses to guide them northward. Will Sleet's home stood as one node in that clandestine web, and the fact that his role is remembered here points to the courage such work demanded in a community close enough to slavery's reach to make sheltering the escaping dangerous.

Belmont, TX

Born in Georgia in 1830, William B. Fleming came to Texas before 1850 and rode with the Texas Rangers' mounted volunteers before serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Settling afterward in Gonzales County, he built a black-walnut log cabin along the Guadalupe River and turned to horse breeding. His stallion "Old Billy" founded the celebrated line of "Billy" quarter horses prized by cowboys, rodeo riders, and racers.

Clearfield, PA · est. 2004

William Bigler rose through Pennsylvania politics from state senator to governor in the 1850s and then to the United States Senate on the eve of the Civil War. Though he opposed slavery, he belonged to the camp that hoped a compromise with the South might hold the Union together and avert war. In a striking family coincidence, his brother John was elected governor of California the same year William won Pennsylvania; William made his home here.

Newton, TX

Georgia-born William Blewett came to Texas in 1849, worked as a district surveyor, and by 1858 had opened a mercantile in Newton with his cousin. When the Civil War came, he helped raise a company of local volunteers and served as a captain in Company G, 13th Texas Cavalry. He died in Arkansas in 1862, one of the many Texans who never came home.

Corpus Christi, TX

Born William Düry in Würzburg, Bavaria, this chemist, geologist and photographer fled to America after the failed 1848 uprising against King Ludwig I, remaking himself as William DeRyee. He built cottonseed mills, investigated copper mines, and pioneered photographic techniques among Texas's German immigrant community before serving the Confederacy as a state chemist developing nitrates and explosives. After the Civil War he opened a Corpus Christi drugstore and, during the 1867 yellow fever epidemic that killed his own son, developed remedies and an effective antiseptic.

Austin, TX

Born in Montgomery County, Texas, in 1839, William E. Collard served the Confederacy in the 10th and 15th Texas Infantry during the Civil War. After the war he built a legal career in Robertson County, winning election as district judge in 1880 and later serving on the Court of Civil Appeals from 1887 until his death in Austin in 1902.

Sanger, TX

A Virginian who surrendered with Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox, W. E. Partlow came to Texas after the Civil War and married into a pioneer Denton County family. A merchant by trade, he was elected the first mayor of Sanger when the town incorporated in 1892 and built this home in 1904. He later served as a federal court commissioner in New Mexico before returning to Sanger to serve as justice of the peace.

Crockett, TX

Alabama-born Buck Mayes came to Texas in 1856 and served in the Civil War before returning to Houston County to build a career in lumber and merchandise. His enterprises included one of the area's earliest banking operations, helping knit together the local economy in the difficult years after the war. He remained a leading businessman until his death in 1915.

Cotulla, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1831, W. F. Evans moved through several Texas counties before the Civil War, when he served in the state's coastal defenses on Galveston Island with the 2nd Texas Volunteer Infantry and Mann's Regiment. He made Cotulla his home in the final years of his life, from 1903 until his death in 1917.

Corpus Christi, TX

Ohio-born William Henderson Maltby came to Corpus Christi in 1859 to help his brother publish the Ranchero, beginning a lifelong career in the frontier press. He served the Confederacy as an artillery officer until his battery was captured in 1863, survived the 1867 yellow fever epidemic that killed his first wife, and in 1877 co-founded the Corpus Christi Free Press, forerunner of the Corpus Christi Caller.

Wallis, TX

Kentucky natives William and Lydia Guyler married in 1845 and made the journey to Austin County in 1859, where William built a log cabin, trading post, sawmill and cotton gin that served settlers for twenty miles around. He served the Confederacy while Lydia nursed the sick through the 1867 yellow fever epidemic and aided soldiers at home. When the Santa Fe railroad came in 1875–76, the Guylers sold land that became the town of Wallis.

Baird, TX

Born in Illinois in 1829, William Jeff Maltby lived one of the great frontier lives of 19th-century Texas—soldier in the Mexican War and the Civil War, Texas Ranger, and builder of frontier forts for the U.S. Army beginning around 1850. Retiring to Callahan County in 1878, he reinvented himself as a nationally recognized horticulturist and nurseryman, and in 1906 co-authored a partial memoir titled 'Captain Jeff.' His story spanned the sweep of the Texas frontier from open-range danger to settled cultivation.

Greenville, TX

William Lane was born in 1843 near present Wolfe City, when Hunt County lay within the independent Republic of Texas and Anglo-American families were only beginning to settle its blackland prairies. Remembered as the first Anglo-American child born in the county, he was the son of one of the men who helped organize it. Like many young Texans of his generation, he served in the Confederate army during the Civil War before settling into a long life in the Vansickle community.

Hurst, TX

Tennessee-born William "Uncle Billy" Hurst fought for the Confederacy in the 61st Tennessee Infantry, surrendered near Vicksburg to Grant in 1863, and spent the war's final stretch in Northern prison camps after his capture in Tennessee. In 1870 he joined a migration of Claiborne County families to Texas, where he prospered as a land speculator. When he granted a right-of-way to the Rock Island line in 1903, the railroad named its stop for him—and the town of Hurst grew up around it.

Cedar County, IA

On this Cedar County ground stood the home of William Maxon, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Here in the winter before the 1859 Harpers Ferry raid, the abolitionist John Brown drilled a small band of recruits, preparing the men who would follow him east in his violent bid to end slavery.

Silverton, TX

William Moten Vaughan, born in Missouri in 1841, rode with the Texas Rangers on the eve of the Civil War before serving the Confederacy from 1862 to 1865. He was a corporal in the last Confederate army to surrender east of the Mississippi. Afterward he raised a large family across McLennan, Coryell, and Briscoe counties, living until 1928.

Raleigh, NC

William N. H. Smith served in the U.S. Congress, then the Confederate Congress, before becoming Chief Justice of North Carolina from 1878 to 1889. His career carried him through secession, war, and the rebuilding that followed. His home stood a block west, and his grave lies to the east.

Tool, TX

Born in Alabama in 1826, William Avant came to Texas with his family in 1834 and grew up on the frontier of what is now Henderson County, serving alongside his father as a Texas Ranger at just fourteen. He took up a land grant in the Mercer colony in 1849, raised a family with his wife Rutha, and helped build the road from Athens to Palestine. Enlisting in the Confederate Army, he died after only a year of service in 1863.

Austin, TX

Known affectionately as "Old Gotch," William P. Hardeman was a frontiersman and Indian fighter who fought in the Texas Revolution, the Cordova Rebellion, and the Mexican War before joining the Confederate army in 1861. Serving in the New Mexico campaign, he helped lead the celebrated cavalry charge at the Battle of Valverde, which earned him a colonelcy, and later commanded a brigade in the Red River campaign. Promoted brigadier general in 1865, he afterward became the first president of the state Confederate Home.

Sharp, TX

Born in Germany in 1844, William Persky came to the United States with his family at age eight and grew up to enlist in the Confederate army, spending part of the Civil War as a prisoner of war. He farmed in Austin and Bell counties before settling in the Milam County area in 1925. Living to 100, he was at his death in 1945 both the oldest resident and the last surviving Confederate veteran of the county.

Person County, NC

Born near here in 1842, William R. 'Sawney' Webb served as a Confederate soldier before founding a school in 1870 that, relocated to Bell Buckle, Tennessee, became the celebrated Webb School. Late in life he served briefly as a United States Senator in 1913.

Edgecombe County, NC

William R. Cox rose to become a Confederate general whose brigade is remembered for taking part in one of the last infantry actions at Appomattox in April 1865, in the final hours before Lee's surrender. After the war he returned to public life as a congressman and later served as Secretary of the U.S. Senate. His home stood here in the Edgecombe County countryside.

Oakhurst, TX

Bill Kelley, a Virginia-born overseer who came to Texas by 1851 and served in the 25th Texas Cavalry, C.S.A., built a family and a nearly 700-acre farm with Dinah Rush, a woman born enslaved in Alabama in 1848. Because state and federal law barred their union, Dinah could never marry the father of her ten children or carry his name, yet the couple built an enduring household until her death in 1884. Their descendants went on to become leaders in business, law, medicine and education.

Columbus, TX

Kentucky-born William S. Delaney taught at the college level before turning to law, practicing in Tennessee until he moved to Columbus in 1860. Through the Civil War and the decades that followed he served his adopted community as district attorney, county judge, and state legislator, and worshipped as a lay leader at St. John's Episcopal Church. He died in 1900 while visiting his daughter in Austin.

Austin, TX

A New York-born West Point graduate, William Steele fought in the Seminole and Mexican Wars before resigning from the U.S. Army to serve the Confederacy, rising to general and commanding troops from New Mexico and the Indian Territory to the defenses of Galveston. He led cavalry in the Red River campaign and other Louisiana actions against Union invasions of Texas. After the war he served as Texas Adjutant General, rebuilding the Texas Rangers during the turbulent Reconstruction years.

Hamilton, TX

Born in Ohio in 1850, William Thatcher Baker came to Texas as a young man and married Emily Beeman, daughter of a Dallas pioneer family. Though a Unionist at heart, he stayed loyal to his adopted state and made shoes for the Confederacy during the Civil War, then ran a ferry on the Trinity River in the years after. In 1879 he settled at Plum Creek Farm in Hamilton County and, in 1882, founded a post office he pointedly named "Ohio" for his home state.

Burlington, VT

This marker honors William Wells (1837–1892), a Vermont businessman and politician who rose to become a general in the Union Army during the Civil War. He received the Medal of Honor for gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he led a cavalry charge on July 3, 1863. After the war he returned to civic and business life in Burlington, his home city.

Liberty Hill, TX

Legend clings to the earliest years of this hilltop burial ground, where oral history places the graves of an enslaved man, an unknown Native American, and a settler family said to have been ambushed and buried in their own wagon in 1854. The oldest marked grave is that of infant Polly Williams, interred that same year on land owned by W. W. Williams. Honored veterans of both Confederate and U.S. forces lie here, along with graves relocated when Lake Georgetown was formed.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1949

In November 1863, the town of Gettysburg was still reeling from the great battle fought that July when it gathered to dedicate a national cemetery for the Union dead. Abraham Lincoln lodged in the home of attorney David Wills, met Governor Andrew Curtin and other dignitaries, and greeted crowds from the doorway. It was here, on the eve of the ceremony, that the President put the finishing touches on the few short remarks that would become the Gettysburg Address.

Newton, TX

This burial ground grew up around Wilson Chapel, credited to David McMahon, Newton County's first attorney, and holds a remarkable cross-section of the county's pioneer leaders. Among them are a Methodist minister, an early county organizer said to have been the youngest soldier at San Jacinto and later a Civil War veteran, and an English army captain turned frontier schoolteacher. Their marked graves, alongside others only remembered by name, sketch the first generation to build a community here.

Romney, WV

This brick residence stands in Romney, one of the oldest towns in what is now West Virginia, laid out in the 1760s along the South Branch of the Potomac in the mountainous eastern panhandle. Homes like this one anchored a community that grew from a colonial-era frontier settlement into a county seat, their walls witnessing generations of family life and the upheavals that swept the region. During the Civil War, Romney sat astride contested ground and famously changed hands many times between Union and Confederate forces, and its older houses endured occupation and hardship on the war's shifting border.

Lake Creek, TX

John William Wilson enlisted in a Missouri infantry unit for the Confederacy in 1862 and was gravely wounded and left for dead at the Battle of Corinth, surviving by eating scattered grains of corn in the field; his left leg was partly paralyzed for life. He built a new life in Delta County as a farmer and beloved Methodist circuit-riding preacher, often paid only in goods for his services. His acts of charity, from raising his widowed daughter's children to his renown as a "marrying parson," made him one of the county's most esteemed pioneers.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1947

Winfield Scott Hancock was born on this ground in 1824 and grew up in nearby Norristown before entering the army. He became one of the Union's most respected commanders, earning the nickname "Hancock the Superb" and playing a decisive role at Gettysburg in 1863, where his corps helped hold the line against Pickett's Charge. He returned to Norristown in death, buried in the county where his story began.

Decatur, TX

Confederate veterans and Wise County pioneers gathered for an 1881 reunion at Cold Springs, timed to the anniversary of Captain George Stevens' 1874 victory over raiding Indians; some 5,000 people came. Settling into its present grounds by 1896, the gathering grew to a multi-day festival of speeches, rodeos, and sham battles drawing crowds of 12,000. Sponsored by the Old Settlers Association, it endures as the oldest recurring public event in the county.

Decatur, TX

Though Wise County voted against secession, its men rallied so quickly in 1861 that they organized militia companies before Texas or the Confederacy had plans to muster them. Decatur became a military post and arsenal, and with nearly every able man away at war, the town swelled into a refugee camp for families seeking protection from frontier raids. The war's darkest local moment came with the 1862 "Peace Party Plot," when fifty were tried in the arsenal and five were hanged.

Wixon Valley, TX

The farming community of Wixon was settled in the late 1860s by families leaving several war-torn Southern states in the wake of the Civil War. A school and a Cumberland Presbyterian church rose nearby in the 1870s, and the earliest recorded burial here dates to 1871. Among those laid to rest are the area's pioneer settlers and at least 17 Confederate veterans.

Goldsboro, NC

William T. Dortch of Goldsboro was one of North Carolina's representatives in the Confederate Senate during the Civil War, and after the conflict he remained a fixture of the state's public life. In 1883 he headed the commission charged with codifying North Carolina's laws, a major undertaking that brought order to decades of accumulated statutes. This marker points visitors toward his former home and grave nearby.

Attleboro, MA

This memorial marks the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the great fraternal order of Union veterans founded in 1866 in the wake of the Civil War. Named for William A. Streeter, Post 145 would have been a hub of civic life in Attleboro—organizing Decoration Day (later Memorial Day) observances, aiding aging and disabled comrades, and keeping alive the memory of those who served. At its peak the G.A.R. was among the most powerful organizations in the nation, and its posts dotted towns across the North.

Seattle, WA

This monument was raised by the Woman's Relief Corps, the national auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic, to honor Union soldiers of the Civil War of 1861–1865. Founded in 1883, the Corps tended veterans, decorated graves, and kept alive the memory of those who fought to preserve the Union.

Kirvin, TX

Settled in 1848 mostly by families from Alabama, this community opened its cemetery in 1862 with the burial of Capt. John L. Wortham, who died at Galveston serving in the Confederate Army. His kinsman Col. Luther "Dick" Wortham, a Kentucky merchant and planter, donated the surrounding land for a cemetery, a Baptist church, and Woodland College. With over 1,000 graves, the ground marks the heart of a vanished frontier town.

Telegraph, TX

Like many Hill Country burial grounds, Wooten Cemetery began with a single sorrow—the 1880 grave of one-year-old Cornelius Clay Jackson, whose headstone remains its oldest. His mother followed the next year, and among the graves lies a family thought to have died of tuberculosis, a reminder of frontier medicine's limits. The cemetery takes its name from Simon Lee Wooten, a Civil War veteran who came to Texas from Georgia "upon the death of the Old South."