Civil War

Atlanta, GA

On July 28, 1864, during the struggle for Atlanta, the divisions of Gen. J.C. Brown of S.D. Lee's Confederate corps launched the opening assaults of the Battle of Ezra Church against the Union right flank. Brantly's Mississippians briefly carried the Federal log barricades before being thrown back by a counterattack, and a renewed effort by Walthall's division met the same fate.

Atlanta, GA

At the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864, Confederate Gen. A.P. Stewart brought Walthall's and Loring's divisions forward to renew the assault on the Union lines west of Atlanta. Riding to this hill to assess Walthall's failed attack, Stewart was struck by a spent bullet; command passed to Walthall, who withdrew and called off further attacks. That night Hood pulled his battered troops back into Atlanta.

Atlanta, GA

This spot marked the extreme right of Gen. O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee during the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864. Lightburn's brigade of Logan's corps held the line here as Brown's four Confederate brigades tried to roll up the Federal flank, and again when Walthall's division attempted the same ground—both attacks failing to dislodge the Union defenders.

Galveston, TX

As part of the Union blockade, Commander W. B. Renshaw's fleet took the lightly defended port of Galveston on October 4, 1862. Determined to recapture Texas's most important harbor, Major General J. B. Magruder improvised a navy—refitting two steamers as 'cottonclad' gunboats manned by cavalry—and struck before dawn on January 1, 1863. In the fierce fight the Confederates boarded the Harriet Lane, the Union flagship Westfield exploded, and the remaining federal ships fled, leaving Galveston in Confederate hands for the rest of the war.

Hanover, PA · est. 1954

On the morning of June 30, 1863, days before the armies collided at Gettysburg, Confederate horsemen under J.E.B. Stuart clashed with Union cavalry in the streets of Hanover. Stuart's troopers briefly seized the town before the Union counterattack drove them off, and by evening the Confederates withdrew. The running fight helped delay Stuart's raiders and kept them from rejoining Lee's army before the great battle to come.

Jasper County, SC

On November 30, 1864, Union forces under Brig. Gen. John P. Hatch pushed inland to sever the vital Charleston–Savannah railroad and met a smaller Confederate force dug in near Honey Hill. Confederate commander Col. Charles J. Colcock ordered a field of grass set ablaze to slow the advancing Federals, buying time to gather reinforcements behind strong earthworks. Short on ammunition and unable to break the position, the Union troops were repelled and withdrew.

Irvine, KY

On July 30, 1863, Confederate Col. John S. Scott and his troopers rode into Irvine intending to capture the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, but held the town only briefly. Union Col. W. P. Sanders pursued, catching part of Scott's rear guard, and the two forces exchanged fire across the river as Scott's men crossed and slipped away. It was the only Civil War engagement in this stretch of eastern Kentucky.

Clayton County, GA

On August 31, 1864, the opening day of the Battle of Jonesboro, Gen. O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee entrenched along the Flint River after marching up from Fairburn. Confederate corps under S.D. Lee and Hardee attacked the Union lines but could not break them, leaving the contest drawn and unresolved until the following day.

Jonesboro, GA

On September 1, 1864, the final pitched battle of the Atlanta Campaign was fought around Jonesboro. Hardee's Confederate corps, posted in a salient near the Warren house, was assaulted late in the day by three divisions of Davis's 14th Corps, aided by Stanley's 4th Corps advancing down the railroad. With nightfall Hardee withdrew south to Lovejoy's Station.

Cobb County, GA

On June 22, 1864, Union divisions of the 23rd and 20th Corps linked up near Kolb's farm on the Powder Springs Road as Sherman probed the Confederate left. Federal skirmishers, backed by the 14th Kentucky, seized a ridge and held it stubbornly, and when Stevenson's Confederate division advanced against the main line it was driven back.

Cobb County, GA

On June 22, 1864, as the Union right threatened to outflank the Confederate line, Gen. Joseph Johnston sent Hood's corps to his far left near Kolb's farm to stop the advance. Hood ordered Stevenson's four brigades against the 20th and 23rd Corps posted astride the Powder Springs Road, but this and later attempts failed to check the Federal push southward.

Cobb County, GA

On June 22, 1864, the 14th Kentucky and 123rd New York were posted as skirmishers east of the Kolb farmstead during the Battle of Kolb's Farm. Their stubborn resistance, together with Federal artillery fire, disrupted and delayed Stevenson's Confederate assault on the main Union line along the Powder Springs Road, helping to halt the attack short of its objective.

London, KY

On August 17, 1862, Confederate Colonel John S. Scott led 500 cavalry against roughly 200 Union soldiers and 98 convalescents under Colonel L. C. Houk at London. The lopsided fight cost the Union thirteen killed, seventeen wounded, and over a hundred captured along with forty wagons, while Scott lost only a handful of men. Driven back to George W. Morgan's main force at Cumberland Gap, Houk's defeat helped sever Union supply lines and set the stage for Morgan's long retreat to Ohio.

Lone Jack, MO

On the morning of August 16, 1862, the war between the states erupted across this Missouri crossroads village when a Confederate force overwhelmed a smaller detachment of Union cavalry. The Battle of Lone Jack was one of the vicious, close-quarters fights that made the Missouri-Kansas border among the most bitterly divided theaters of the Civil War, where neighbors and guerrillas turned on one another. The engagement left dozens dead in the streets and fields around the town.

Mount Sterling, KY

On March 22, 1863, some 300 Confederate cavalrymen under Colonel R. S. Cluke swept into Mount Sterling and captured the town, taking 438 prisoners along with wagonloads of military stores, hundreds of mules, and a thousand stand of arms. The raid cost each side only a handful of casualties but stripped the Union garrison of its supplies. It was one of the many mounted strikes that made Civil War Kentucky a running contest of cavalry.

Brownsville, TX

On May 12–13, 1865 — more than a month after Lee's surrender at Appomattox — Union and Confederate forces clashed near this spot in the last land engagement of the Civil War. Federal troops advancing from Brazos Island toward Fort Brown were checked by Confederate cavalry under Col. John S. "Rip" Ford until his artillery and a flanking charge forced a Union retreat. In a strange coda to a war already lost, the Confederates carried the field, reporting no fatalities while Union losses ran to more than a hundred.

Pinal County, AZ

This memorial marks the Battle of Picacho Pass, fought April 15, 1862, near a jagged peak in the Arizona desert. A small clash between Union cavalry from California and a Confederate patrol from Texas, it is often called the westernmost battle of the Civil War. Though tiny in scale, it signaled how far the war's reach extended into the Southwest.

Paulding County, GA

On May 27, 1864, following the fighting at New Hope Church, Union Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard pushed over 18,000 men toward the Confederate right, hoping to find and turn its flank. Instead, three Federal brigades blundered into a deep, wooded ravine and were cut down one after another by Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's Confederates firing from three directions, handing the South a clear victory in a five-hour battle.

Paulding County, GA

After the defense at New Hope Church in late May 1864, Confederate Gen. Johnston extended his right to counter Sherman's flanking moves. At Pickett's Mill, more than 18,000 Union troops under Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard sought the Confederate flank, but their brigades were funneled into a deep ravine and defeated in detail by Patrick Cleburne's men, who held the field after a fierce five-hour fight.

Gordon County, GA

On May 13, 1864, Union Gen. McPherson's corps emerged from Snake Creek Gap to open the Battle of Resaca, with Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry leading the advance until he was wounded by Confederate skirmishers. Over the next day Federal forces deployed along ridges overlooking Camp Creek as the battle opened in earnest against Hood's and Hardee's lines.

Resaca, GA

On May 16, 1864, Gen. Johnston's Confederate army slipped across the Oostanaula River on pontoon and railroad bridges, ending the Battle of Resaca. Union forces rebuilt the burned bridges and pursued southward while other columns fanned out toward Rome and the Coosawattee crossings, and the Army of the Tennessee forded the river downstream at Lay's Ferry.

Gordon County, GA

During the Battle of Resaca on May 13–14, 1864, Union corps deployed along ridges west of Camp Creek opposite Leonidas Polk's Confederate corps. On May 14 the Federals drove Polk's men across the creek and, by evening, carried and held his new position on the hills beyond, forcing Polk to fall back toward the Dalton–Resaca road.

Mableton, GA

On July 4, 1864, Union Brig. Gen. John Fuller's brigade probed east from Nickajack Creek to test the strength of the Confederate position near Ruff's Mill. Finding it strongly held, Fuller returned, then advanced again with support and after a bitter struggle seized the first line of Confederate works. The action, paired with fighting at Smyrna, was part of pressuring Johnston's retreat from Kennesaw toward the Chattahoochee.

Seven Springs, NC

On December 15–16, 1862, Union troops under General J. G. Foster raided the village of Whitehall (now Seven Springs) during operations along the Neuse River. In the fighting they damaged the Confederate ironclad ram 'Neuse,' then under construction along the river. The clash was part of Foster's broader expedition against Confederate supply lines in eastern North Carolina.

Clayton County, GA

The deep gully south of this marker — the bed of a small stream running to the Flint River — was one of the few natural landmarks of the fighting here on August 31, 1864. Along and north of it, Union divisions of the 15th and 16th Corps formed a refused line bent back to the river. When Hardee's Confederate divisions attacked from south of the gully, the ravine became a fatal obstacle, breaking up their assault against the entrenched Federal infantry and artillery near Jonesboro.

Atlanta, GA

When Lt. Gen. John B. Hood took command of the Army of Tennessee on July 18, 1864, he moved quickly to strike the Federal armies closing on Atlanta. His first blow fell on July 20 against Thomas's Army of the Cumberland as it crossed Peachtree Creek, but a delay in Confederate deployment let the Federals secure ground south of the stream. The battle spread west across fields bisected by Collier Road, from Clear Creek to Howell Mill Road.

Whitfield County, GA

In 1864 the rail towns of northwest Georgia became a battleground during Sherman's drive on Atlanta. This spot saw a May delaying action as Confederates withdrew toward Resaca, and an October assault in which part of French's Division shelled a blockhouse held by some 300 men of the 17th Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry, forcing their surrender after a fight of several hours.

Cherokee County, KS

On October 6, 1863, Union General James G. Blunt and roughly a hundred men were ambushed near Baxter's Springs by William Quantrill's Confederate guerrillas, some disguised in Union blue. The deception let the raiders close in before the escort could react, and much of Blunt's party was cut down in the fighting that followed. The episode was one of the bloodiest guerrilla actions on the Kansas-Missouri border.

Baytown, TX

In the spring of 1861 Dr. Ashbel Smith raised a company of volunteers from the Galveston Bay settlements, drilling them on his own plantation before they mustered into Confederate service as part of what became the Second Texas Infantry. Among their ranks were sons of Republic of Texas presidents Sam Houston and Anson Jones. The regiment fought at Shiloh, where half the company fell, and endured the forty-six-day siege of Vicksburg before its survivors were paroled and served out the war along the Texas coast.

Baytown, TX

In the wreckage the Civil War left across Texas, Henry Gillette and a small group of citizens gathered in 1866 to care for the children of Confederate soldiers, and the Texas Legislature chartered their orphanage that September. On a bluff overlooking Tabbs Bay, a two-story brick house became home to a growing family of children—76 of them by 1870—sustained by donated land, stocks, and a state grant of tens of thousands of acres. When support shifted toward Houston, the home relocated in 1888 and, through many changes of name and mission, endures today as Harris County's Burnett Bayland Rehabilitation Center.

Kyle, TX

During the Civil War, Hays County's established cattle industry became a supply line for the Confederate army, with ranchers designated as "Government Stockraisers" tasked with feeding the Commissary Department. Driving herds across quicksand-bedded, flooded rivers while dodging raiders and enemy patrols, men like the Day brothers, Jesse Driskill, and Mexican War veteran William Washington Moon turned Texas beef into a war effort — some of them serving in uniform besides.

Houston County, TX

In the years after Texas won its independence, families like the Beesons and Boxes carved farms out of the East Texas woods, and their private burial grounds became the enduring record of that first generation. Established in 1852 with the burial of William R. Box, this family graveyard gathers together settlers who arrived in the early 1840s, three brothers who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, and Confederate soldiers of the next generation. The Beeson descendants who still tend the plot keep an unbroken line of memory stretching back to Houston County's founding families.

DeBerry, TX

This East Texas farming community grew up around the early Kinlock post office, its settlers sharing a five-acre burial ground deeded to the Bell-Fountain Baptist Church, founded before the Civil War. The earliest marked grave, a child who died in 1850, and the several Confederate veterans laid to rest here mark the sweep of pioneer life through the war years. After the church burned in 1880 and the congregation dispersed, descendants preserved the site, fencing the plot and raising a tabernacle where the church once stood.

Rockett Community, TX

Founded in 1875 on land given by John and Elizabeth Gibbons, this cemetery and its associated church took the name of Confederate veteran Jodie M. Bell, a church and civic leader in the Rockett Community and the first person buried here in 1877. The Red Oak Masonic Lodge helped raise a two-story chapel and meeting hall on the deeded ground. The lodge later moved to Red Oak in 1894.

LaGrange, GA

Bellevue, completed in 1855, was the Greek Revival home of U.S. Senator Benjamin Harvey Hill, a leading orator who hosted Jefferson Davis and other Confederate figures. Hill became a fierce champion of the South during Reconstruction, and it was partly at his urging that President Hayes withdrew federal occupation troops. The LaGrange Woman's Club has maintained the house since 1942.

LaGrange, GA

Benjamin Harvey Hill rose from a Troup County farm to become one of Georgia's foremost orators — a Whig legislator who opposed secession yet became a staunch defender of the Confederacy in its Senate. After the war he vigorously fought the Reconstruction Acts and, with Senator John B. Gordon, pressed President Hayes to remove federal troops from the South, later serving in the U.S. Senate until his death in 1882. His home, Bellevue, was built in 1854–55.

Fitzgerald, GA

Ben Hill County was carved from Irwin and Wilcox Counties in 1906 and named for Benjamin Harvey Hill, the celebrated orator who backed the Confederacy in its Senate and later served in the U.S. House and Senate. Its first officers were commissioned in January 1907.

Columbus, TX

Ben Marshall Baker and his brothers founded the "Colorado Citizen" newspaper in 1857, and all three joined the Confederate Army when the Civil War came — one brother, Hicks, was killed in the fighting. Ben returned to publish the paper from 1873 until his death in 1907, making this house the center of the town's press. His widow Virginia lived on here until 1916.

Upshur County, TX

Raised in 1872 of broad-axe-hewn boards and square nails, this home became a gathering place where, as the marker recalls, "a stranger never passed." Its builder, Ben F. Phillips—Confederate veteran, Church of Christ minister, and self-styled philosopher—performed many marriages here and represented Upshur and Camp counties in the Texas Legislature from 1890 to 1894. He and his wife Mattie raised nine daughters under its roof.

Laredo, TX

The three Benavides brothers descended from Tomás Sánchez, who founded Laredo in 1755, and became the town's best-known Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Santos Benavides rose to colonel—the highest rank achieved by a Mexican-American in the Confederate army—while his brothers Refugio and Cristóbal earned captaincies; together they defeated a raiding party under Juan Cortina at Carrizo in 1862 and, badly outnumbered, held Laredo against Union sympathizers in 1864. Their victories helped keep open the vital Confederate cotton trade with Mexico, and they were leading merchants and politicians in Laredo.

Greenville, TX

Benjamin D. Martin came to Hunt County from Virginia in the 1850s and, during the Civil War, organized the Texas Sharpshooters known as "Ben Martin's Company." After the war he became Greenville's first mayor in 1873, helped draft the Texas Constitution of 1875, and served in the state senate. His public life spanned the wrenching passage from Confederacy to Reconstruction-era Texas.

Evant, TX

Benjamin F. Gholson, born in 1842 to early Texas settlers, served with the Texas Rangers as a young man and in 1860 took part in the company that recovered Cynthia Ann Parker, the Anglo woman taken by the Comanche as a child in 1836. He went on to serve in the 2nd Texas Cavalry during the Civil War before becoming a prominent stockman. In later life he was active in the Texas Ex-Rangers Association, helping to preserve the memory of the frontier era he had lived.

New Orleans, LA

Purchased in 1853 by Judah P. and Joseph Benjamin, this Hurstville-suburb house sheltered their widowed sister Rebecca Benjamin Levy until the U.S. Treasury confiscated it in 1889 as enemy property. Its frequent visitor, Judah P. Benjamin, rose from U.S. Senator for Louisiana to Secretary of War and then State for the Confederacy. The house once faced St. Charles Avenue and was relocated to this spot in 1892.

Durham, NC

At this modest farmhouse belonging to James Bennett, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army to Union General William T. Sherman on April 26, 1865. Coming seventeen days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, it was the largest surrender of the war and ended Confederate resistance across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.

Atlanta, GA

On July 22, 1864, during the Battle of Atlanta, Benton's Mississippi and Coltart's Alabama brigades of Cheatham's corps struck the Federal line east of here, dislodging Union brigades and briefly seizing ground astride the Georgia Railroad before reinforced counterattacks recovered it. Colonel Samuel Benton was mortally wounded in the fighting and died days later at a hospital in Griffin.

Galveston, TX

Virginia-born Bernard Moore Temple served in the Confederate army before heading west to build a career in civil engineering. As chief engineer for the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad in the early 1880s, he oversaw much of the line's expansion across Texas and insisted on quality construction, and the railroad town of Temple, Texas, was named in his honor in 1881. This marker commemorates the engineer whose work helped stitch the state together by rail.

Round Top, TX

Bernard Scherrer left his native Switzerland at 22, wandering for years before reaching Texas in 1833, and fought in Burleson's regiment during the Texas Revolution. Granted land but settling in the Biegel community of Fayette County around 1838, he served as justice of the peace and county commissioner, married in 1845, and later took up arms again for the Confederacy in the Civil War. This cabin, his first Texas home, was relocated here in 1975.

Alto, TX

The land around Berryman Cemetery traces back to a 1802 Spanish grant sought by James Dill, who would become the first alcalde of Nacogdoches under Mexican rule. His daughter Helena and her husband, West Point graduate Capt. Henry Berryman, built the plantation home 'Forest Hill' and encouraged farmers to settle the area; after Henry's death in 1859, Helena stayed on and raised thirty orphans alongside her own children. The burial ground that grew here holds the family, former slaves Sally and Alex Berryman, a Civil War veteran and county commissioner, and even a former Cleveland Indians ballplayer.

Welfare, TX

Carl Joseph and Augusta Beseler brought their family from Germany to Texas in 1848 and settled on a Kendall County land grant, where the community of Welfare took root. The family's story tracks Texas's divided loyalties: their son Ernst died at the Battle of the Nueces, where Confederate forces killed German Unionists, while his brother Carl Philipp went on to build Welfare into a railroad shipping point and hold a string of county offices in the 1880s. The old general store is among the few remnants of the community they founded.

Appleby, TX

Bethel Cemetery has served Appleby since the 1880s, taking its name from the Bethel community that grew up as the focus of the future town, complete with a church and school by 1878. As the railroad arrived and lumber and cotton industries flourished, John A. Hunt conveyed land for the cemetery in 1903, though the earliest interment dates to 1887. Its expansive grounds hold obelisks, curbed plots, Woodmen of the World markers, and veterans reaching back to the Civil War.

Coppell, TX

Set aside before 1853 by Peters Colony pioneer James Parrish on his farm along the Elm Fork of the Trinity, this cemetery holds the layered history of a vanished community—smallpox victims, Confederate veterans, former slaves, and six people killed in an 1869 lynching. Of an estimated two hundred graves, all but two have been lost to vandalism and development, leaving the resting places of two small children as almost the only visible markers.

Bethel, TX

This ground began as part of an 1828 Mexican land grant and passed to settler Henry Rampy, who in 1859 deeded five acres for a community cemetery and church. The Bethel community thrived from the late 1840s, home to a Cumberland Presbyterian minister who helped found the Science Hill academy, and the burying ground holds pioneers, their descendants, and Confederate veterans. As the town faded after the Civil War, the cemetery became its last visible trace.

Greenfield Township, OH

Set in the rolling farmland of Fairfield County, this burial ground grew up around the Bethel Church congregation, whose members gathered to worship near the crossing of Stringtown and Pleasantville Roads in the early 1800s — the first generation to settle and farm this corner of central Ohio. The graveyard remained in active use for well over a century, until roughly 1930, gathering the families who built the surrounding community. Among those laid to rest here are several Union soldiers who marched off to the Civil War, alongside the Arnold, Wagner, and Weakley families whose names recur across the local record.

Strawn, TX

Bethel Strawn settled in Palo Pinto County in 1858 and, in 1864, enlisted in the Texas State Troops to guard the frontier against raids while settlers supplied the Confederate cause. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad crossed his land in 1880, the stop took his name, and the town of Strawn soon drew people from older settlements. His name later spread underground, too, attached to the oil-bearing "Strawn" rock formations and the coal once mined nearby.

Fulton County, GA

Bethsaida Baptist Church was formed in 1829 and served for decades under Pastor John S. Dodd, who led it for 50 years. In 1864 Union forces occupied the original wooden church as a headquarters, reportedly using its pews as horse troughs. The sanctuary later burned, the congregation merged with another to form United Baptist Church, and the Bethsaida site eventually closed, leaving behind a cemetery with graves dating to the 1800s.

Nursery, TX

W. H. "Uncle Billy" Kyle—trail driver, cattleman, and Civil War veteran—built this Texas colonial ranch home in 1872 as the cattle frontier boomed across the South Texas coastal plains. The plain, sturdy house reflects the working life of a man who moved herds up the trails in the great era of the Texas cattle drives. It survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Coweta County, GA

William Thomas Overby, born on this site in the 1840s, enlisted in the 7th Georgia Infantry in 1861 and later rode with Mosby's Rangers, the daring Confederate cavalry command that harassed Union forces in Virginia. Captured near Front Royal in September 1864, he was offered his freedom in exchange for revealing the Rangers' hiding place; he refused, and was hanged without trial.

Jasper County, GA

A mile from this spot in 1823, Jasper County produced Benjamin Harvey Hill, a lawyer whose silver tongue would carry him into the U.S. Senate and the front rank of Confederate politics. Though he had argued against secession, Hill became one of Jefferson Davis's ablest defenders, and after the war he pressed for the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South. He is remembered as an early voice for a "New South" built on industry rather than cotton alone.

Lawrenceville, GA

Charles Henry Smith was born in Lawrenceville in 1826, but Georgia came to know him by his pen name, "Bill Arp." A lawyer and Confederate major, he first used the humorous persona in 1861 and spent more than forty years as one of the South's most beloved newspaper humorists and gentle philosophers. His column ran until his death in 1903, softening hard times with wit.

Augusta, GA

Joseph Wheeler was born near Augusta in 1836 and, after West Point, resigned his U.S. commission to ride for the Confederacy, rising within two years to command all the cavalry of the Army of Tennessee. "Fighting Joe" harried Union forces from Kentucky to the Carolinas and was wounded three times. In a rare second act, he returned to U.S. uniform as a general in the Spanish-American War, fighting at San Juan Hill before his burial at Arlington.