Military & Wartime

Ozona, TX

Joseph L. Casbeer, born in Lamar County, served the Confederacy in Company G of Col. R. T. P. Allen's Texas Infantry, mustering out at the war's end in 1865. He married Matilda Peacock in Lampasas County in 1871, raised two sons, and in 1898 moved west to Ozona in the ranching country of Crockett County. His grave marker records a life carried from the Civil War into the settlement of far West Texas.

Stevens Point, WI

This memorial honors Casimir Pulaski, the Polish nobleman who came to America in 1777 to fight for independence and reorganized the Continental cavalry, earning the title 'Father of the American Cavalry.' He was mortally wounded leading a charge at the 1779 Siege of Savannah and died at just thirty-two. Erected on the 150th anniversary of his death, this monument reflects the deep pride Polish American communities take in his sacrifice.

Chadds Ford Township, PA · est. 1975

Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman exiled for resisting foreign rule, threw himself into the American cause and helped cover Washington's retreat from the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. Made a brigadier general, he became the first overall commander of the Continental Army's cavalry, earning fame as the "Father of the American Cavalry." He was mortally wounded leading a charge at the Siege of Savannah in 1779.

San Antonio, TX

Organized in 1853 by San Antonio's cultured German immigrants, the Casino Association built an 1858 clubhouse with a theatre, a 700-seat hall, and banquet and club rooms. During the Civil War its stage hosted military balls, benefit concerts, and minstrel shows for the Confederate cause, while women gathered there to roll bandages. Over the decades its audiences included Robert E. Lee before the war and, later, Ulysses S. Grant and Buffalo Bill.

Linden, TX

Carved from Bowie County land in 1846, Cass County took its name from Lewis Cass, a soldier-statesman who had pushed hard for annexing Texas into the Union. The county's loyalties turned sharply in 1861: swept up in secession fervor, residents renamed it "Davis" for Confederate president Jefferson Davis, only to restore the original name in 1871 after the war. Its seat shifted too, from the busy river port of Jefferson to centrally located Linden once Marion County was split off in 1860.

Castine, ME

In the small coastal town of Castine, on a peninsula that had seen British occupation in earlier wars, residents raised this monument to the local men who marched off to the Civil War between 1861 and 1865. Like hundreds of New England towns, Castine sent its sons and sailors to fight for the Union, and many never returned. The inscription's closing line—paraphrasing the biblical passage in which Roman citizenship was bought 'with a great sum'—frames the survival of the United States as a costly-won freedom purchased through their sacrifice.

New York, NY

Built by the United States between 1808 and 1811 as the 'West Battery,' this fort was the last in a line of defenses guarding lower Manhattan back to the Dutch settlement of 1624. It helped protect New York Harbor during the War of 1812, was renamed in 1815 for Governor DeWitt Clinton, and briefly served as U.S. Third Military District headquarters under General Winfield Scott.

Palacios, TX

John T. and Opal Cates Price arrived in Palacios in 1906 and, joined by Opal's parents, had architect Winn Wood design companion homes on adjoining lots by 1910. Unusual among Craftsman bungalows for its side-gabled roof and dormered second story with veranda, the house was a local showplace that once hosted former Texas Governor Pat Neff. During World War II it served as the unofficial officers' club for nearby Camp Hulen.

Baltimore County, MD

By the spring of 1968 the Vietnam War had split American consciences, and on May 17 nine Catholic activists walked into the Selective Service office in Catonsville, carried out hundreds of draft records, and burned them in the parking lot. Among them were the brother-priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, whose faith-rooted defiance turned their federal trial into a nationally watched drama about war, conscience, and the limits of the law. Convicted and imprisoned, the 'Nine' became folk heroes of the antiwar left and a template for symbolic direct action.

Goliad, TX

When Spain entered the American Revolution against Britain in 1779, Bernardo de Gálvez went to New Orleans to raise an army—and remembered the wild cattle of the Texas country where he had once been stationed. At his request the Spanish governor of Texas rounded up some 10,000 head from the missions and ranches, assembling them at Presidio La Bahía. Driven east between 1779 and 1782 to feed Gálvez's Gulf Coast campaign, this is regarded as the first major Texas cattle drive.

Kent County, MD

In the late summer of 1814, as British forces raided the Chesapeake in the closing months of the War of 1812, a landing party came ashore in rural Kent County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. On the night of August 31, American militia under Colonel Philip Reed met the raiders in the darkened farm fields near Caulk's house and turned them back. The British commander, the young and celebrated Royal Navy captain Sir Peter Parker, was mortally wounded in the fighting — a rare local victory won by citizen-soldiers defending their own countryside.

LaGrange, TX

The Lewis family settled the La Grange area in the 1830s and set aside this ground as a family burial place, where the earliest marked grave dates to 1857. German immigrants left a deep imprint here—records were kept in German until 1931 and their culture is carved into many of the tombstones. Renamed several times as it grew into a community cemetery, it holds veterans of every American conflict from Texas independence through the Korean War.

Randolph County, NC

Chartered in 1828 and opened in 1836, Cedar Falls was one of the early textile mills that harnessed the water power of the Deep River in Randolph County. Jonathan Worth — who would serve as North Carolina's governor from 1865 to 1868 — headed the enterprise, and during the Civil War the mill supplied cloth for the Confederate war effort.

Rusk, TX

Established in 1847 as Rusk's city cemetery, Cedar Hill sits atop a forested hill named for the massive cedars shading its oldest, northern section. It holds the graves of the town's prominent founding families alongside those of early pioneers, including the Cobbles—typical of families who traveled through early Texas during westward expansion—whose descendant Dr. Thomas H. Cobble led Rusk Memorial Hospital in 1949. War veterans from the Confederacy through the Spanish-American War, both world wars, and Korea and Vietnam lie beneath markers ranging from ornate obelisks to stone tree-trunks and a brick crypt.

Loop, TX

Known also as Laguna Sabinas, this largest of the plains' alkali lakes was long an Indian camp and burial ground, and by tradition the birthplace of the great Comanche leader Quanah Parker. In October 1875 it was the scene of a skirmish between Native fighters and U.S. Cavalry under Lieutenant John L. Bullis, one of the closing clashes as the Comanche were driven from the Llano Estacado. Water, refuge, and memory converged at this remote West Texas lake.

Brazoria vicinity, TX

Built in 1861–62, the Cedar Lake Salt Works supplied a resource the Confederacy could not do without — salt to preserve meat for its armies and civilians. In November 1862, Federal landing parties from Gulf ships raided the works, destroying buildings, kettles, and boilers and ruining stored salt. When they struck again the next day at a nearby plant, Texas cavalry and Moseley's Battery of the 7th Texas Artillery Battalion drove the raiders back to their boats.

Rosebud, TX

Tucked into the Robertson Colony country of rural Falls County, this burial ground holds its earliest marked grave from 1874, though at least twenty people were laid to rest before the land was formally deeded in 1901. Most early burials cluster inside the fenced plot of surveyor and colony attorney J. G. W. Pierson, suggesting it began as a family ground; among those resting here are Civil War soldiers who lived out their later years on the Texas prairie.

Village of Roslyn Harbor, NY

Cedarmere was the beloved country estate of William Cullen Bryant, one of nineteenth-century America's most celebrated poets and, for nearly half a century, the influential editor of the New-York Evening Post. From 1843 until his death in 1878 he retreated to this wooded waterside property on Long Island's North Shore, writing, gardening, and hosting the literary and civic figures of his day. Bryant had risen to fame as a young poet in the Early Republic and matured into a leading public voice, championing causes from a free press to the creation of New York's great public parks. The house he shaped here reflects the era when American letters and American civic life were coming into their own.

Warren, PA · est. 1947

In 1749 a French expedition led by Céloron de Blainville pushed into the Ohio Valley by way of Chautauqua Lake and Conewango Creek, part of France's effort to secure its claim to the vast interior. At the mouth of the Conewango his party buried an inscribed lead plate asserting French sovereignty over the region. The gesture was a prelude to the imperial contest that would soon erupt as the French and Indian War.

Lockhart, TX

Also known as the Mexican Cemetery, this burial ground has served Lockhart's Mexican American community since about 1900, with its earliest dated grave, that of settler Severiano Sánchez, marked 1901. Community leaders, business owners, laborers, ranchers, teachers, and veterans dating to World War I rest here, many beneath the tree-shaped Woodmen of the World monuments that gave it another local name. In 2005 descendants formed an association to restore the grounds and renamed it for Tejano statesman and Texas Declaration signer José Antonio Navarro.

Aransas Pass, TX

By local tradition George Lewis gave half an acre here in the late 1800s to the area's Hispanic families for a cemetery, on the condition that he be buried at its center. Hand-carved stones mark graves reaching back into the 19th century, among them children lost to a 1940 influenza epidemic and veterans of many wars, though wind and rain have worn many illegible. A statue of St. Anthony holding the Christ child, carried across the border from Mexico by a local priest, still watches over the grounds.

San Marcos, TX

Built around 1890 on land the Dixon family sold to the San Marcos Cemetery Association in 1876, this carpenter Gothic chapel has hosted funerals and memorial services for generations. Its cruciform plan, board-and-batten walls, and Gothic-arched openings make it a fine example of vernacular church architecture. Among those remembered here are veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.

Gonzales, TX

Set aside in 1825 as part of the original town plan of Gonzales, this block became the resting place of some of the community's earliest residents. Among them lie Nicholas Peck, who fought at San Jacinto, and Daniel Davis, a veteran of the ill-fated Mier Expedition, alongside his wife Elizabeth. The square gathers the founders and soldiers of a town that stood at the center of Texas's fight for independence.

Corpus Christi, TX

Forbes Britton, a Virginian and West Point graduate, first came to Corpus Christi as an army captain during the Mexican War of 1846 and returned as a civilian to build this classical revival house in 1849–50. He ranched, ran a shipping firm, helped fight for a deep-water channel, and served in the Texas senate, even carrying Governor Sam Houston's word to President Buchanan in 1860. During the Civil War the house served as a hospital for Confederate and then federal forces, and it is recognized as the oldest surviving structure in the city.

Cookville, TX

First known as the Yancey Cemetery, this burial ground began in the mid-1860s on land donated by David Yancey, Sr., whose party had traveled from Tennessee to Texas—an orphaned infant from that group being the first laid to rest here. Many of the earliest graves are marked only with rough fieldstones. Renamed Center Grove in 1900 for the nearby Church of Christ, it holds veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.

Austin, TX

Central Presbyterian traces its origins to October 1839, when Austin's first Presbyterian service was held in Bullock's Hotel—the city itself barely a year old as the Republic's capital. Builder Abner Cook, an elder of that first church, helped secure this property after a post–Civil War split within Presbyterianism, and a sanctuary rose here in 1874. Its rolls read like an Austin who's-who, including Gov. Francis Lubbock, the writer O. Henry, and U.S. Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory, and its ministers helped found the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Newport, OR

CG 36503 is a 36-foot motor lifeboat built at the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in 1946 and kept in active rescue service until 1970. Sturdy, self-righting craft like this one launched into the punishing surf and bar conditions of the Oregon coast to save mariners in distress, and the boat now stands as a memorial to those lost at sea and to the crews whose courage and devotion to duty defined the service.

Riverside, TX

Founded in the 1870s on land owned by Lacy Harrington and named for the area's chalky geology, this graveyard's earliest documented burial is that of Civil War veteran Barney Carroll, who died in 1880. For more than a century it has served the Kittrell community, which once supported a post office, school, church, blacksmith, general store, cotton gin, and grist mill. A cemetery association formed in 1971 continues to tend the historic grounds.

Chalk Mountain, TX

Chalk Mountain began as a trading center before the Civil War, and its cemetery — the community's only burial ground — holds a marked grave dating to 1874, with unmarked plots hinting at earlier use. Confederate veteran Hiram Berry Rogers deeded the ground to the county in 1915, and more than 350 people rest here, among them veterans of the Civil War, both World Wars, and Korea. A cemetery association has cared for the site since 1959.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1948

Benjamin Chambers settled at the forks of the Conococheague in 1734 and laid out "Chambers Town" in 1764; two decades later it became the seat of the newly formed Franklin County. During the Civil War the town sat squarely in the path of Confederate operations—raided by J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry in 1862, occupied by Confederate troops in 1863, and finally put to the torch in 1864 when residents refused a ransom demand.

Greene Township, PA · est. 1948

Founded by Benjamin Chambers, who settled here in 1734 and laid out "Chambers Town" in 1764, Chambersburg became the seat of Franklin County in 1784. Its location in south-central Pennsylvania placed it repeatedly in harm's way during the Civil War: J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry raided it in 1862, Confederate forces occupied it in 1863, and in 1864 they burned much of the town after its people could not meet a ransom demand.

Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1948

Benjamin Chambers put down roots here in 1734 and laid out "Chambers Town" in 1764, and by 1784 the growing community was named the seat of Franklin County. The town's place in the Cumberland Valley made it a frequent Confederate target during the Civil War—raided by J.E.B. Stuart in 1862, occupied in 1863, and burned by Confederate troops in 1864.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1948

Chambersburg traces its beginnings to Benjamin Chambers, who settled at this Cumberland Valley site in 1734 and laid out "Chambers Town" in 1764; it became the seat of Franklin County in 1784. During the Civil War the town endured repeated Confederate incursions—J.E.B. Stuart's 1862 raid, an 1863 occupation, and its burning in 1864 after residents could not pay a demanded ransom.

Macomb, IL

This 1929 memorial arch honors C. V. Chandler, who served as adjutant of the 78th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, one of the regiments Illinois raised during the Civil War. Beyond his wartime service, Chandler became a leading citizen and benefactor of Macomb and McDonough County, and the community raised this arch decades later to mark his lifetime of civic generosity. It reflects the way Gilded Age and early-20th-century towns memorialized the Union veterans who went on to shape local life.

San Augustine, TX

Chapel Hill Cemetery near San Augustine holds burials reaching back to 1838, beginning with a veteran of the American Revolution whose widow is said to have given land along the old El Camino Real for a public graveyard. Its oldest graves face north-south beneath slabs of hewn native rock, and among those interred is a Cumberland Presbyterian minister who served as chaplain and courier for Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution. The surrounding community lived and worshipped here through the cotton era until World War II drew its people to combat and coastal shipyards.

Chappell Hill, TX

Founded in 1847 and named for early settler Robert Chappell, this Washington County town quickly became an education center, home to the Chappell Hill Male and Female Institute and Soule University. When war came in 1861, its male students marched off to the Confederate army, and the town served as a C.S.A. quartermaster depot.

Charleston, SC

In 19th-century Charleston, free and enslaved African Americans formed mutual-aid and benevolent societies—groups with names like "Charity" and "Benevolence"—that pooled members' dues to care for the sick, support widows and orphans, and guarantee every member a dignified burial. Excluded from many white institutions, these societies often maintained their own cemeteries, making the burial ground both a place of mourning and a testament to community self-reliance. This memorial marks one such African-American cemetery, honoring the societies whose charitable work sustained Charleston's Black community across slavery, the Civil War, and the generations that followed.

Lorena, TX

Charles Alexander Westbrook came from Mississippi to Texas in 1859 and, after Confederate service in the Civil War, settled his large family in McLennan County to establish a cotton plantation along Cow Bayou. In the 1870s he built a three-story stone home with square Doric columns beside the Waco-to-San Antonio stage road, often lodging travelers there. When the railroad arrived in 1881, the new town nearby was named Lorena for his daughter.

Saint Paul, TX

A Maryland native, Charles C. Stibbens came to Texas around 1835 and fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution. He settled afterward as a farmer and shoemaker, raised eleven children, and moved to Saint Paul in 1870. He is the only known San Jacinto veteran buried in Collin County.

Charles City County, VA

In the decades after the Civil War, communities across the South erected monuments honoring their local soldiers, and rural Charles City County was no exception. This marker pays tribute to the men of the county who fought for the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865, opening with the Latin motto "Pro aris et focis" — "for altars and hearths" — a classical phrase invoking the defense of home and faith. The accompanying language, framing the cause as "constitutional liberty and the right of self government," reflects the Lost Cause memorial tradition that shaped how the war was remembered well into the twentieth century.

High Island, TX

Born in Marseilles in 1805, Charles Cronea shipped to America as a cabin boy at thirteen and soon fell in with the privateers of Jean Laffite, cruising the Gulf off Spanish Mexico. Settling in Texas, he joined the fight for independence at the Siege of Bexar and, by some accounts, guarded prisoners near the Battle of San Jacinto; a decade later he marched under General Zachary Taylor in the war with Mexico. Awarded 1,280 acres as a surviving veteran of the Texas Revolution, the old adventurer farmed near Sabine Pass and finally settled his family at High Island, where he is buried.

San Antonio, TX

Born in New Hampshire in 1811, Charles Frederick King came to Texas and served in the Texas Army in 1836, the year of the revolution that won independence from Mexico. He later served two terms as mayor of San Antonio, in 1847–1849 and again in 1852–1853, guiding the frontier town through its early years as part of the new state of Texas. He died in San Antonio in 1869.

Goodnight, TX

Charles Goodnight glimpsed the promise of ranching at nineteen while crossing Texas bound for the California gold fields, and turned back to build a cattle empire. During the Civil War he scouted for the Frontier Regiment of Texas cavalry, guarding settlers against raids, and afterward he and partner Oliver Loving blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail across the arid, Comanche-dominated lands of West Texas and New Mexico to supply distant forts. A legendary cattleman and Indian fighter, he also founded Goodnight College before his death in 1929.

Armstrong County, TX

Charles H. Roan (1923–1944) earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism during the Allied invasion of Peleliu in the western Pacific during World War II. His medal was presented posthumously in 1945 to his mother, Armstrong County Treasurer Lillabel Roan, in Claude. A Navy destroyer was christened in his name in 1946, and he lies in the Marine Cemetery on Peleliu Island.

Calhoun, KY

Charles Hansford (1759–1850) enlisted in Virginia in 1775 and again in 1777 before going to sea as a privateer in Virginia's navy during the Revolution, sailing off the American coast, the West Indies, and Spain. Captured three times by the British, he endured a brutal three-month confinement aboard the prison ship Jersey—nicknamed "Hell Afloat"—which he survived along with only one of thirty-six fellow prisoners. He later settled in Kentucky and is buried on Mayo Hill near Calhoun.

Horseshoe Bay, TX

Born in Vermont in 1814, Charles Haynes came to Texas in 1836 with Ohio's "Buckeye Rangers" to fight for independence, then settled at Lockhart, where he ran a blacksmith shop and served in early county government. Around 1859 he moved his family to Llano County, and in 1860 he organized a Masonic lodge at the Comanche schoolhouse. Twice married and father of eight, he was a builder of frontier civic and fraternal life.

Orange, TX

Born in Mississippi around 1820, Charles Holmes Saxon came to Texas in 1842 and, after serving in the Mexican War, helped organize Orange County in 1852, sitting on its first commissioners court and later serving as sheriff. He farmed, made shingles, and rode into the Civil War, seeing action across Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana before dying in 1919 at nearly a century old.

Claude, TX

A Claude native, Charles H. Roan (1923–1944) volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps in December 1942 and shipped out to the Pacific in World War II. On Peleliu Island he threw himself on a Japanese grenade, saving four fellow Marines and giving his own life, an act that earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. The medal was presented to his mother, county treasurer Lillabel Roan, at the courthouse in July 1945, and a Navy destroyer, the USS Charles H. Roan, was christened in his honor in 1946.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 2007

Charles M. Schwab rose through the ranks of the American steel industry to become one of its towering figures, and in 1904 he established the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Under his leadership the company grew into one of the world's largest steel producers, its mills feeding the nation's building boom and, during World War I, its war effort. Schwab made his home in South Bethlehem, at the heart of the industrial empire he built along the Lehigh River.

Baltimore, MD

Colonel Charles Marshall served as military secretary and aide-de-camp to General Robert E. Lee, and was at Lee's side at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. He helped prepare Lee's farewell address as the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms.

Gonzales, TX

This state marker honors Charles Mason, who took up arms in the Texas struggle for independence and fought both at Gonzales, where the revolt first flared, and at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. Erected by the State of Texas in 1962, it is one of many grave markers placed to remember the volunteer soldiers of 1836. His service links a single citizen to the founding of the Texas Republic.

Trinity, TX

Born in Trinity in 1933, Charlie Wilson graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a naval officer before entering Texas politics, winning his first legislative seat in 1961 and election to the U.S. House in 1973. Over a dozen terms in Congress he is best remembered for leading support for a major covert program aiding Afghan fighters during the Soviet-Afghan War. He also championed the rights of minorities and women and helped make the Big Thicket a national preserve.

Kosse, TX

This marker honors Charles Q. Haley, who took up arms as a volunteer soldier in the Texas War for Independence of 1835–36. Ordinary colonists like him filled the ranks of the improvised army that won Texas its freedom from Mexico. The State of Texas placed the memorial in 1962 to keep his service remembered.

Erie, PA

This Erie monument honors a hometown son whose steady nerve gave the U.S. Navy one of its most quoted commands. Charles Vernon Gridley captained the cruiser USS Olympia into Manila Bay in May 1898, where Commodore George Dewey turned to him with the now-legendary order, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." The guns that followed shattered the Spanish Pacific squadron in a matter of hours, a decisive opening blow of the Spanish-American War. Gridley, already gravely ill, died weeks later before he could return home to Erie.

Columbus, TX

Charles William Tait—military surgeon, surveyor, Texas legislator, and planter—completed this Colorado County home after returning from Civil War service with the 4th Texas Cavalry. The house features cottonwood siding and hand-molded brick in its chimneys. It was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Charleston, SC

The Charleston Light Dragoons were an elite volunteer cavalry company drawn from the planter families of the South Carolina Lowcountry, a unit whose roots reached back into the late 1700s. When war came in 1861, they rode for the Confederacy, and this monument gathers the names of those who did not return — officers, sergeants, and privates alike, honored together as the 'Heroic Dead.' The surnames carved here, among them Manigault and Prioleau, read as a roll call of old Charleston, a reminder that the city's leading households sent their sons into four years of cavalry service and often buried them for it.

Charlestown, RI

During World War II the U.S. Navy carved auxiliary airfields out of the New England countryside to train the pilots and aircrews the war demanded, and Charlestown's naval landing field was one of them. This memorial gathers the community's remembrance of local service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in the nation's wars. Set along Rhode Island's south shore, it turns a former military training ground into a place of quiet tribute.

Charlton, MA

In the years after the Civil War, towns across the North raised monuments to the men who never came home. This one was the gift of William H. Dexter, a Charlton native, honoring local soldiers who died in their country's service between 1861 and 1865.

Charlton, MA

Beginning in 1757, in the midst of the French and Indian War, the townsmen of Charlton gathered on this field for their annual militia muster — the citizen-soldier training days required of nearly every able-bodied man in colonial and early New England. Musters mixed drill with fair-like sociability, and here they continued for more than eighty years, until 1840. They span an era when local militias, not a standing army, were the backbone of American defense.

Womelsdorf, PA · est. 1947

Charming Forge rose in 1749 as part of the iron plantations that made colonial Pennsylvania an industrial powerhouse of the British Empire. It was once held by the flamboyant ironmaster and glassmaker Baron Henry William Stiegel and later run for a half-century by George Ege. During the Revolution, Hessian prisoners were put to work cutting a rock channel to supply the forge with water.