Military & Wartime

Houston County, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1814, Aaron Lowery lived in Tennessee and Louisiana before entering Texas in 1835, where he promptly joined the Texian Army — enlisting in Capt. George English's company at the same time as Sam Houston. He saw action in the Battle of Bexar during the Texas Revolution. He later married Louisa English, moved to Trinity County around 1851, and raised ten children.

Sherman, TX

Aaron Mangum came to Texas from South Carolina with a Georgia battalion in 1835 and served under Colonel James Fannin at Goliad during the Texas Revolution. Falling ill on an expeditionary mission, he was away from the garrison and so survived the massacre of Fannin's men in 1836. He later married Leonora Snively and settled in Grayson County; the town of Mangum, Oklahoma, carries his name.

Cooper, TX

Abel Morgan came to Texas as the revolution was igniting, arriving at Bexar in late 1835 and serving under Colonel Fannin's command. He survived the 1836 Goliad Massacre—the mass execution of surrendered Texian prisoners on Santa Anna's orders—spared, in his own words, "for a nurse." His marker, bearing the Star and Wreath, commemorates one of the few men who lived through one of the darkest days of the Texas Revolution.

Victoria, TX

Abel Seymour Cunningham belonged to the generation of settlers who turned Texas from a Mexican province into an independent republic. He took up arms in the 1836 Texas War for Independence, then served the young Republic of Texas as a ranger guarding its raw frontier and as a congressman helping build its government. The State of Texas honored his service with this marker in 1962.

Abington Township, PA · est. 1992

Founded in 1714, Abington Presbyterian Church stood at the heart of one of Montgomery County's oldest colonial communities, with its adjoining burial ground opening in 1719 and receiving its first recorded interment in 1728. The grounds saw Revolutionary War skirmishing as armies maneuvered across the Philadelphia countryside, and generations of pastors, educators, and war veterans were laid to rest here. The cemetery links Abington to the wider intellectual worlds of Philadelphia and Princeton through the notable clergy and teachers buried within it.

South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1929

Born in Grabs, Switzerland, Abraham Blumer crossed the Atlantic to serve the German Reformed congregations of the Lehigh Valley, ministering at Jordan, Union, Egypt, and Allentown from 1771 to 1801. During the Revolution he also served as chaplain to the First Battalion of the Northampton County Militia. He spent three decades tending to the spiritual life of his frontier congregations and is buried in this cemetery.

Damon, TX

Abraham Darst came to Mexican Texas from Missouri in 1827 as one of Stephen F. Austin's colonists, part of the first wave of Anglo-American settlement on the Brazos. He took up arms in the 1832 Battle of Velasco, an early clash with Mexican authority, and though he died in 1833, five of his sons served in the Army of Texas during the revolution of 1836.

Victoria, TX

Built before the Civil War with eight fireplaces and ten rooms, this Victoria home was owned from 1861 to 1881 by banker-merchant Abraham Levi, known for his charitable giving. In 1865 the U.S. Army of Occupation took it over as a Reconstruction headquarters, with a prison in the rear. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Los Angeles, CA

This monument honors Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, who led the United States through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation before his assassination in 1865. Statues of Lincoln became fixtures of American public space, cast as the preserver of the Union and 'the Great Emancipator.' Its placement in a Los Angeles civic setting reflects how deeply his memory was woven into the nation's shared identity.

Milwaukee, WI

This 1934 statue by sculptor Gaetano Cecere honors Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) as president, emancipator, and martyr, quoting the healing words of his second inaugural: "With malice toward none." Erected seventy years after his death, it reflects the enduring reverence for the leader who guided the Union through the Civil War and set emancipation in motion before his assassination. The monument stands in Milwaukee as a civic tribute to his memory.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 1953

In the tense winter of 1861, as seven states had already declared their secession, President-elect Abraham Lincoln made his slow, whistle-stop journey east toward his inauguration. On February 22 — Washington's Birthday — he paused in Harrisburg at the Jones House hotel and spoke from its portico to a crowd packed into Market Square. Within days he would slip secretly through Baltimore amid assassination fears to reach the capital.

Hanover, PA · est. 1954

On November 18, 1863, a half block east of here, Abraham Lincoln paused during his journey to Gettysburg and spoke briefly to a gathered crowd from his special train. He was on his way to dedicate the National Cemetery there — the occasion for which, the next day, he would deliver the Gettysburg Address. This small trackside moment placed the wartime president, if only for a few minutes, among the ordinary townspeople of Hanover.

Tomball, TX

Abraham Roberts (1773–1850), a Georgia native, settled on Spring Creek about 1829 at a crossroads in the thinly settled community of New Kentucky. On April 16, 1836, Sam Houston's retreating army paused here, uncertain whether their general would keep withdrawing east. When soldiers asked Roberts—standing at his gate—the way to Harrisburg, he pointed southeast, a great shout went up, and Houston took that road, leading to the decisive victory at San Jacinto five days later.

Groesbeck, TX

Born in 1817, Abram Anglin served as an early Ranger during the Texas War for Independence, riding with Captain Seale's company in 1835–36 under authority of the provisional Council of Texas. He lived on into the frontier era of the Republic and statehood, dying in 1875. His grave marker, crowned with the star and wreath, commemorates the volunteer soldiers who fought to sever Texas from Mexico.

Bastrop, TX

Abram Wiley Hill served as a soldier in the Texas War for Independence in 1836 and stood among the victors at San Jacinto, where Sam Houston's army routed Santa Anna and secured the Republic. The State of Texas placed this 'Star and Wreath' marker in 1962 to commemorate his service.

White Township, PA · est. 2009

Raised in the Indiana County countryside, Absalom Hazlett grew into a committed abolitionist and joined John Brown's small provisional army for the 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The plan to arm enslaved people and spark their liberation collapsed, and Hazlett was captured, tried, and hanged for his part. Yet the raid electrified a divided nation and pushed it closer to open conflict.

Orange, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1812, Absalom Jett came to Texas as a boy in 1824, during the Mexican colonial era, and grew up to serve in the Army of Texas during the 1836 revolution under Captain Benjamin J. Harper. He lived on in the young republic and state until his death in 1878. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1957.

Hankamer, TX

When the Abshier and Weed families came from Louisiana in 1843 to farm this corner of Liberty County, they could not have known the family plot begun with Lucinda Abshier Higginbotham's burial in 1852 would grow into a community graveyard spanning generations. Those laid to rest here served in nearly every American conflict from the War of 1812 through Korea, and their graves include striking tree-trunk monuments of the Woodmen of the World. A cemetery association has tended the grounds since 1896.

Lavon, TX

John Abston, a Virginia-born veteran of the American Revolution, followed his family west across a lifetime — to Missouri in the 1830s and finally to Collin County, Texas, in 1853, when he was already past ninety. After his son Jesse died, the family set aside a small burial ground here, and Abston's own interment in 1856 was the first. By family tradition, Abston's daughter-in-law Sarah later gave a house and land to a former slave, Elias Bellew, in exchange for tending the graves — giving the site its other name, the Old Bellew Cemetery.

Moscow, TX

This burial ground, now named for a former county commissioner, began as a family graveyard for the Lotts, who moved from Mississippi to the Republic of Texas in 1843. Their son Calvin farmed the land and served as a Confederate soldier and in the Texas State Troops during the Civil War; his 1884 grave is the oldest marked burial, though earlier unmarked graves are believed to lie here. Known over the years by several names, the cemetery preserves the memory of Polk County's pioneer families.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1982

Established in 1800 and named for President John Adams, this county in Pennsylvania's rolling southern hills became known for its orchards and fruit harvests. Its seat, Gettysburg, was a quiet crossroads town until July 1863, when it became the site of the Civil War's bloodiest and most decisive battle. That autumn, President Abraham Lincoln came to dedicate the soldiers' cemetery and delivered the brief, immortal Gettysburg Address.

Cedar Creek, TX

Addison Litton arrived in Texas in 1827, in the years when Anglo colonists were streaming into the Mexican province. When revolution came he served in the Army of Texas in 1836 as a member of Captain Gibson Kuykendall's company at Harrisburg during the campaign that won independence. He lived out his remaining years in Bastrop County, where he died in 1847, and the state later marked his grave with the Republic's star and wreath.

Lexington, TX

After serving in the Civil War, Alabama native R.L. Cain settled in this part of Lee County and in 1867 deeded five acres for a community cemetery, then known as Cain School Community. The settlement was renamed Adina when its post office opened, and the graveyard took the name with it; among its oldest burials is Martha Cane Slaughter, who died in 1871. In 2001 several graves — including that of William B. Craddock, a victim of the lawless violence that plagued the area in the 1870s and 1880s — were reinterred here beside relatives.

Brackettville, TX

Raised during Fort Clark's 1873–1875 expansion to house a full regiment, this quarters stood apart from the line's duplexes as a single dwelling. Its adobe core followed a three-room hall-and-parlor plan with a symmetrical front and end chimneys, later enlarged in 1904 and 1944. When the Fifth U.S. Cavalry was garrisoned here from 1921 to 1941, the regimental adjutant — the officer handling the commander's essential paperwork — lived within these walls.

New York, NY

This monument marks the grave of David Glasgow Farragut, the U.S. Navy's first full admiral and one of the Union's most celebrated Civil War commanders. A career sailor who first went to sea as a boy, Farragut won lasting fame in the 1860s for his daring victories on the Gulf and Mississippi, running his fleet past shore batteries and mines to seize control of vital Confederate waters. Erected by his wife and son after his death in 1870, the memorial honors a man Congress created the rank of admiral expressly to recognize.

Rockhill, PA · est. 1995

When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, William Sims commanded American naval forces operating in European waters, coordinating with the Royal Navy against the German submarine campaign that was strangling Allied shipping. A sharp-penned naval writer and reformer, he had left this small Huntingdon County community for the U.S. Naval Academy back in 1876, and his family lived in the house opposite this marker for nearly two decades. His career bridged the age of sail-trained officers and the modern steel navy that fought a global war.

Edom, TX

Adren Anglin came to Texas from Kentucky in 1833 and helped build Fort Parker in present Limestone County, a frontier stronghold against attack. He became a Texas Ranger in 1835 and furnished food and supplies to the revolutionary army during Texas' fight for independence, earning a headright grant in Henderson County. He married Phebe Parker, tying him to one of the era's most storied frontier families.

Pacific, WA

This memorial honors the Americans who served in the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 and the Iraq War of 2003–2021, two conflicts that defined a generation of U.S. military service in the Middle East. The Gulf War, launched to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, was a swift coalition victory; the Iraq War that began in 2003 became a long, costly occupation and counterinsurgency spanning nearly two decades. The stark casualty figures inscribed here — the killed and wounded — put a human weight behind the headlines, while the quoted words of veteran M. D. Dallocchio speak to the private cost carried home by those who fought.

Erie, PA · est. 1996

When Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron met and captured a British fleet on Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, African American sailors were among the skilled seamen who made the victory possible. Their labor and seamanship were critical to one of the young United States' most decisive naval triumphs in the War of 1812. This marker at Erie, where much of that fleet was built and based, restores their names to the record of that day.

Washington, NC

During the 1863 siege of Washington, North Carolina, roughly 100 Black men took up arms to help Union forces hold the town. Their service came even before the formal organization of the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, making them among the earliest African Americans to fight for the Union in the state. They defended a community and a cause that promised their own freedom.

Austin, TX

Both free and enslaved African Americans supported the Texas cause during the 1835–36 War of Independence, though official recognition of their service was long withheld. Hendrick Arnold scouted and fought at the Siege of Bexar and San Jacinto; the Nacogdoches businessman William Goyens interpreted for Sam Houston in treaty talks with the Cherokee; the freeman Samuel McCullough, Jr. was among the first wounded in the Goliad campaign; and Joe, enslaved by Alamo commander William Travis, survived the fall and carried word of it to Houston. Others died at the Alamo and in the Goliad massacre or gave money and hauled supplies.

Victoria, TX

Agapito De Leon was the fourth son of empresario Don Martín De León, the founder of Victoria and its Mexican colony, and grew up active in the colony's affairs and its cattle and livestock trade. A Texas patriot during the 1836 War for Independence and a noted frontier fighter, he was cut down soon after the war by Mabry 'Mustang' Gray, whose gang preyed systematically on Texans of Mexican descent. He died in 1836 at just twenty-eight.

Roanoke, VA

On a quiet knoll near Roanoke lie Col. Elijah McClanahan and his wife, Agatha Strother Lewis, members of one of frontier Virginia's most prominent families. Agatha descended from the storied Lewis line: her grandfather, Gen. Andrew Lewis, commanded colonial militia at the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore's War and rose to brigadier general in the Revolution. The marker preserves the memory of an early settler family whose roots stretched across the mountains as Virginia pushed westward in the late eighteenth century.

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth's first Jewish congregation, Ahavath Sholom, dedicated this six-acre cemetery in 1909, and a Ladies Cemetery Society formed the same year to tend the grounds. Later generations buried three World War II soldiers side by side here and raised a monument to the millions of Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The chapel and a maintenance trust reflect a community caring for its own across more than a century.

Weymouth, MA

This Weymouth square honors Master Sergeant Aime M. Arsenault, a career U.S. Army soldier who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and went on to serve through World War II and the Korean War. Survivors of Pearl Harbor carried firsthand memory of the day that thrust the United States into global war, and hometowns later dedicated squares and plaques to keep their service in public view. Arsenault lived from 1922 to 1995, a lifetime that spanned the nation's mid-century conflicts.

Corsicana, TX

As war loomed in 1940, the U.S. government turned to civilian flight schools to help train the pilots it would soon need in vast numbers, and Corsicana Field became one of them. Built on a 400-acre tract beginning in 1941, it delivered primary flight training to cadets in ten-week cycles—by 1944 more than 8,000 airmen had passed through in 37 classes, and the school employed over 550 civilians, reshaping the local economy. When peace came the field was no longer needed, and the site went on to house a junior college and later a municipal airport.

Burnet, TX

Kentucky-born Adam Rankin Johnson came to Texas in 1854, rose to Confederate brigadier general during the Civil War, and afterward settled in Burnet County as a businessman and civic leader. In 1882 he gave land for the railroad that hauled Burnet County granite to build the Texas State Capitol, and around the same time raised this sturdy stone barn on his homestead. The barn is a rare surviving piece of his working estate.

Walker County, TX

This hill marked a landmark on the old Colony Road running between Huntsville and Ryan's Ferry on the Trinity River. It takes its name from Thomas Akin, a Mississippi native who came to Texas in 1853 with his wife Ruth and built a cabin at its base in the rural community of McGuire. During the Civil War Akin rode as a courier for Confederate General John B. Hood while his wife moved their family of seven children to safety farther east.

Seattle, WA

This tribute honors Alfred 'Al' Ruffner Rochester, a Seattle-born son of Broadway High School who served in France during the Great War in 1918–1919 and later sat on the Seattle City Council from 1944 to 1956. A civic fixture of mid-century Seattle, Rochester bridged the generation that fought World War I and the postwar city-builders. His 'podium' marks a life given to public service.

Mobile, AL

This memorial in Mobile speaks in the voice of Alabama's fallen from the Vietnam War, the long and divisive conflict that drew American troops into Southeast Asia through the 1960s and early 1970s. Its plea — 'we are the men from Alabama who served in Vietnam, but could not return… Remember us' — gives words to those who never came home. Memorials like this one rose across the country as communities worked to honor a generation of veterans whose service was too often met with silence.

Desdemona vicinity, TX

This burial ground began when pioneer William Mansker set aside part of his land for a school and community cemetery in the mid-19th century, serving Anglo settlers drawn together by the hardships of frontier Texas. Family clusters like the four Bell children who died in 1877, graves marked only by fieldstones, and the interment of veterans of several wars all testify to the precarious lives of those who built the Alameda community.

San Antonio, TX

This soaring cenotaph honors the defenders who died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, in the fight for Texas independence. Rather than marking a grave, it stands as an empty tomb, a symbol raised so that the sacrifice made in that mission-turned-fortress would not be forgotten. Its inscription casts the fallen as men who chose neither surrender nor retreat.

Pecos, TX

This courthouse statue in Pecos honors the famous 'Alamo letter,' William Barret Travis's 1836 appeal from the besieged mission at San Antonio de Béxar, signed 'Victory or Death.' Written during the Texas Revolution as a small garrison faced the Mexican army, the letter became one of the most stirring documents in Texas history. Its placement before a West Texas courthouse reflects how deeply the Alamo's defiance entered the state's civic identity.

San Antonio, TX

Mission San Antonio de Valero, founded in 1718 and relocated to this area in 1724, was ringed by thick stone and adobe walls by the 1760s, with its main gateway set in the south wall. After Spanish cavalry occupied the secularized mission in the early 1800s, the complex became known as the Alamo. During the famous 1836 siege, couriers slipped out through this gateway before Santa Anna's troops breached it on March 6, and some accounts place James Bowie's death in the adjacent low barracks.

City of Albany, NY

In the summer of 1754, delegates from seven British colonies gathered at Albany while war with France loomed on the frontier. Out of that congress came the Albany Plan of Union, a bold proposal for the colonies to govern common affairs—defense, treaties with Native nations, and westward settlement—through a single president-general and a grand council. Though the colonial assemblies and the Crown alike rejected it as too radical, the idea of a united colonial government took root here decades before it was realized.

Wharton, TX

Albert Clinton Horton came to Texas in 1834, raised volunteers in Alabama for the revolution, and served as a cavalry colonel before helping launch the Republic of Texas — chairing the commission that chose Austin as its capital in 1839. When Texas joined the Union in 1845 he became its first lieutenant governor and served as acting governor while Governor Henderson fought in the Mexican War. A planter and a founder of Baylor University, he lived at "Sycamore Grove" near this site.

Matagorda, TX

Georgia-born Albert Clinton Horton came to Texas from Alabama in 1834, established a plantation on Caney Creek, and returned east to recruit volunteers for the Texas army, serving as a cavalry colonel in the Revolution. Elected to the Republic's congress, he chaired the commission that helped select a permanent capital, and at statehood in 1845 he became Texas's first lieutenant governor — acting as governor for over a year while Governor Henderson led troops in the Mexican War. A charter Baylor trustee, he also gave land for the first Episcopal church in Texas.

Point Marion, PA · est. 2014

Albert Gallatin was one of the young republic's most consequential statesmen, serving as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1801 to 1814—still the longest tenure in the office's history. He funded the Lewis and Clark Expedition, worked steadily to reduce the national debt, and helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. In the 1790s his moderating influence helped defuse western Pennsylvania's Whiskey Rebellion, and his home, Friendship Hill, stands nearby.

Houston County, TX

In 1857 Albert Holley left Alabama for Houston County, bringing the family's supplies overland by wagon along with 137 enslaved people while his relatives traveled by boat. He began homesteading this land with his wife Julia, served in the Civil War and endured captivity as a prisoner of war, then returned to farm and build a family home here in 1867. The property stayed in Holley hands until 1976.

Bonney, TX

Albert Sidney Johnston, a West Point graduate born in Kentucky in 1803, made Texas his home during the Republic era, rising to command its army and serving as secretary of war under President Mirabeau B. Lamar. He and his second wife settled at China Grove, his plantation on this site, in the 1840s, and he later fought in the Mexican War and patrolled the Texas frontier as a U.S. Army officer. When the Civil War came he resigned to become a Confederate general, and he was killed leading his troops at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.

Bastrop, TX

This Bastrop County home rose in stages on land the Mexican government granted in 1831 to a colonist of Stephen F. Austin's second colony — a reminder that Anglo Texas began as Mexican Texas. Farmer John Aldridge built the first portion in 1852, and after the Civil War a Confederate captain and plantation owner, J. W. Fitzwilliam, added the two-story section around 1872, naming the place 'Wexford' for his Irish birthplace.

East Columbia, TX

Raised between 1837 and 1841 for farmer and landholder William Aldridge, this East Columbia house passed through several owners, including J. H. Dance and Co., a firm that manufactured arms for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Businessman Thomas Masterson Smith and his wife Mary leased the home from 1908 and bought it in 1917, keeping it in the Smith family for generations. The dwelling survives as a local landmark from the earliest years of Anglo settlement in Brazoria County.

Winters, TX

This grave holds a Civil War soldier, Alec Simmons, who came from the small settlement of Lemon Gap a few miles to the northwest and was laid to rest here in an unmarked grave before 1897. The spare record is itself telling—of a frontier region where many who served and died left little trace beyond a name and a place. The state recorded the site in 1967.

San Antonio, TX

Born in 1835, Alejo de la Encarnación Pérez was carried into the Alamo as an infant during the 1836 siege and lived to become its last known survivor. His long life bridged two Texas eras: he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, then spent decades serving San Antonio as a police officer and city marshal. When he died in 1918 at 83, the living memory of the Alamo's defenders died with him.

Gilmer, TX

Alex Earp followed his father into law enforcement in Upshur County, becoming sheriff in the 1880s just as the booming East Texas timber industry drew a rough, transient workforce to the area. A former Confederate cavalry captain born in Alabama, he later served as county commissioner. The marker credits him with keeping order under difficult conditions during a raucous chapter of the county's growth.

Corsicana, TX

A Scottish native, Alexander Beaton emigrated to the United States in 1843 and reached Texas in 1848 after serving in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. Settling in Corsicana in 1850, he practiced law and, in 1871, chaired the finance committee that persuaded the Houston & Texas Central Railroad to route its line through town — an effort that earned him the street bearing his name. A Mason, Methodist, and amateur geologist, he raised a family there with his wife, Elizabeth Jane McKinney.

Orange, TX

An Irish immigrant who reached America in 1846, Alexander "Sandy" Gilmer built ships in Orange with his cousin and ran a mercantile before the Civil War, when he served the Confederacy as a blockade runner trading local cotton and lumber for scarce supplies and took part in the 1863 Battle of Sabine Pass. After the war he turned to sawmilling, and though fires destroyed four of his mills, he became one of the region's leading lumbermen, with holdings that included the town of Remlig—his name spelled backward. He died in 1906 while on business in New York.

Boston, MA

Alexander Hamilton was one of the young republic's most consequential Founders — a Revolutionary War officer and aide to George Washington who became the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury. In that role he built the financial architecture of the United States, from a national bank to the assumption of state debts, setting the country on a path toward commercial and industrial strength. This statue, the inscription notes, was raised not by a government but by Thomas Lee, a private citizen of Boston, a reminder that Hamilton's legacy was championed by ordinary Americans who saw his hand in the nation's prosperity.

Dallas, TX

Alexander Harwood arrived in Dallas from Tennessee in 1844, when the settlement was little more than a river crossing, and spent the next four decades helping run it. Voters returned him as county clerk six times between 1850 and 1880, and he served the Confederacy as an assistant to Postmaster General John H. Reagan before representing Dallas County at the 1866 constitutional convention that followed the Civil War. His long public career threads through the town's rise from frontier outpost to established county seat.

San Augustine, TX

Alexander Horton came to Texas in 1824 and served as an aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. A pioneer, soldier, and state legislator, he bought this land in 1837 and built his home beside what became the family burial ground. By tradition the first grave was that of his brother, a Texas Ranger who died in 1849, and the small plot still holds Horton and his kin.