Military & Wartime

Moscow, OH

In the decades before the Civil War, the Ohio River was one of the most consequential borders in America — free soil on the Ohio bank, slavery on the Kentucky shore opposite. Moscow, a small river town in Clermont County, sat squarely on that dividing line, making it one of many crossing points where freedom seekers slipped north. According to local oral tradition, the home of Thomas Fee Jr. (1801–1862) served as one such refuge, a stop where people escaping bondage could find shelter on their way to safety. Like much of the Underground Railroad's history, the account survives through community memory rather than written ledgers, which by necessity were rarely kept.

Felicity, OH

In the decades before the Civil War, the free soil of southern Ohio sat just across the river from slaveholding Kentucky, making its small towns natural way-stations for freedom seekers heading north. Felicity, in Clermont County, lay within this borderland network, and the cemetery here holds the graves of Arthur Fee and Oliver Perry Spencer Fee, the latter remembered as an abolitionist who helped operate the Underground Railroad. Their work meant sheltering and guiding people escaping bondage — quiet, dangerous acts of conscience carried out by ordinary neighbors who believed slavery was a moral wrong worth risking their safety to resist.

Felicity, OH

In the 1840s, the question of slavery was tearing American churches apart from the inside. Nationally, antislavery Methodists broke away in 1843 to form the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, refusing to share communion with slaveholders; here in southern Ohio, just miles from the Ohio River and the slave state of Kentucky, that conviction took local form when forty members walked out of their congregation to found this church in 1847. Clermont County was already a stronghold of abolitionist feeling and Underground Railroad activity, and a congregation defined by its stand against slavery fit naturally into that landscape.

Victoria, TX

Felix de León was born in Texas in 1806, third son of the empresario Don Martín de León, founder of the De León Colony and the city of Victoria. As a boy he was seized and held hostage aboard a pirate ship to pressure his father, and he grew into a skilled frontier fighter who took up the cause in Texas's war for independence. He made his living driving horses, mules, and cattle to the New Orleans market.

Three Rivers, TX

Private First Class Felix Longoria of Three Rivers enlisted in 1944 and was killed in the Battle of Luzon in the Philippines. When his remains came home in 1949, the town's only funeral home refused to hold his wake, a decision widely seen as racial discrimination against Mexican Americans. His widow turned to Dr. Hector Garcia and the newly formed American G.I. Forum, and Senator Lyndon Johnson arranged burial at Arlington National Cemetery, turning a private grief into a national reckoning.

Victoria, TX

Fernando De Leon was the eldest son of empresario Martín De León, whose family came north from Mexico to help colonize the Texas frontier in the 1820s and founded the town of Victoria. A colony commissioner, rancher, and frontiersman who owned the noted Escondida Ranch, he cast his lot with Texas independence and was imprisoned by Mexican forces during the revolution.

Colmesneil, TX

Near the Neches River community of Holly Fork, settlers began farming and shipping goods by river as early as the 1820s, and buried their dead at this ground well before its first dated stone in 1866. Deeded formally in 1914, the Ferrell (or Holly Fork) Cemetery holds generations of pioneer families—Rawls, Conner, Cowart, and others—alongside Confederate brothers John W. and Richard G. Rawls and veterans of later conflicts.

Fairfield, PA · est. 1951

On July 3, 1863—the climactic day of the Gettysburg campaign—Union and Confederate cavalry clashed just two miles north of here in the sharp fight at Fairfield. Afterward this church building became a field hospital, its pews and floor given over to the wounded of both the 6th U.S. Cavalry and the 6th Virginia Cavalry, C.S.A. In the aftermath of battle, sanctuaries like this one became places where the war's cost was measured in shattered bodies from both sides.

Houston, TX

Fielding G. Secrest rode with Captain Henry W. Karnes's cavalry at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the decisive fight that won Texas its independence from Mexico. He died in Houston in 1840, only a year after the death of his wife, Eliza.

Borger, TX

Fifteen miles from this marker lies the site of the first Battle of Adobe Walls, fought on November 25, 1864, when Kiowa and Comanche warriors met U.S. troops led by Colonel Christopher 'Kit' Carson. Carson attacked the villages but, badly outnumbered, was forced to withdraw in what proved to be the famous scout and frontiersman's last fight. The clash was one of the largest engagements between the Army and the Southern Plains nations.

Stanly County, NC

In July 1780, Patriot militia under Colonel William Lee Davidson defeated a Loyalist force led by Colonel Samuel Bryan a few miles southeast of here, at Colson's on the Pee Dee. The clash was part of the bitter civil war between Whig and Tory neighbors that raged across the Carolina backcountry during the Revolution. Such small, savage fights did much to determine who controlled the region.

Poynor, TX

Fincastle grew up in the early 1850s as one of Henderson County's first settlements, when the area bustled with new plantations and farms. John Tindel bought more than a thousand acres in 1851 and platted the townsite, drawing farmers, tradesmen, and professionals. The town saw brisk activity during the Civil War as Captain William H. "Howdy" Martin raised troops and a Confederate commissary operated here, but by around 1900 most residents had drifted to the county seat at Athens, leaving a church, a pioneer cemetery, and Tindel's home as its only remnants.

Plainview, TX

What began as a small-town flying club with a single two-seat Aeronca became, in September 1940, the municipal Finney Field. When the United States entered World War II, the field was pressed into urgent service: from June 1942 civilian contractor Clent Breedlove ran a pre-glider school here, where cadets cut their engines and landed powered planes 'dead stick' to prepare for silent glider flight. More than 1,100 students trained at its runways and 23 buildings before the program moved to Lamesa in 1943.

Texas City, TX

The First Aero Squadron, the U.S. Army's first tactical air unit, was stationed here from 1913 to 1915 amid border tensions stirred by the Mexican Revolution. Though its seven planes, five officers, and twenty-one enlisted men never saw combat, they made aerial maps and set a long-distance flight record. It was pioneering work in the earliest days of military aviation.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Organized on October 5, 1849, under the Baptist missionary William M. Pickett, this congregation first gathered in a log building east of what is now the Franklin County Courthouse, only a year after the Mount Vernon post office opened. Originally called New Liberty, it took the name Mount Vernon Baptist Church in 1870. Its early roll included the Rev. Joshua F. Johnson, who would sit as a delegate at the 1861 Secession Convention in Austin.

Stinnett, TX

In the closing months of the Civil War, thousands of Comanche and Kiowa warriors — allied with the Confederacy — clashed with a Federal column of some 372 men led by the famed scout Col. Kit Carson near the ruins of an old trading post on the Canadian River. Though Carson mounted what he called the greatest fight of his career, the vastly outnumbered soldiers were forced to withdraw, making this one of the largest Indian engagements of the war. A decade later, some of the same warriors would face buffalo hunters at the 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls, a fight that helped open the Panhandle to settlement.

Cooke County, TX

Massachusetts-born Daniel Montague came to Texas in 1836 and took up the dangerous work of surveying the Fannin Land District, helping settlers stake claims while defending against raids. He joined the 1843 Snively Expedition against Mexican traders in the Republic's disputed borderlands and captained a company in the Mexican War of 1846. When Cooke County was organized in 1848 he became its first surveyor, and like fellow surveyor John H. Reagan he was honored with a county bearing his name.

Shelbyville, TX

Founded before 1825 and first called Nashville, this settlement became the original seat of what is now Shelby County, its first courthouse standing on this spot. In the 1840s it became a flashpoint of the notorious Regulator-Moderator War, one of the bloodiest vigilante feuds in early Texas. The same ground later mustered troops for frontier defense, the Texas army, and, decades on, Confederate service.

Laurel County, KY

Carl H. Dodd, born in Harlan County, Kentucky, served with Company E, 5th Regimental Combat Team in the Korean War. In January 1951, near Subuk, he led the capture of Hill 256, a key piece of terrain, with what the citation called "utter disregard for his safety." President Harry S. Truman presented him the Medal of Honor in May 1951; Dodd rose to major before retiring in 1965 and spent his last decades in Laurel County.

Louisville, KY

Founded in June 1872 as the First English Lutheran Church, this Louisville congregation dedicated its present Gothic-style sanctuary in 1905, designed by local architect Mason Maury. During the great flood of 1937 the church and its members aided stricken families even as floodwater nearly reached the second-floor sanctuary. In World War II, soldiers from Fort Knox and Bowman Field gathered here each week at the Lutheran Service Center to socialize and worship.

Berkeley, CA

This memorial honors the fallen Marines of the 1st Marine Division who died at Cape Gloucester in 1943. There, on the jungle-covered island of New Britain, the division waged a grueling amphibious campaign against Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, fighting through monsoon rains and dense terrain. It was one of the storied division's hard campaigns on the road across the Pacific.

Marshall, TX

Marshall grew into one of East Texas's leading towns before the Civil War, and its First Methodist congregation reflects that arc. Begun by circuit-rider Littleton Fowler in 1839 and organized in 1845, the church raised its brick sanctuary in 1861 with hand-molded bricks and a north gallery for enslaved worshippers. During the war its basement stored munitions and its bell was given to the Confederacy, later replaced by one taken from Federal forces; a wartime pastor, E. M. Marvin, went on to become a Methodist bishop.

Winnsboro, TX

Organized in 1859 as Winnsboro's first religious body, this Methodist congregation fell apart during the upheaval of the Civil War before being revived in 1869 with just fifteen members. It moved from borrowed quarters into its own sanctuary in 1880, then rebuilt in brick in 1904 and again in 1963. Across more than a century it anchored the town's spiritual and civic life.

Galveston, TX

When Texas rose in revolt against Mexico, Governor Henry Smith established the young republic's first navy on November 25, 1835, a fleet of four ships—Brutus, Independence, Liberty, and Invincible. These vessels harried Mexican shipping and helped protect the Texas coast during the war for independence. This memorial honors the sailors who fought for the fledgling nation.

San Antonio, TX

When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, the army rushed to train combat officers, and the first of eight camps opened at Leon Springs, Texas. On May 8, 1917, three thousand volunteers gathered at Camp Funston, and after three intense months, 1,846 graduated as second lieutenants—earning the nickname '90-day wonders.' Many served with distinction, nearly 300 returned for World War II, and three later became governors.

McCalmont Township, PA · est. 2016

The Pennsylvania State Police, founded in 1905, was among the first state police forces in the country, created to bring law to rural and industrial districts beyond the reach of local sheriffs. Barely a year into its existence, two young troopers were killed and three wounded trying to arrest fugitives barricaded in a nearby house. Their deaths were the force's first in the line of duty and are remembered in its enduring Call of Honor.

Hopkinsville, KY

Organized in 1813—by tradition through the pioneer minister and Cherokee missionary Gideon Blackburn—First Presbyterian is among Hopkinsville's oldest congregations. Its sanctuary, built between 1848 and 1852, still stands. During the harsh winter of 1861–62 the building served as a hospital for Confederate troops encamped nearby under Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, when disease swept the camp.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

Begun in 1757 and reckoned the oldest public building in Carlisle, the First Presbyterian Church grew from a congregation organized at Meeting House Springs back in 1734. Its walls witnessed history twice over: in 1774 townspeople gathered here to declare for American independence, and in 1794 President George Washington worshipped within them while rallying troops against the Whiskey Rebellion. Stone-built and enduring, it stands at the civic heart of the old frontier town.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1984

This Lancaster congregation traces its roots to 1742, completing its first building here in 1770 with the current edifice dedicated in 1851. Its first regular pastor, the Rev. John D. Woodhull, was a Revolutionary patriot, and among its members was James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States. The church's long life spans the colonial era, the Revolution, and the antebellum decades of national growth.

Georgetown, TX

Organized in 1854 at a Round Rock home, this Presbyterian congregation soon settled in Georgetown, where a donated lot held both its sanctuary and one of the town's first schools. The Civil War fractured the church as it did the nation: in 1866 the membership split into Northern and Southern congregations, a division that lingered until the Northern church disbanded and sold its building to the Southern one. Georgetown Presbyterians have worshipped in the present building since 1873, their denominations finally reunited in 1983.

New Bern, NC

In this town on August 25–27, 1774, seventy-one delegates gathered for the first provincial congress in America convened in open defiance of British colonial orders. Meeting despite the royal governor's objections, they chose delegates to the Continental Congress and voiced colonial grievances. It was a bold step toward organized resistance in North Carolina.

Easton, PA · est. 1953

Easton's First Reformed congregation gathered in 1745, and by 1776 — the very year of independence — its members had built and enlarged this church. In 1777 it hosted an Indian treaty council, one of the diplomatic gatherings that shaped relations between the young nation and Native peoples on the Pennsylvania frontier. During the Revolution the building also served as a military hospital, its pews and floors given over to the sick and wounded of the Continental cause.

Gonzales, TX

A mile and a half from here, on October 2, 1835, Texan colonists under Col. John H. Moore fired a small cannon at Mexican troops — the opening shot of the Texas Revolution. The confrontation at Gonzales over that very cannon crystallized the colonists' defiance and launched the fight for Texas independence.

Charleston County, SC

In the tense spring of 1861, Charleston Harbor became the flashpoint of a divided nation. Before dawn on April 12, a mortar round arced out from Fort Johnson toward the Federal garrison holding Fort Sumter across the water — the opening shot of a war that would consume the country for four years. Placed on the conflict's centennial, this marker fixes the spot where the long-feared rupture finally came.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2021

Organized in 1774 as the Philadelphia Light Horse, this volunteer cavalry troop rode into the Revolution almost at once, scouting for General Washington and crossing the icy Delaware with him on Christmas night 1776. Over the centuries it has served in every major American conflict while counting mayors, ambassadors, a Secretary of Defense, and an Apollo astronaut among its ranks. Now part of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, the Troop has kept this armory as its home since 1900.

Vallejo, CA

This marker honors Mare Island at Vallejo, established in 1854 as the first United States naval station on the Pacific coast. For well over a century its shipyard built, repaired, and outfitted vessels of the U.S. Navy, anchoring American sea power on the western edge of the continent through the age of sail, steam, and steel. Its founding signaled the nation's arrival as a Pacific power in the decade after California statehood.

Center, TX

Among the oldest cemeteries in Shelby County, this Methodist burying ground opened with the grave of a small child in 1861, as the Civil War was just beginning. Most of those laid to rest here were buried before 1900, including five Civil War veterans, thirteen Masons, a minister, a doctor, and R. L. Parker, remembered as the father of Center. Antique iron fencing and family plots still mark the ground, now softened with blooming plants and a flagstone walk.

Centerville, TX

Before Centerville had a formal congregation, traveling circuit riders like Henry Cassady and George Tittle carried Methodism to this Texas frontier, and in 1850 the church organized in earnest. Worshippers met in a schoolhouse until their first sanctuary rose in 1871, and a grander building with a bell tower replaced it in 1921. The congregation felt the reach of World War II directly when its pastor became an army chaplain and two members were killed in action.

Harlingen, TX

Thirty-one charter members founded Harlingen's Methodist congregation in 1910, at first sharing a frame sanctuary and served by a circuit-riding preacher who walked between towns. With land offered by city founder Lon C. Hill, they built Harlingen's first brick church by Easter 1911 and grew alongside the booming Rio Grande Valley city. The congregation weathered the 1933 Labor Day hurricane as a refuge, sent thirteen members to die in World War II, and helped plant a family of new churches, several serving the area's Spanish-speaking community.

Palacios, TX

Organized in 1903 in a one-room schoolhouse, the Methodist congregation at Palacios soon built Pioneer Hall, a parsonage, and, by 1912, a larger sanctuary, adding a youth Epworth League and choir. During World War II the town swelled around Camp Hulen, and the church opened its doors for Red Cross work, staffed the USO, and rented rooms to military families. Through hurricanes and the decades since, the congregation has kept adding buildings and ministries.

Danville, KY

On May 23, 1864, nearly 250 Black men—most of them enslaved—left Boyle County to march to Camp Nelson and enlist in the Union army, enduring stones and gunfire from hostile onlookers along the way. When they arrived, a Union colonel at first refused them because no policy yet permitted the enlistment of enslaved men. Their acceptance helped force a change in policy, opening the army to able-bodied African American men and setting the stage for more than 5,000 troops to be recruited at Camp Nelson.

Benton, PA · est. 2009

In August 1864, rumors of draft resistance and Confederate sympathy in the Fishing Creek Valley brought 800 federal troops into this quiet corner of Columbia County. Peace Democrats — Northerners who backed the Union but opposed Lincoln's wartime policies — were interrogated near a church at this site, and 44 were arrested and jailed at Fort Mifflin without access to civil courts. Their ordeal fed a national debate that, in 1866, led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that military trials of civilians were unconstitutional.

Dallas, TX

The Bast family journeyed from Kentucky to join the Peters Colony, and in 1859 Abraham Bast donated an acre for a nondenominational church, school, and burial ground beside Five Mile Creek. Neighbors James Horton and David King added land as well. Among the burials are area pioneers and two Confederate soldiers, and the cemetery — with hundreds of graves — remains in use today.

Erie, PA · est. 1948

During the War of 1812, control of Lake Erie was decisive for the fate of the American Northwest. On September 10, 1813, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry led a hastily built American squadron against the British fleet; when his first flagship, the Lawrence, was shot to pieces, Perry famously transferred to the Niagara and pressed the fight to victory. His terse report—"We have met the enemy and they are ours"—became one of the young republic's most quoted lines.

Dare County, NC

The USS Minnesota, a wooden steam frigate launched in 1855, served as flagship of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron under Flag Officer Silas H. Stringham. On August 28–29, 1861, she led seven Union warships in bombarding Forts Hatteras and Clark on the North Carolina coast, an early amphibious victory that tightened the naval blockade of the Confederacy.

Valdosta, GA

In the years after World War II, Korea, and amid Vietnam, American Legion posts across the country raised memorials to honor those who had served, and Valdosta's Post No. 13 was no exception. Dedicated on Veterans Day in 1969 as a gift to the city and Lowndes County, the Flame of Freedom stands not for a single battle but for the veterans of every American war. Its eternal-flame motif — popular in mid-century civic memorials — was meant as a perpetual reminder of sacrifice, a fixture of small-town South Georgia's public square.

Flemingsburg, KY

Kentucky's 26th county, Fleming, was cut from Mason County in 1798 and named for Col. John Fleming, a Revolutionary War officer who came to mark and improve land here in 1776 and built the area's second station in 1788. He worked alongside fellow pioneers John Finley, Michael Cassidy, and his half-brother George Stockton, who owned the land and laid out Flemingsburg in 1796.

Gonzales, TX

Born in Orange County, Fleming T. Wells served as a purser in the navy of the Republic of Texas and as secretary to Captain Jeremiah Brown of the warship Invincible. He died in 1844, during the brief life of the Texas Republic, and the State of Texas erected this Star and Wreath grave marker in his memory in 1962. His story recalls the small but consequential sea force that helped secure Texas independence.

Waco, TX

This burial ground began in 1868 with the grave of early settler Sample Carrigan and grew when Catherine Carrigan Fletcher set aside three acres as a public cemetery in 1873. It served the scattered farming communities of the McLennan and Falls County countryside, from Golinda to Satin. A number of Civil War veterans rest among its graves.

Village of Floral Park, NY

This memorial in the Village of Floral Park, on Long Island in Nassau County, honors local men who died in the two world wars that defined the first half of the 20th century. Communities across America raised such monuments to give permanent public form to their losses in World War I and World War II. It stands as the village's collective act of remembrance.

Wakefield, MA

In 1949, with the losses of the Second World War still fresh, the townspeople of Wakefield chose a gentler kind of monument — a planted "Floral Way" rather than carved stone — as a living memorial to all who had served in their country's defense. Sponsored by the Wakefield Garden Club, it reflects a postwar impulse to honor the fallen and the returned through something rooted and growing. Garden memorials like this one spread through New England towns in the years after 1945.

Corpus Christi, TX

In 1838, as France blockaded Mexico's coast during the so-called Pastry War, smuggling revived around Corpus Christi Bay, with goods carried overland across the Rio Grande to a Mexico hungry for supplies. When word spread that Mexico had declared Corpus Christi a port of entry and dispatched hundreds of men, Texans rallied at Texana in August to drive off the perceived invaders. By the time the volunteers arrived the Mexican force had scattered, abandoning about a hundred barrels of flour — the cache that gave Flour Bluff its name.

Corpus Christi, TX

Schooling on the Flour Bluff peninsula began in 1892, but it was oil, gas, ranching, and the Navy that made it a district. After the 1916 hurricane, students themselves helped rebuild the school farther inland; when the oil boom and then World War II brought new families and the Naval Air Station, the district built a junior-senior high and a "Laboratory of Industry" that trained boys for work at the naval plant. Voting for independence after the war, Flour Bluff ISD under Superintendent Ernest J. Wranosky pushed to "advance and equalize" opportunity for every student.

Schellsburg, PA · est. 1947

In 1758 General John Forbes cut a new military road across the Pennsylvania mountains to strike the French at Fort Duquesne, where Pittsburgh now stands. His army halted at the Shawnee Cabins camp near this spot, one link in the chain of fortified camps that made the slow, methodical advance possible. The campaign ended with the French abandoning and burning the fort, opening the Ohio country to British control.

Napier Township, PA · est. 1947

During the French and Indian War, Britain raced to seize the Forks of the Ohio from the French. In 1755 Colonel James Burd hacked a supply road through this Allegheny wilderness, and in 1758 General John Forbes drove a new military road westward toward Fort Ligonier and, ultimately, Fort Duquesne. This quiet Bedford County intersection is where the later Forbes Road split from Burd's earlier trace, sending the army deeper into the mountains.

Murrysville, PA · est. 1960

In November 1758, as the British pushed toward the French stronghold at the Forks of the Ohio, a young Colonel George Washington established a supply camp on the hill south of here to help feed the advance along the newly cut Forbes Road. He did so under orders from Colonel Henry Bouquet, describing himself as commanding the troops "to ye Westward." The camp was one link in the long logistical chain that carried Forbes's army across the Pennsylvania mountains during the French and Indian War.

Plum, PA · est. 1952

In the autumn of 1758, during the French and Indian War, General John Forbes led a British and provincial army west across the Pennsylvania mountains to seize the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne. This site marked the army's final staging point—breastworks thrown up by Colonel Henry Bouquet after nearly two hundred miles of cutting through wild country. On November 25, the French having abandoned and burned their fort, Forbes's men marched in unopposed.

Shade Township, PA · est. 1952

In 1758, during the French and Indian War, General John Forbes cut a new military road west toward the French stronghold at Fort Duquesne. This spot along the old Raystown Path — named for Indian trader Edmund Cartlidge — offered good grass to feed the army's horses, a vital consideration for a force hauling supplies through the Alleghenies. A nearby redoubt guarded the encampment.

Allegheny Township, PA · est. 1952

Perched atop Allegheny Hill, this fortification was thrown up in 1758 as part of General Forbes's methodical advance against the French at Fort Duquesne. Small forts and redoubts like this one secured the army's long supply line as it pushed west through the mountains, each a link in a chain of defended camps. The site of the works lies near the head of Breastwork Run.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1952

In 1758, during the French and Indian War, General John Forbes set out from his base at Carlisle to seize Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio. Rather than follow Braddock's ill-fated earlier route, Forbes drove a new road westward, keeping as close as army wagons allowed to the old Raystown Indian and Traders Path. Axemen under Colonel Henry Bouquet widened the trail into a military road that ended with the French abandoning and burning the fort.