Military & Wartime

Athens, PA · est. 1947

On August 18, 1779, General John Sullivan raised a fort on the high ground between the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers, commanding both waterways at once. With a supporting camp on the flats below, the post became the launching point for Sullivan's expedition into central New York — a scorched-earth campaign that broke the military power of the Tory and Iroquois alliance allied with Britain. The fort's brief life belied its role in one of the Revolution's most consequential frontier operations.

Athens, PA · est. 1929

During the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan's army built Fort Sullivan here as a supply base for its campaign against the Iroquois. In mid-August, soldiers killed in a skirmish downriver at Chemung were carried back and buried within the fort's walls. The location was remembered by a veteran, Solomon Talada, who settled in Athens after the war, and confirmed generations later when skeletons were unearthed before 1839.

Union Township, PA · est. 1999

As the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze in the mid-1750s, settlers threw up fortified blockhouses to shelter their scattered farms. Fort Swatara, first built by Peter Hedrick in 1755 and strengthened by Capt. Frederick Smith in 1756, guarded the strategic Swatara Gap against raids and gave frontier families a place of refuge in a dangerous season.

Caldwell, TX

In July 1830 the Mexican government established Fort Tenoxtitlan near here, naming it for the Aztec capital in a bid to halt the flood of Anglo-American settlers pouring into Texas. The plan failed: troops abandoned the post by 1832, and a town nevertheless sprang up after 1834 that drew many prominent early Texans. Like many frontier settlements, it faded from the map, gone by 1860.

Caldwell, TX

Founded by Mexico in 1830 as a bulwark against Anglo-American immigration, Fort Tenoxtitlan took the ancient Aztec name for Mexico City, meaning "prickly pear place," and its commandant even dreamed of it becoming Texas's capital. The plan backfired as Mexican soldiers and Anglo pioneers became friends and the empresario Sterling C. Robertson funneled in settlers. After troops withdrew in 1832 the site passed to the Anglos, and among its residents were five signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, an Alamo martyr, and seven veterans of San Jacinto before it was abandoned amid Indian raids in 1841.

Chester, TX

In 1830 the Mexican government planted Fort Terán on the Neches to halt the tide of Anglo-American colonists pouring into Texas—the first white settlement in what became Tyler County. Named for General Manuel Mier y Terán, commander of Mexican forces in Texas, it was led in 1831 by the colorful Peter Ellis Bean. The garrison's mission reflected Mexico City's growing alarm at Anglo immigration, but the effort proved futile, and troops abandoned the post in 1835 on the eve of the Texas Revolution. Only the marked site remains.

Port Bolivar, TX

Just after Texas declared independence in 1836, President David Burnet sent Colonel Ed Harcourt to Galveston Island to throw up a fortification, and using army recruits and enslaved labor Harcourt built an octagonal earth-and-timber fort armed with guns taken from the Texas Navy schooner Cayuga. Named for Alamo defender William B. Travis, the original fort was soon storm-damaged, but the name endured: a second Fort Travis rose at Bolivar Point in 1898-99 near a former Civil War Confederate work. Its coastal batteries were expanded through both World Wars before the fort was decommissioned and sold as surplus in 1949, later sheltering residents from hurricanes.

Franklin, PA

By 1760 the British had won the struggle for the Ohio Country, and they raised Fort Venango where French Creek meets the Allegheny River—a strategic river junction the French had earlier fortified. Its garrison held the frontier only briefly. In 1763, as Pontiac's War swept the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, Native warriors overwhelmed the post and burned it, one of a string of British forts that fell in that coordinated uprising.

St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1930

Fort Waddell was one of a line of frontier defenses raised to protect the settlers of old Cumberland County during the dangerous years of the French and Indian War. It stood on the plantation of Thomas Waddell, part of a chain of posts running from Fort Davis to Shippensburg. These small forts offered refuge to scattered farm families amid frontier raids.

St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1947

General Edward Braddock's crushing defeat near the Monongahela in 1755 tore open the Pennsylvania frontier, and settlers answered by building a chain of small stockaded forts as places of refuge. Fort Wadell was one link in that improvised line, standing ready when raiding parties struck the scattered farms of the Cumberland Valley. These were homemade defenses, thrown together by the very families they protected.

Alexandria, VA

During the Civil War, Washington, D.C. was ringed by a vast network of earthen forts and gun batteries built to defend the Union capital against Confederate attack. Fort Ward, in Alexandria, was one of the largest of these works, and this marker identifies the remains of an outlying gun battery — a forward emplacement that extended the fort's defensive firepower across the surrounding terrain. Such batteries housed artillery positioned to cover roads and approaches that the main fort alone could not reach.

Savoy, TX

Built in 1836 by Arkansas Indian trader Abel Warren to guard his trading post, Fort Warren was among the earliest settlements in Fannin County, its bois d'arc walls anchored by two-story corner guardhouses. Kiowa, Tonkawa, Caddo, Wichita, and other peoples came to exchange furs for knives, paint, and trade goods, and during the Civil War the post served as a supply center funneling provisions to Confederate troops and Indian refugees in the Territory to the north.

Gonzales, TX

Named for Confederate General Thomas N. Waul, this earthen fort was begun in late 1863 to guard inland Texas against a possible Federal push up the Guadalupe River and to protect military supply trains. Engineer Col. Albert Miller Lea oversaw its construction, partly by enslaved laborers, on a scale of roughly 250 by 750 feet. Surviving records leave it uncertain whether the fortification was ever finished.

Fort Wayne, IN

Erected on Armistice Day in 1924, this memorial honors the men of the Fort Wayne Works of the General Electric Company who served in the World War of 1914–1918. Their fellow employees raised it to remember the workmates who left the factory floor for the trenches of France. It reflects how deeply the Great War reached into America's industrial communities.

Scott Township, PA · est. 1948

In 1778 the frontier scout Moses Van Campen raised a stockade fort along Fishing Creek to shield local families from the raids that swept this valley during the Revolution. Attacked at least once, it served as one of the refuges that let settlement cling to the Susquehanna country through years of border warfare. Van Campen became a legendary figure in the region, remembered for his exploits as a scout and Indian fighter.

New Castle, NH

In December 1774, months before Lexington and Concord, New Hampshire patriots learned the Crown had banned gunpowder imports and moved to seize the royal magazine at New Castle. Over two days, local militia led by John Langdon and John Sullivan overwhelmed the small garrison at Fort William and Mary and carried off gunpowder, muskets, and cannon. The captured powder is traditionally said to have supplied later fighting.

Plymouth, NC

Fort Williams was the principal Union stronghold at Plymouth, named for General Thomas Williams. As the Confederate assault of April 1864 collapsed the surrounding works, the garrison fell back to this fort, which held out until it too surrendered on April 20. Its capitulation ended the battle and handed the town to Confederate forces.

Defiance, OH

In the autumn of 1812, with the young United States again at war with Britain, Gen. William Henry Harrison ordered this fort thrown up at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers in what was then contested frontier. Fort Winchester never saw a great battle; instead it did the quieter, essential work of war — stockpiling supplies, drilling troops, and marshaling men before they pushed north to the fighting at Fort Meigs. By 1815 the war had ended and the garrison marched away, but the fort's footprint lingered: the streets of Defiance, Ohio grew up along the lines it had traced.

Mineral Wells, TX

Growing from the 1925 National Guard grounds of "Old" Camp Wolters, this post was activated by the U.S. Army in 1940 as an infantry replacement center, expanding to more than 7,500 acres with over 100 buildings raised in under four months. It trained tens of thousands of soldiers—including Medal of Honor recipients Jack Knight and Audie Murphy—and held German POWs during World War II. Reactivated after the war, it became the Army's primary helicopter flight-training center during the Vietnam era before closing in 1973.

Westworth Village, TX

In 1941, Fort Worth boosters led by Amon G. Carter secured an aircraft plant to build B-24 Liberator bombers, and the Army opened an adjoining airfield that in 1943 became Fort Worth Army Air Field, training more than 4,000 pilots during World War II. Renamed Carswell Air Force Base in 1948 for hometown Medal of Honor pilot Horace S. Carswell, Jr., it became a front-line Strategic Air Command base of the Cold War—home first to the giant B-36 Peacemaker and then the B-52, whose crews flew the Vietnam War's Operation Linebacker II in 1972. After the base closed in 1993 it reopened as a Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base.

Fort Worth, TX

The Stock Yard Company's wooden horse and mule barns burned on March 14, 1911—opening day of the show later known as the Southwestern Exposition & Fat Stock Show, which went on as planned with former President Theodore Roosevelt delivering the opening address. Rebuilt in 1912 as fireproof concrete-and-steel structures holding 3,000 animals, the barns became some of the finest stables in the world. When World War I broke out in 1914, European armies bought Fort Worth horses and mules by the trainload, spending an estimated $11 million and making the city the largest horse and mule market on earth.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1947

Pennsylvania built Fort Wyoming in 1771 to press its claim in the Wyoming Valley, only to have it seized by the Connecticut settlers it was meant to check. Rebuilt in 1778, it served the following year as a mustering point for General John Sullivan's expedition against the Iroquois during the Revolution. The garrison held until 1784, when Continental and Pennsylvania troops withdrew and the works were destroyed.

Millcreek Township, PA · est. 1947

Half a mile north stands Fort Zeller, reckoned the oldest surviving fort in Pennsylvania. It was built in 1723 by Palatine German pioneers who had migrated from New York's Schoharie Valley to settle the Tulpehocken country, and rebuilt in 1745. In dangerous years it served as a fortified refuge for frontier families during clashes with Native peoples.

Louisville, KY

When George Rogers Clark and the settlers who had wintered on Corn Island came ashore in 1778, they raised Fort-on-Shore—the first building on the mainland at the site of present-day Louisville. Built on Clark's orders during the American Revolution, the stockade sheltered troops for four years before it was replaced in 1782 by the larger Fort Nelson. The island that gave the settlers their first foothold once lay in the Ohio River just off this spot.

Forty Fort, PA · est. 1947

Forty Fort took its name from the forty Connecticut pioneers who came to the Wyoming Valley in 1769 and began the stockade the next year. It is remembered above all for the aftermath of July 3, 1778, when its surrender to a British, Loyalist, and Native force under Major John Butler was followed by the Wyoming Massacre, one of the war's bloodiest frontier episodes. The killing of settlers and prisoners shocked the young nation and hardened resolve against the Iroquois allies of the Crown.

Victoria, TX

As the United States raced to build an air force before entering World War II, Victoria secured an advanced aerial gunnery training field, opened in 1941 and named for a young instructor killed in a 1925 crash. Cadets trained here throughout the war, firing over ranges on the Matagorda coast, and the base even hosted the Aztec Eagles — Mexico's 201st Fighter Squadron — as Allied fliers trained side by side. Closed at war's end, it was reactivated for jet training during the Korean War, became a permanent Air Force base, and finally passed into civilian hands as Victoria's regional airport.

Goldsboro, NC

On December 17, 1862, Union troops under General John G. Foster struck Goldsboro during a raid from their base at New Bern, aiming to cut the vital Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. The attack was part of the wider Union effort to control eastern North Carolina's rivers and rail lines. The raiders damaged the railroad bridge before withdrawing.

Mifflinburg, PA · est. 1947

A mill has stood near this spot since 1771, when Fought's Mill first turned grain for the settlers of Buffalo Valley. During the Revolution, the sturdy mill doubled as a place of refuge when frontier raids threatened the scattered farms of the region. It was also here, on November 3, 1776, that Buffalo Valley held its first election under Pennsylvania's new revolutionary state constitution.

Fort Worth, TX

In the late 1840s the U.S. Army sought a new post on the Trinity River to guard the line between settlers and the Plains tribes. General William J. Worth planned it but died of cholera before it was built, leaving Major Ripley Arnold to scout and establish the fort in 1849 near Marrow Bone Springs with the help of local figures like Middleton Tate Johnson. Arnold named the post for Worth, the recently fallen Mexican War hero, and the barracks rose where the Tarrant County Courthouse now stands.

Boston, MA

This tablet records the early-1630s agreement by which Boston's first inhabitants, led by Governor John Winthrop, purchased the rights to the peninsula from William Blackstone, the solitary settler already living there. The town then set aside a tract as a common training field for the militia and for grazing cattle — the origin of Boston Common. The words come from a later deposition by John Odlin and others attesting to the sale.

Covington, LA

John Wharton Collins founded the town of Wharton here in March 1813, naming it for his grandfather. Three years later the Louisiana legislature renamed it Covington in honor of General Leonard Covington, a hero of the War of 1812.

Cambridge, MA

On April 19, 1775, the war for American independence began at dawn on Lexington Green and spread down the road through Concord. The bloodiest hours came not in the morning volleys but during the British column's long, harried retreat toward Boston, when militia and townsmen fired from behind walls and houses along the route. Cambridge lay squarely on that path, and here four of its citizens fell to the retreating regulars. The city raised this monument in 1880 to mark the ground and keep their names — Isaac Gardiner, William Marcy, John Hicks, and Moses Richardson — from fading.

Freeport, TX

Four miles from this spot stood the original town of Velasco, one of early Texas's most consequential coastal sites. Here the schooner Lively landed the first immigrants to Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1821; here colonists and Mexican troops clashed in the 1832 Battle of Velasco, an early spark of Texan resistance; and here, in 1836, Presidents David G. Burnet and Santa Anna signed a peace treaty that Mexico never ratified. Few places hold so many turning points of the Texas Revolution in one stretch of shoreline.

Austin, TX

This state marker rests over the graves of Frances Lenoir McCulloch and her son Benjamin, mother and son of a family that gave two brigadier generals to the Confederacy. Benjamin McCulloch first fought as a private at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, helping win Texas independence, then became a noted Texas Ranger before rising to Confederate brigadier general. He was killed at the Battle of Elk Horn (Pea Ridge), Arkansas, in March 1862.

Whitesburg, KY

Whitesburg honors Burdine native Francis Gary Powers (1929–1977), the CIA pilot whose high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union made him a Cold War symbol. On May 1, 1960, his aircraft was downed deep inside Russia; he parachuted to safety, was captured, tried for espionage, and freed in 1962 in a swap for a Soviet spy. He later died in a helicopter crash while working as a news pilot.

Hempstead, TX

North Carolina-born Francis Jarvis Cooke fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, joining the volunteer army that won Texas its independence, and lived until 1903. He is remembered here alongside his Tennessee-born wife, Emily Stockton Cooke, whose long life stretched into 1908. Their joined memory ties a veteran of the republic's founding fight to the family that carried on after him.

Rowan County, NC

Colonel Francis Locke commanded the Patriot militia that routed a large Loyalist force at the Battle of Ramsour's Mill on June 20, 1780. Fought largely by neighbors on both sides, the battle broke Tory strength in the western Piedmont at a critical moment of the Revolution's Southern campaign. Locke's home stood nearby in Rowan County.

Milam, TX

Francis Marcus Weatherred was a Virginia-born frontiersman who fought in the Creek Indian War before joining the Texas War for Independence in 1836, the year the Republic of Texas was born. Arriving in Texas in 1835, he earned the coveted status of a Citizen of the Republic, and he and his wife Nancy settled in the piney woods of Sabine County near the Louisiana line. The state honored his service with this grave marker in 1962.

Texarkana, TX

Francis Marion Henry, a great-great-grandson of the Revolutionary orator Patrick Henry, served in the Confederate army before buying land in the young town of Texarkana around 1873. Elected to the Texas Senate in 1876, he built the city's first brick home, donated ground for a Methodist church, and spent 34 years as a leading trial lawyer of wide repute. When he died in 1911, every business in Texarkana closed in his honor.

Chatfield, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1830 and orphaned young, Francis Marion Martin led his adoptive family to Navarro County in 1853 and built a life as a horse breeder and farmer before entering politics under the wing of Sam Houston. A Confederate cavalry captain in poor health, he returned to public life after the war as a constitutional convention delegate and state senator, proudly styling himself a "farmer-senator." As the "Swamp Fox of Navarro," he championed farmers and laborers, drew significant African American support, served as lieutenant governor from 1883 to 1885, and later became a Populist leader.

Edna, TX

Francis Menefee White, born in Tennessee in 1811, took part in the 1835 capture of Bexar — the siege that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio in the opening months of the Texas Revolution. His grave marker, which also remembers his wife Rosanna, ties an ordinary volunteer to one of the war's first decisive victories. He lived on until 1897, long enough to see the frontier republic he fought for become part of the United States.

Luling, TX

Tulane-trained Dr. Sidney Joseph Francis settled in the railroad town of Luling in 1889 and built this corner home by 1896, enlarging it into a two-story dwelling with a full-length porch and porte cochere in 1916. A physician, businessman, and World War I veteran, Francis saw the house pass to his daughter and her husband, H. Miller Ainsworth, who served in both World Wars and rose to General in the National Guard. It remained in the family until deeded to the city in 1989.

New York, NY

This small triangle of pavement in Queens is one of hundreds of "squares" that New York City has quietly dedicated to hometown servicemen, turning ordinary street corners into places of remembrance. It honors Frank C. Prokop and bears the name of Glenridge Post 34 of the Catholic War Veterans (C.W.V.), a national organization of Catholic servicemen founded in the 1930s that established local posts across the boroughs. Such memorial squares were typically dedicated by neighbors and veterans' groups to keep the memory of a local man's service and sacrifice alive on the streets where he once lived.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2004

Frank E. Bolden was one of the first two African American war correspondents accredited by the U.S. Army during World War II. Reporting from India, Burma, and China, he chronicled the service of the "Buffalo Soldiers" and the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen for readers back home. He later became city editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation's most influential Black newspapers.

Dallas, TX

Frankford Cemetery began as a resting place for pioneers along the old Preston Road cattle-drive route, its first burial dating to 1862. Among those interred is John T. Coit, a South Carolina lawyer who raised a Dallas-area regiment and served as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, later reinterred here. The burial ground has been tied since the 1870s to the White Rock Masonic Lodge, whose hall doubled as church and school.

Franklin, TX

The town began in 1872 as Morgan, named for a railway official, but a naming conflict soon led residents to adopt 'Franklin' instead. Robertson County was deeded five acres here in 1880 as an inducement to bring the courthouse to town, though burials had already begun — the earliest recorded is Elizabeth Calvert in 1869. Among more than 1,300 graves rest a War of 1812 veteran, officials, legislators, and soldiers from every American war through Vietnam.

San Antonio, TX

This memorial in San Antonio honors Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose "Good Neighbor" policy sought friendlier relations with Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s. Dedicated also to those who, like him, gave their lives in the cause of freedom, it ties the wartime president to the sacrifice of a generation shaped by the Second World War. Roosevelt died in April 1945, just as the war he led the nation through drew to its close.

New York, NY

This New York City memorial honors Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), the four-term president who steered the United States through its two greatest 20th-century trials — the Great Depression and World War II. His New Deal redefined the role of the federal government, and his wartime leadership helped guide the Allies toward victory before his death in April 1945.

Greenville, SC

This memorial in Greenville honors Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, who guided the nation through its two greatest twentieth-century trials: the Great Depression and the Second World War. Elected to an unprecedented four terms, Roosevelt dramatically expanded the role of the federal government before dying in office at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945 — just months before the war's end. His long tenure reshaped the American presidency and the country's sense of what government could do.

Galveston, TX

Built in 1886 to replace a home lost in a great Strand fire, this Italianate house belonged to attorney and judge Robert M. Franklin, son of San Jacinto veteran Benjamin C. Franklin, for whom Franklin County was named. Robert had fought in the Civil War Battle of Galveston as a Confederate "horse Marine" aboard a cotton-clad gunboat and later helped plan the city's protective seawall. In 1931 the house passed to John F. Wandless, a Boer War and World War I veteran who served as a Gulf Coast intelligence officer for Britain during World War II while his wife ran a local British sailors' club.

Bedford, PA · est. 1952

As General Forbes's army pushed toward the Ohio in 1758, frontier settlements sprang up in its wake. Here John Fraser and his wife established an inn and trading post that same year, feeding officers at nearby Fort Raystown, the outpost that grew into Bedford. Fraser was no ordinary tavernkeeper—he had served as a guide and interpreter for a young Colonel George Washington in the tense years before the war.

New York, NY

On December 4, 1783, days after the last British troops left New York, George Washington gathered his officers in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern to bid them an emotional farewell, the Revolutionary War won and his command soon to be surrendered. The tavern was kept by Samuel Fraunces, a man of West Indian origin who had long served the patriot cause. The scene — a victorious general voluntarily taking leave of his army — became one of the enduring images of the new nation.

Weymouth, MA

Across eastern Massachusetts, towns like Weymouth honor residents by naming street corners and small squares for them — a civic tradition that, in the decades after the World Wars, most often recognized local people who served in the armed forces. This square carries the name of Fred K. Tolken. The marker records the dedication rather than a biography, so it stands as a compact token of community remembrance rather than a full account of his life.

Trappe, PA · est. 2008

Frederick Muhlenberg came of age as the American republic was being invented on paper. A Lutheran minister turned statesman, he sat in the Continental Congress, led Pennsylvania's assembly, and presided over the state convention that ratified the new federal Constitution in 1787. When the first Congress convened in 1789 he was chosen Speaker of the House, and his was the first signature on the Bill of Rights. He kept his home here in Trappe through those founding years.

Hamilton, TX

Frederick B. Gentry served as a soldier in the Texas War for Independence in 1836, the fight that won the Republic of Texas its freedom from Mexico. He later commanded a frontier Minuteman company, part of the citizen defenders who guarded exposed settlements against raids. The State of Texas erected this marker in his honor in 1962.

Town of Guilderland, NY

Frederick Crounse was a local farmer who served as an officer in the 3rd Albany County Militia during the American Revolution, when the settlers of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys were pulled into one of the war's decisive campaigns. In the autumn of 1777, American forces converged on Saratoga to halt General Burgoyne's advance from Canada, and civilians and militiamen like Crounse kept the army fed and supplied through the long fight. This marker stands on his farm in Guilderland, where he was laid to rest, tying an ordinary working landscape to a battle that changed the course of the Revolution.

Lynn Township, PA · est. 1928

In September 1777, with British troops advancing on Philadelphia, patriots feared the great State House bell would be melted for cannon. Local farmer Frederick Leaser hitched his farm team and hauled the bell north to Allentown, where it was hidden beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church until the danger passed. More than half a century later his grandson used the same wagon to carry a liberty pole to this spot, its Jacksonian legend against nullification tying one generation's revolution to the next's fight over the Union.

Fredericksburg, VA · est. 1936

Union troops crossed the Rappahannock and charged a stone wall held by entrenched Confederates below Marye's Heights. Wave after wave fell; nearly 13,000 Union casualties resulted.

Seattle, WA

Dedicated on Memorial Day in 1951, this grove honors American service members who gave their lives fighting under the United Nations banner. In 1951 that fight was the Korean War, where U.S. troops formed the core of a UN coalition defending South Korea. The living memorial was planted as a place of quiet remembrance for those losses.

Alta Vista, IA

This small-town memorial carries the familiar refrain reminding passersby that liberty has always been purchased at a cost. Set in rural Chickasaw County, it belongs to the tradition of local veterans memorials that dot the courthouse squares and roadside parks of the American heartland.