Military & Wartime

College Station, TX

This marker commemorates George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States, noting his World War II service as a young Navy lieutenant junior grade — he was among the nation's youngest naval aviators. After a long career in public service he settled in College Station, Texas, home to the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University, where he and his wife are memorialized. The listing of his naval rank and service number echoes the plain style of a military honor marker.

Uniontown, PA · est. 1981

On this Uniontown site in 1880 was born George Catlett Marshall, who would become one of the towering figures of the American century. As Army Chief of Staff he directed the vast mobilization that won the Second World War, then as Secretary of State lent his name to the Marshall Plan that rebuilt a shattered Europe. The soldier who organized victory became the statesman who organized peace, an achievement crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize.

New Bern, NC

George E. Badger, born near this spot, rose to become United States Secretary of the Navy in 1841 and a U.S. Senator from 1846 to 1855. A superior court judge and staunch nationalist, he was one of antebellum North Carolina's most prominent statesmen. His career spanned the courtroom, the cabinet, and the Senate in the decades before the Civil War.

Edna, TX

George F. Horton built this house in 1876 in Old Texana, a once-promising Jackson County town, and when its fortunes faded he simply dismantled the home and moved it to nearby Edna in 1882. A Confederate veteran who became a businessman and postmaster, Horton belonged to the generation rebuilding civilian lives across Texas after the Civil War. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Kingsbury, TX

George Francis fought in the 1836 Texas War for Independence, then brought his family to Texas and built this house on York's Creek in 1849, near a crossing used by the San Antonio-to-Bastrop mail route. A generation later, all six of his sons marched from this home to serve the Confederacy in the Civil War. Several never returned — one killed at Chickamauga, another dying in service at Galveston, and a third falling at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield.

Crockett, TX

A New York native and War of 1812 officer, George G. Alford came to Texas in 1836 and served as quartermaster general under Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution. Captured by Mexican forces on a later supply mission for the young Republic, he won his release through the intervention of President Andrew Jackson, then settled into life as a plantation owner and county judge.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1999

George Gordon Meade rose from Army engineer to major general, taking command of the Army of the Potomac just days before it turned back Robert E. Lee's invasion at Gettysburg in July 1863 — the campaign that broke the Confederacy's northward push. Philadelphia was his family's city, and a grateful nation gave him a house here, where he lived until his death in 1872. The marker stands near that home, tying the Union's most consequential victory to the ordinary streets of the general who won it.

Cameron, TX

George Green fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. Beyond the battlefield he served as a ranger and surveyor, helping map and secure the young republic's frontier, and became an honored citizen of Milam County. The State of Texas erected this marker to his memory in 1962.

San Marcos, TX

George H. Talmadge (1840–1911), an Illinois farmer and Union Army veteran of the Civil War, moved to San Marcos in 1888 with his wife Lydia and their children, including an adopted daughter orphaned by the Great Chicago Fire. A carpenter by trade, Talmadge built this Victorian house of cypress in 1889. His family lived in the home for 86 years.

Fort Worth, TX

Born in Fort Worth in 1926, George Herman O'Brien, Jr. served in the Merchant Marine, earned a geology degree from Texas Tech, and was called to active Marine Corps duty after war broke out in Korea. On October 27, 1952, ordered to retake a vital hill known as the Hook near the 38th parallel, Second Lieutenant O'Brien spearheaded a four-hour assault—much of it hand-to-hand—pressing the attack despite repeated wounds before setting a defense and tending his men. For that valor he received the Medal of Honor, later returning to Texas to work as a petroleum geologist.

Paradise, TX

George Lafayette Ramsdale left Devonshire, England, and by 1836 had reached Texas, enlisting in the army during the war for independence from Mexico. He and his wife Elizabeth moved across several counties before the Civil War, when he served the Confederacy guarding the frontier. Settling in Wise County in 1866, he farmed and ran a tannery until his death in 1884.

Aurora, TX

Georgia-born George Lawton Bledsoe, a carpenter and cotton-gin builder, came to Texas in 1834 and fought in the Texas Revolution, including the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He earned a military pension and patented land grants across five counties as the young republic and state took shape. He is buried here alongside his daughter and a brother-in-law.

Westhoff, TX

Born in England in 1816, George Lord immigrated to Canada and then New Orleans before joining volunteers for the army of the young Republic of Texas in 1837. He fought through the turbulent 1830s and '40s—the Córdova Rebellion, the Somervell Expedition, and the ill-fated Mier Expedition, where he survived the notorious Black Bean lottery and imprisonment at Perote—then served as a Ranger in the Mexican War. In 1849 he joined the Gold Rush to California, marrying Kate Myers along the way, and the couple returned with a fortune in gold to establish a Longhorn ranch in DeWitt County.

Corpus Christi, TX

Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, George Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and served with the 116th United States Colored Infantry through the Appomattox Campaign that ended the Civil War. He then joined the newly formed 9th Cavalry—one of the regiments Plains nations called Buffalo Soldiers—patrolling and guarding the west Texas frontier before settling in Corpus Christi, where he died in 1879.

Pecos, TX

George R. Reeves raised and captained a company in the 11th Texas Cavalry at the Civil War's outbreak, campaigning across Arkansas, the Indian Territory, and the 1862 invasion of Kentucky. Promoted to colonel and command of his regiment by 1863, he led it at the bloody battle of Chickamauga and through the grinding Atlanta campaign, opposing Sherman's march to the sea and fighting on into the Carolinas in 1865. The West Texas county and town of Pecos's Reeves County bear his name.

Pottsboro, TX

George R. Reeves, born in Tennessee in 1826, came to Texas around 1845 and climbed steadily through public life as a Grayson County tax collector, sheriff, and state representative. During the Civil War he served as a Confederate officer, fighting at Chickamauga and through the grinding Hundred Days Atlanta Campaign. He returned to politics afterward and rose to Speaker of the Texas House before his death in 1882 — the man for whom vast Reeves County was later named.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

George Ross settled at Lancaster around 1751 and became a soldier, jurist, and ardent patriot in the cause of American independence. As a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The site of his country house, nine blocks north on Ross Street, is now marked by a monument; Ross died in 1779, in the midst of the Revolution he helped launch.

Webberville, TX

George Self served in Captain Jesse Billingsley's company at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the brief and decisive clash that secured Texas independence. His terse grave marker, noting only his service and his death in 1856, is typical of the plain memorials raised to the Republic's soldier-settlers. It preserves the memory of one man among the small army that won a nation.

Rockdale, TX

Born in Rockdale in 1910, George Sessions Perry drew on his small-town Texas boyhood for a celebrated body of fiction and nonfiction, winning the 1941 National Book Award. During World War II he reported firsthand from the front for The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post, bringing the war home to millions of American readers before his death in the mid-1950s.

Jefferson, TX

Captain George T. Todd, a Confederate veteran who became a district attorney, state legislator, and senior East Texas attorney, built this late Victorian home in Jefferson in 1893 for his large family. Distinguished by a corner tower with a mansard roof, the house remains in the hands of his descendants.

Easton, PA · est. 1953

This handsome stone house was built in 1757 by William Parsons, the Surveyor-General who laid out Easton, and first served as his own home. It later belonged to George Taylor, an ironmaster and member of the Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Taylor's forges helped supply the Revolution with the iron of war, and his signature bound him to the boldest gamble of the founding generation.

Catasauqua, PA · est. 1947

George Taylor, an Irish-born ironmaster who rose from indentured labor to prosperity, made his home in this handsome 1768 house along the Lehigh. Elected to Pennsylvania's provincial Assembly in 1764, he stood against royal government and was sent to the Continental Congress in July 1776, where he added his name to the Declaration of Independence. His restored home is today a National Historic Landmark.

San Marcos, TX

George Thomas McGehee arrived in the San Marcos area as a boy in 1846, among its earliest settlers. He rode with Terry's Texas Rangers in the Civil War, served three terms in the state legislature, and in 1895 crowned his standing by building this turreted Victorian residence with his wife Sarah. Restored in 1949 by the Thompson family, the house survives as a monument to a pioneer-turned-statesman.

Henderson, TX

Born in South Carolina in 1848, George W. Burton served the Confederacy before migrating to Rusk County, Texas, around 1880. He went on to represent the county in the Texas House of Representatives from 1915 to 1921, three eventful terms during which he took part in the impeachment of Governor James Ferguson, the state's mobilization for World War I, and the creation of the Texas State Highway Department. He and his wife, Julia Savannah Palmer, raised six children.

Cuero, TX

This state marker honors George W. Davis, a citizen soldier who served Texas during its 1835–1836 struggle for independence from Mexico. It was erected by the State of Texas in 1962 to commemorate his part in the Revolution.

Austin, TX

George W. Sampson, a former Confederate captain turned leading Austin merchant, married Mary Goodwin Hall—niece of Reconstruction governor Edmund J. Davis—in an 1872 ceremony that was the first wedding held in the Governor's Mansion. In 1875 he built this house of native limestone hand-cut on site, fed by a rainwater cistern that supplied what may have been Austin's first complete indoor plumbing. A Corinthian-columned gallery was added in the 1920s.

New York, NY

On April 30, 1789, George Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall in lower Manhattan and took the oath as the first President of the United States. New York City served as the nation's first capital, and this moment set the young republic's experiment in self-government into motion. The stone marked here commemorates the physical spot where that history began.

Waterford, PA · est. 1946

In December 1753 a 21-year-old George Washington reached this remote frontier carrying a message from Virginia's governor demanding that the French withdraw from lands Britain claimed. The French politely refused, and Washington's dangerous winter journey home carried the warning that war was coming. The mission was his first appearance on the public stage, and a statue here honors that formative errand into the wilderness.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

In October 1794, President George Washington came to Carlisle to review militia gathered from Pennsylvania and New Jersey before marching west to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. The tax revolt among frontier distillers had become the first serious challenge to federal authority, and Washington's personal appearance at the head of an army was a deliberate show of resolve. It remains the only time a sitting American president has commanded troops in the field.

Forward Township, PA · est. 1970

In December 1753, a young George Washington passed through this region on his return from Fort Le Boeuf, where he had carried a British demand that the French withdraw from the Ohio Country. Traveling the Venango Indian Trail, he came close to death here on December 27, 1753, when an Indian fired at him from less than fifteen paces. The perilous mission helped ignite the imperial struggle that became the French and Indian War.

Comanche, TX

A member of Stephen F. Austin's colony, George Washington Gentry came to Texas in 1835 and settled in what became Washington County, working as a farmer and surveyor. He took part in the Texas Revolution, fought in several skirmishes with Native peoples, and helped defend San Antonio during the 1842 Mexican invasions led by Vasquez and Woll before later moving to Comanche County.

Seguin, TX

George Washington Lonis came to Texas in 1830 and joined the Texans' 1835 campaign against Bexar during the opening months of the revolution. The following spring he was wounded at the Battle of San Jacinto, the victory that secured Texas independence. He lived on in Guadalupe County until his death in 1860, and the State of Texas honored his service with this marker in 1962.

Seattle, WA

In 1932, the two-hundredth anniversary of George Washington's birth, patriotic and civic groups across the country planted trees, raised markers, and held ceremonies in his honor. Here the Mary Morris Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution planted a tree and set this plaque to mark the bicentennial. Such living memorials linked a twentieth-century community to the founding generation.

Brenham, TX

This marker remembers a Tennessee-born veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 engagement that secured Texas independence from Mexico. Born in 1812, he was among the fighters of that founding generation and lived on in Texas until his death in 1901.

Malone, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1826, George Washington Savage came to Texas in 1847 and made his mark as a farmer, race-horse breeder and trainer, and Confederate cavalryman. He eased the way for German immigrant families by selling them parcels and helping them start farms, and in 1885 he donated land for Savage School No. 1, the area's first school. At his death in 1899 he left a second wife and ten children.

Corsicana, TX

Born in Virginia and living in Tennessee, George Washington Shelton (1814–1882) joined fifteen other recruits late in 1835 to come to Texas and fight the forces of Santa Anna. He served in the Texas war for independence from January to September 1836 and earned two land bounties for his duty, later settling as a pioneer citizen of Navarro County. His grave marker honors one of the volunteers who made Texas independence possible.

Blue Ridge, TX

George Washington Smith left Tennessee for Texas in 1834, arriving on the eve of revolution. He served as an artillery private in the Texas War for Independence and later as a Texas Ranger sergeant in the Mexican War under the famed Col. John Coffee "Jack" Hays. He settled his family in Collin County in 1852 and was buried near Blue Ridge after his death around 1876.

Canton, TX

George Washington Tull arrived in Canton in 1858 after a stint chasing gold in California, and built a mercantile business that anchored the courthouse square for more than half a century. He served as a Confederate private during the Civil War, then returned to grow one of the town's most enduring stores, even constructing the county courthouse in 1872 under contract. Known as the wealthiest man in town yet remembered as the poor man's friend, he helped shape Canton's commercial district.

Exeter, NH

In the autumn of 1789, the newly inaugurated President George Washington set out on a grand tour of the northern states, in part to take the measure of the young republic he now led and to let its citizens take the measure of him. His route carried him through New Hampshire, and Exeter — a town that had served as the state's Revolutionary-era capital — turned out to receive him. This plaque marks a house where Washington was received and entertained during that celebrated journey, when a stop by the first president was the event of a lifetime for a New England town.

Palo Pinto, TX

Born in Mississippi in 1811, George Webb Slaughter came to Texas in 1830 and threw himself into the young republic's making—serving as a courier for Sam Houston and carrying a dispatch to William B. Travis at the Alamo. His 1836 wedding was the first marriage sanctioned under Republic of Texas law. Ordained a Baptist minister in 1844, he rode a frontier circuit preaching and practicing 'saddlebag' medicine, survived Indian raids, and drove thousands of cattle up the trail to Kansas railheads, fathering the noted cattlemen C.C. and John B. Slaughter.

Austin, TX

This marker honors George Weedon, who was permanently wounded at the Battle of San Jacinto while serving in Captain William S. Fisher's company. That short, decisive fight in April 1836 won Texas its independence from Mexico. Weedon carried his injuries until his death in early 1842 near old Cincinnati in Walker County.

San Diego, CA

This memorial marks the spot at the University of California, San Diego where, in 1970, a young student named George Winne Jr. set himself on fire in protest of the Vietnam War, dying of his injuries. He carried a sign reading, in part, "In the name of God, end the war." His act was among the most extreme expressions of the anti-war movement that swept American campuses at the height of the conflict.

Corpus Christi, TX

During World War II Texas held some 50,000 prisoners of war across roughly 70 camps, and in August 1945—months after Germany's surrender—the first German POWs arrived by train at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. They built their own compound of wood-and-canvas 'hutments' and worked repairing runways, digging drainage, and clearing hurricane debris until the camp was dismantled and closed in March 1946.

Lufkin, TX

During World War II the U.S. Army held roughly 425,000 Axis prisoners in camps across the country, and Texas alone housed about 50,000, mostly Germans, to fill wartime labor shortages. Lufkin became the only Texas town with two POW camps, put to work salvaging pulpwood and timber wrecked by a severe January 1944 ice storm. German prisoners at Southland Paper Mills' Camp Number 1 produced pulpwood until 1946, while a second camp at the fairgrounds ran briefly to clear ice-damaged forest.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1954

Before Gettysburg was a name known to the nation, it was a crossroads where the Shippensburg-Baltimore and Philadelphia-Pittsburgh roads met, anchored by the tavern of Samuel Gettys. Taverns at such junctions were the gathering places of colonial life, and in 1775 men mustered here for Continental service as the Revolution began. The Gettys family's crossroads would later lend its name to the town and, eventually, to one of the most famous battles in American history.

Cumberland Township, PA · est. 1947

Near this spot on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln rose to dedicate the new National Cemetery for the Union dead of the Battle of Gettysburg. In barely two minutes he delivered the address he had drafted in Washington and revised the night before, redefining the war as a struggle for a nation "conceived in liberty" and a government "of the people, by the people, for the people." The few hundred words spoken here became one of the most consequential speeches in American history.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1947

Here on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the National Cemetery, honoring the soldiers who had fallen months earlier in the war's bloodiest battle. Having written the speech in Washington and polished it after reaching Gettysburg the previous evening, Lincoln distilled the meaning of the Union cause into a few immortal sentences. The brief remarks, overshadowed that day by a two-hour oration, would long outlive every other word spoken at the ceremony.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1895

Lee's second invasion of the North ended here in three days of fighting that left over 50,000 casualties. Four months later Lincoln redefined the war's purpose in 272 words.

Cumberland Township, PA · est. 1947

After three days of savage fighting at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia gave up the field and began withdrawing on July 4, 1863, taking the Fairfield Road toward the mountain passes and the Potomac. The retreat was a grueling ordeal, and swollen river waters trapped the army on the northern bank for days before it could finally cross on the night of July 13. Those anxious days offered the Union a chance to destroy Lee's battered force before it escaped south.

Franklin Township, PA · est. 1947

In the last days of June 1863, Confederate columns poured east over South Mountain from Chambersburg as Lee concentrated his scattered army in the Pennsylvania countryside. A. P. Hill's corps gathered here on June 29–30, and on July 1 its advance guard pushed toward Gettysburg, colliding with Union troops west of town. That chance meeting opened the greatest battle ever fought on American soil.

Mount Joy Township, PA · est. 1947

Only days before the battle, President Lincoln handed command of the Army of the Potomac to George G. Meade, replacing Joseph Hooker on June 28, 1863. Racing to meet Lee's invasion, Meade rode this road from Taneytown to Gettysburg on the night of July 1 and set up headquarters just south of town. From that modest farmhouse he would direct the defense that broke the Confederate assault.

Tyrone Township, PA · est. 1947

As Lee gathered his far-flung divisions, Jubal Early's Confederates marched back from York to rejoin the main army. They camped three miles east of here on June 30, 1863, then turned south the next morning toward Gettysburg on orders from corps commander Richard Ewell. Early's men would arrive in time to help drive Union forces through the town on the battle's first day.

Mount Joy Township, PA · est. 1947

As the fighting opened, Union reinforcements streamed toward Gettysburg along these country roads. The 12th Corps reached this point on the afternoon of July 1, 1863, and soon took position on Culp's Hill, the anchor of the Union right. Over the next day the 6th and 5th Corps followed, filling out the fishhook line that would hold against Lee's attacks.

Cumberland Township, PA · est. 1947

On the first day of the battle, the Union 11th Corps hurried up from the Emmitsburg Road and turned north here toward Gettysburg to support the troops already engaged. That night the 2nd Corps encamped at this spot as the army massed for the fighting to come. These crossroads marked the steady flow of blue columns toward the battle line.

Tyrone Township, PA · est. 1947

Robert Rodes led his Confederate division back from Carlisle to rejoin Lee's concentrating army, camping here on the night of June 30, 1863. The next morning his men marched west toward Biglerville — then called Middletown — and on toward the developing fight at Gettysburg. Rodes' troops would strike the Union line from the north on the battle's first day.

Cumberland Township, PA · est. 1947

On July 1, 1863, Robert Rodes' Confederate division came down this road from Carlisle toward the sound of battle at Gettysburg. Here his men turned along the ridge toward Oak Hill, seizing high ground from which to strike the exposed Union flank. Their attack helped collapse the Northern line north of town on the battle's opening day.

Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1947

Late in June 1863, before the armies met at Gettysburg, Jubal Early's Confederates swept east toward the Susquehanna. John B. Gordon's brigade passed here on June 27 bound for York, while Early's main force took a parallel route through Hampton and East Berlin. Both columns entered York the following day, part of the deepest Confederate thrust into Pennsylvania.

Cumberland Township, PA · est. 1947

On the morning of July 1, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg opened when Union cavalry under John Buford met A. P. Hill's advancing Confederates coming from the west. Buford's dismounted troopers bought precious time until infantry could arrive, but the appearance of Ewell's corps that afternoon forced the outnumbered Union men back through the town. The stage was set for two more days of decisive fighting.

Freedom Township, PA · est. 1947

In the final days of June 1863, tens of thousands of Union soldiers were converging on the Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg. The 1st Corps camped on this ground on June 30 before marching at dawn to support John Buford's cavalry, which was already skirmishing with Confederate forces west of town. That collision opened the three-day battle that became the war's great turning point.

South Middleton Township, PA · est. 1947

On July 1, 1863, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry rode into the Carlisle area by way of Dover and Dillsburg, only to find that Gen. Ewell's troops had already moved on the day before. Stuart put the U.S. Cavalry Barracks to the torch and then turned toward Gettysburg, where the battle that would decide the campaign had just begun. The moment captures the confusion and hard riding that shaped the Gettysburg Campaign's opening.