Military & Wartime

Edna, TX

Jackson County voted for secession in 1861 by 147 to 77 and then threw its resources into the Confederate war effort. Its beef and cotton fed the South, while local beds and mines yielded salt, hides, tallow, and lead, and families at home molded bullets and wove clothing for the fighting men. Couriers skirted the blockaded coast toward Brownsville, and a Confederate gunboat chased from Lavaca Bay sank in the Navidad.

Jacksonville, TX

A Kentucky blacksmith, Jackson Smith came to Texas in the 1830s and fought in its War for Independence before scouting for the Republic of Texas. Settling near Gum Creek in the 1840s, he platted the townsite he named Jacksonville; he later served as a Confederate officer, and in 1872 the town was relocated to meet the new railroad.

Flatonia, TX

Jacob Castleman fought in the War for Texas Independence and stood among the veterans of the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its freedom from Mexico. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1962 to honor his service. Markers like this preserve the memory of the ordinary soldiers whose fight created the Republic of Texas.

Sabine Pass, TX

A Louisiana native, Jacob H. Garner settled as a boy in southeast Texas in 1825, a decade before the fight for independence. In 1835 he joined the Texas Army and took part in the Grass Fight and the Siege of Bexar, service for which he later received land grants, then went on to hold a string of local offices from justice of the peace to district clerk. When war came again in 1861, he took up arms once more as a Confederate officer, a life of service spanning Texas's earliest struggles through the Civil War.

York, PA · est. 1999

Jacob L. Devers grew up in York and rose to become one of the most consequential American commanders of World War II. Made the Army's youngest brigadier general in 1940 and a four-star general by 1945, he led Allied forces in Europe and played a central role in the 1944 liberation of France. His career carried him from a Pennsylvania boyhood to the highest ranks of a global war and, finally, to burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1991

Jacob Stroud (1735-1806) was a militia colonel and Revolutionary patriot who fortified his home on this frontier as Fort Penn during the dangerous years of the war. He served in Pennsylvania's 1776 constitutional convention and later in the state legislature, then in 1799 founded the town that bears his name, laying out its streets with his son Daniel. His life spans the transformation of this Pocono country from exposed frontier to settled community.

Woden, TX

When William Jacobs led his family and neighbors from Tennessee to southern Nacogdoches County, arriving on Christmas Day 1836, they brought with them a family burial ground atop a ridge above Carrizo Creek. In 1870 his daughter Paulina deeded the surrounding acres to the trustees of Jacobs Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church for worship, school, and burials; among those resting here are William and his wife Nancy and their son James, whose family lost seven of twelve children in the 1860s to Civil War wounds and typhoid.

Gonzales, TX

First mapped in 1825 as Market Square, this Gonzales public square had become known as Jail Square by 1836. That year, as Santa Anna's army advanced, Gonzales was burned by order of General Sam Houston to keep its buildings and supplies from falling into enemy hands—part of the desperate retreat known as the Runaway Scrape. Gonzales, already famed as the site of the war's opening 'Come and Take It' clash, thus sacrificed itself in the campaign for independence.

Boston, MA

Jamaica Plain, a leafy streetcar-suburb neighborhood of Boston, sent hundreds of its sons into the two great conflicts of the twentieth century, and this memorial gathers their sacrifice into a single act of civic remembrance. In World War I, American doughboys shipped overseas to the trenches of France in 1917–18; a generation later, World War II drew the neighborhood's young men to battlefields across Europe and the Pacific. Communities like this one across America raised such monuments so that the names and losses of ordinary local families would not be forgotten. It stands as the neighborhood's collective thank-you to those who did not come home.

Millerstown, PA · est. 1948

James A. Beaver was born in this Perry County town in 1837 and rose to become one of Pennsylvania's most distinguished public men. He won fame as a Civil War officer, later served as governor of the commonwealth, and finished his career on the state's Superior Court bench. He spent his adult years in Bellefonte, where he died in 1914.

Kosse, TX

This state marker honors James Alfred Head, who fought for Texas independence and then served in the Congress of the young Republic of Texas in 1841-1842. Erected in 1962, it commemorates a member of the generation that won and then governed the short-lived Republic before annexation to the United States.

Kosse, TX

Georgia-born James A. Head came to Texas in 1835 and enlisted at San Felipe de Austin in Silas Parker's ranging company, earning a land grant and a place among the Texas Rangers who guarded the frontier during the war for independence. With his wife Elizabeth he farmed in what became Brazos County, served as justice of the peace and chief justice, and won election to the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas. By 1852 he worked some 17,800 acres and died at Headsville in 1872, father of thirteen children.

Austin, TX

James Allison York joined the fight for Texas independence, taking part in the capture of San Antonio in 1835 and serving in Captain Moseley Baker's company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Kentucky-born, he was among the volunteers whose victory secured the Republic of Texas. He later settled in Lavaca County, where he died in 1869.

Jewett, TX

Ohio-born James Elgin Anderson settled in Leon County in 1857, enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 with Hood's Texas Brigade, and stood with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in 1865. Returning home as a captain, he became a distinguished educator and married Julia Evans in 1867. The couple bought this property in 1875 and built a house with outside end chimneys, then remodeled it between 1885 and 1895 in the Victorian fashion, adding a second story and the exuberant Eastlake trim that still graces its porches and rooflines.

New Waverly, TX

James and Rhoda Winters led their large family from Tennessee to this land between the forks of the San Jacinto River in 1834, following the good report of two elder sons who had come ahead. When war with Mexico broke out, the family gave heavily to the cause: sons and sons-in-law fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution, and one son, James W. Winters, lived to help mark the San Jacinto battlefield in 1901, 65 years after fighting there. Family members went on to help settle half a dozen more Texas counties.

Jacksboro, TX

James B. Dosher came to Texas in 1847 and rode with the Texas Rangers on the unsettled northern frontier before farming in Jack County. His life traced the arc of a hard border era, from Ranger companies to service with Confederate and Texas State forces during the Civil War. In 1870 he was scouting for the U.S. Army as a civilian guide when his gallantry at Bluff Creek earned him the Medal of Honor.

Georgetown, TX

James B. Williams left Kentucky with his bride and extended family, reaching the Berry's Creek area of Central Texas on Christmas Eve of 1848. He rode with his uncle's Texas Ranger company through the 1850s and early 1860s, when such units guarded the exposed frontier, and eventually made his permanent home in Glasscock Valley north of Georgetown. He and his wife Sarah raised thirteen children on the land they helped settle.

Liberty, TX

Kentucky-born James B. Woods arrived in Mexican Texas in 1830 and became a brilliant lawyer and orator in the Liberty District, elected alcalde (mayor) in 1834. As one of five delegates from Liberty, he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March 1836 and served that year in the Texas Army. His life ended in tragedy after he killed a man in an election quarrel in 1851, dying soon after amid remorse.

Kenney, TX

James Bradford Pier, an Ohio native born in 1813, came to Texas in 1835 with his wife Lucy and settled near the early town of Travis. He served in the Texas Army during the war for independence, posted as a rear guard across from Harrisburg during the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. In peacetime he farmed, raised stock, taught, kept a store, served as justice of the peace, and became the Travis community's first postmaster.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

James Buchanan — lawyer, diplomat, and the fifteenth President of the United States — is buried in this Lancaster cemetery, about 350 yards to the southeast. He made his home at Wheatland, on Marietta Avenue, before and after occupying the White House from 1857 to 1861. Buchanan led the nation in the tense years just before the Civil War, and his inability to halt the slide toward secession has shaped his reputation ever since.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1951

James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the United States, made his home in Lancaster and lies buried at Woodward Hill Cemetery just south of here. A seasoned diplomat and lawmaker, Buchanan led the nation during the fraught years of 1857 to 1861, as the quarrel over slavery pushed the Union toward rupture. He left office as Southern states began to secede, handing the crisis to his successor, Abraham Lincoln.

Peters Township, PA · est. 1955

James Buchanan, the fifteenth president, was born in a log cabin near this spot in 1791, in the Cove Gap country of the Pennsylvania frontier. He rose through law and diplomacy to the White House on the eve of the nation's greatest crisis, serving from 1857 to 1861. The humble cabin of his birth was moved more than once and today stands on the campus of Mercersburg Academy.

Walnut Springs, TX

James Buckner "Buck" Barry came to Texas from North Carolina in 1845 and spent his life on its edges — as a soldier in the Mexican War, a fighter in Indian campaigns, and, during the Civil War, commander of Confederate cavalry strung along frontier outposts from the Red River to Fort McKavett. His patrols, camped a day's ride apart, guarded scattered settlers against raids and the threat of Federal incursion from Indian Territory. He later served in the Texas Legislature and left behind personal records of those frontier-defense years.

Muldoon, TX

James Carrel Bell, born in 1820, was a young soldier in the Texas war for independence who entered Bexar in December 1835 under Captain John York. He later served in Company D of the Eighth Texas Infantry Regiment, C.S.A., during the Civil War. This state-erected marker honors him and his wife Eliza Baker Bell, tying one man's life to both the founding of Texas and its Confederate service.

Corsicana, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1790, James Clinton Neill joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1831 and threw himself into the Texas Revolution as an artillery officer, commanding the guns at the Siege of Bexar. Appointed to lead San Antonio and the Alamo, he left that post in February 1836 to tend to family illness — handing command to William B. Travis and narrowly missing the fall of the Alamo. He was wounded serving Sam Houston's army the day before San Jacinto, and later helped found the seat of Navarro County.

Houston, TX

James Collinsworth (1806–1838), Tennessee-born, packed an extraordinary public career into a few short years of the Texas Republic. A delegate to the 1835 Consultation and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, he "bore himself as a chief" at San Jacinto, then served as Secretary of State, senator, and the first Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. After he drowned at Galveston in 1838, his remains were carried up Buffalo Bayou for the first Masonic funeral held in Texas.

Gonzales, TX

Born December 7, 1811, James D. Owens volunteered in the Texas army during the war for independence and served in the San Jacinto campaign that secured the Republic of Texas. He died August 14, 1843, and this Star-and-Wreath grave marker was erected in his honor by the State of Texas in 1962. Such markers commemorate the ordinary volunteer soldiers who filled the ranks of Sam Houston's revolutionary army.

Corpus Christi, TX

English-born and Boston-raised, James Downing enlisted in the Massachusetts heavy artillery in 1862, survived combat at Petersburg, and escaped while being taken to the notorious Andersonville prison, making his way back to rejoin his regiment. After the war he was commissioned an officer in the 36th U.S. Colored Troops and posted to Corpus Christi, where he married into the local von Blücher family and built a long civic career—brickyard owner, voter registrar, fire chief, alderman, and city marshal. He died in Corpus Christi in 1891.

Crockett, TX

Born in 1845 to Houston County pioneers, James Elbert Downes came of age in time to serve in the Civil War and remained active in the local Confederate veterans association for the rest of his life. A prominent business and civic leader devoted to the Methodist Church, he built a family home on 7th Street that still stands as a local landmark.

Houston County, TX

A Tennessean who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the 1835 siege of Bexar and served as a militia commissioner during the Texas Revolution. For that service the Republic granted him land in Houston County, where he and his wife Mary Lucinda settled around 1842. Part of that property became this family cemetery.

Webberville, TX

An Arkansas native, James Euwin Edmiston came to Texas with his family in 1835 and settled near present-day Webberville just as the fight for independence began. He served as a Texas Ranger during the revolution, took part in frontier battles, and was caught up in the Woll Expedition and the Archive War of 1842. He later rode with Travis County ranger companies before joining the rush to California in 1849, and earned a Republic of Texas pension for his service.

Cuero, TX

James F. Blair's life traced the arc of frontier Texas through its wars and lawlessness. Born in Tennessee, he fought in the Mexican War and then rose from the Confederate ranks to captain a company of the 36th Texas Cavalry, before turning to keeping the peace as a Texas Ranger and, in 1866, as the governor-appointed sheriff of DeWitt County. That county would soon become notorious for the Sutton-Taylor feud, and Blair belonged to the generation of veterans-turned-lawmen who tried to hold order on a violent frontier.

Robert Lee, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1844, James Franklin Byrd came west and enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at Gonzales in 1862, riding through hard-fought engagements at Holly Springs, Harrisburg, and Fort Pillow. Captured and held as a prisoner of war on Mississippi's Ship Island, he talked his way free by volunteering to load a boat and slipping in among prisoners bound for exchange. He came home to Texas, married, and settled for good near Hayrick Mountain in the Coke County ranch country.

Austin, TX

Kentucky-born James G. Wilkinson served in Capt. William W. Hill's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. He died in Lee County in 1848, and his wife Amanda lies beside him. The State of Texas marked the grave in 1936 during the centennial of the revolution.

Wells, TX

James H. Bowman served in the army of the Republic of Texas during the 1836 fight for independence from Mexico, part of the volunteer force that secured the breakaway republic. Born in 1820, he lived out his life in the East Texas piney woods, dying in 1886. His grave marker anchors the memory of one of the revolution's many rank-and-file soldiers.

Belton, TX

Tennessee-born James H. Isbell fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. He died in 1858 at age forty-four; his wife Amanda outlived him by more than two decades. Their marker records the resting place of a veteran of the revolution that created the Republic of Texas.

El Paso, TX

Born in Virginia in 1847, James Harrison White served with the Confederacy before coming to El Paso around 1869, then spent the following decades in an extraordinary run of frontier service — in the Mexican and U.S. armies and as a U.S. Marshal at Las Cruces. As sheriff, tax collector, police chief, and railway official, he helped steer El Paso through its transformation from a rough border settlement into a modern city before his death in 1907. His life traced the closing of one frontier era and the rise of the Southwestern metropolis that followed.

Raleigh, NC

James H. Young commanded a Black North Carolina regiment in the Spanish-American War and served as a state legislator while editing the Raleigh Gazette. He was among the most prominent Black leaders in the state at the close of the 19th century. His home stood just feet west of this marker.

Marshall, TX

Connecticut-born physician James Harper Starr came to Texas in 1837 and served the Republic as Secretary of the Treasury and army surgeon. During the Civil War he took on the daunting job of Postmaster General for the Confederacy's western states after federal control of the Mississippi split the South in two—improvising mail routes by pony express, wagon, blockade-runner, and courier to keep soldiers and families connected across enemy lines. After the war he examined East Texas oil showings and founded Marshall's first bank.

Abilene, TX

James Harrison Parramore came west after the Civil War with a Confederate record behind him and cattle on his mind. From a hundred rented acres near Gonzales he built, with his brother-in-law Hugh Lewis and partner C. W. Merchant, the San Simon Cattle and Canal Company — stocking vast Arizona and New Mexico ranges with Texas longhorns for two decades. Settling his large family in Abilene in 1881, he became a fixture of the cattle business and a benefactor of Simmons College, and the grand French Second Empire home he built survived until 1960.

Millard County, UT

This spot lies within the Topaz War Relocation Center, one of ten camps where the United States confined Japanese Americans after Executive Order 9066. On April 11, 1943, James Hatsuki Wakasa, an elderly resident of the camp, was shot and killed by a sentry near the perimeter fence. His death became a rallying point for the incarcerated community and a lasting symbol of the injustice they endured.

Gonzales, TX

James Hodges, Sr. arrived at Gonzales in April 1835 and quickly bought four leagues of land at the forks of the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers, paying three thousand dollars in silver. That autumn the townspeople elected him a delegate to the Consultation of 1835, the convention that created a provisional government and placed Sam Houston over a new Texas army. He supplied the army in 1836, fled with his family during the Runaway Scrape, and later returned to serve on the county's land commission and raise his family on the rivers.

Granbury, TX

James Hogan Doyle, born in South Carolina in 1846, served the Confederacy in the Civil War before making his way to Texas around 1870. Settling in Granbury, he became a prominent merchant, banker, and civic leader who served several terms as Hood County treasurer. He and his wife, Mary Kate Stringfellow, built their home on this site about 1880 and raised three children there; the property stayed in the family until 1939.

Guilford County, NC

James Hunter was a leader of the Regulators, backcountry farmers who rose in the 1760s and early 1770s against corrupt local officials and unfair taxes. After the movement was crushed at the Battle of Alamance in 1771, Hunter was declared an outlaw, and Governor William Tryon's troops burned a nearby house in the reprisals that followed.

Edenton, NC

James Iredell rose from colonial official to become one of the intellectual architects of the new nation's legal order. He served as North Carolina's attorney general during the Revolution and championed ratification of the Constitution, and in 1790 President Washington named him to the first U.S. Supreme Court, where he sat until his death in 1799. His Edenton home still stands nearby.

Flemingsburg, KY

James J. Andrews lived here from 1859 to 1862 before undertaking one of the Civil War's most daring exploits. Leading a small party of Union soldiers deep into Georgia, he seized the locomotive "The General" and tried to wreck the railroad between Marietta and Chattanooga in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase. The raid ended in a dramatic pursuit and the raiders' capture, and Andrews paid for it with his life.

Dallas, TX

Trained as a lawyer in Tennessee, J. K. P. Record became Dallas's district attorney in 1860 before leaving office to serve in the Confederate Army. Returning after the Civil War, he won election as a state senator and sat as a delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1866, one of the fraught gatherings that tried to reshape the defeated South. He later practiced law in Dallas and was active in the Masons and Odd Fellows.

Hillsboro, TX

James Lindell Harris was born on a farm near Hillsboro in 1916 and entered the Army in 1941, training at Fort Sam Houston before joining the 756th Tank Battalion. He led his men through North Africa and Europe, and at Vagney, France, though mortally wounded, kept directing his unit and refused aid until a wounded crewman was carried to safety. For that courage he received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Austin, TX

James Loraine Dallas left Pennsylvania to join the fight for Texas independence, serving in the Army of Texas in 1836 during the revolution that created the Republic. He settled in Washington County, part of the wave of newcomers who staked their futures on the new nation. His grave marker preserves the memory of one of the many soldier-settlers of that founding generation.

Galveston, TX

A veteran of the War of 1812, lawyer James Love came to Texas in 1837 and helped found the city of Galveston, becoming a political ally of Mirabeau B. Lamar. He served as a delegate to the 1845 convention that approved annexation to the United States and held several judicial posts. Though in his sixties, he enlisted in Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War and later became the first judge of the Harris and Galveston County Criminal Court.

Beulaville, NC

James M. Sprunt (1818–1884) was a man of many callings in nineteenth-century Duplin County — educator, botanist, Presbyterian minister, county official, and a chaplain in Confederate service during the Civil War. His wide-ranging life reflected the era's ideal of the learned minister who served both church and community. His grave lies about four miles west of this Beulaville marker.

Bryson, TX

Tennessee-born James Madison McCloud fought with an Alabama cavalry unit in the Civil War before bringing his family to Texas in 1881 and settling near Bryson. There he founded a church at Cottonwood Springs and began a remarkable fifty-three-year career as a Methodist circuit rider across northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. A farmer as well as a preacher, he ministered to scattered frontier congregations until his death in 1934.

Indiana, PA · est. 1998

The small college town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, raised one of Hollywood's most beloved leading men. Jimmy Stewart carried an everyman decency into classics of the 1930s and 1940s, from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to It's a Wonderful Life. His fame was matched by real service: he flew 20 combat missions over Europe in World War II and remained in the Air Force Reserve, retiring as a brigadier general.

Carthage, NC

James McConnell left North Carolina to join the Lafayette Escadrille, the squadron of American volunteers who flew for France before the United States entered World War I. A pioneering combat aviator, he was killed in action on March 19, 1917 — among the last of the Escadrille's Americans to die before his own country joined the war weeks later.

Milford, TX

James McDaniel, born in Alabama in 1810, was among the men who served in the Texas army during the revolutionary year of 1836, when settlers won independence from Mexico. He and his wife Idabella lived out long lives on the Texas frontier, dying in the 1880s and 1890s. Their marker preserves the memory of an ordinary soldier-settler of the founding generation.

Somerville, MA

On April 19, 1775, the day the American Revolution began, the fighting did not stay in Lexington and Concord — it ran the length of the British column's long, bloody retreat toward Boston, through what was then part of Charlestown and is today Somerville. James Miller, sixty-five years old, was among the local men who turned out to harry the redcoats as they passed, and on this hillside he was shot down by British regulars. The words remembered on his monument, "I am too old to run," preserve the defiance of an aging New Englander who chose to stand his ground.

San Antonio, TX

This marker honors a Vermont-born soldier who served in the army of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1837, the perilous first years of Texas independence. Like many volunteers who came from the Northern states, he stayed on after the fighting, and he lived in Texas until his death in 1876.

Coupland, TX

South Carolina–born James O. Rice reached Texas by 1835 and fought in its war for independence, then guarded the young Republic's frontier as a Texas Ranger. In an 1839 clash on the North San Gabriel River, his volunteers defeated Mexican forces under Manuel Flores and seized documents exposing the Cordova Rebellion, and he went on to join the Somervell, Mier, and Snively expeditions and serve in the Mexican War. Rewarded with land bounties, he became one of Williamson County's largest landowners, ran a store and post office at Rice's Crossing, and helped choose the county seat.

Van Alstyne, TX

James P. Dumas (1820-1875), a South Carolinian, married and moved to the Republic of Texas in 1841 and worked as a surveyor, helping map land that became part of Dallas. He fought in the Mexican War of 1846, served as Grayson County surveyor, and amassed holdings so vast he could ride the twenty miles to Sherman without leaving his own land, later helping found a Sherman bank in 1872.

San Augustine, TX

A North Carolina lawyer who arrived in Texas in 1836 leading a company of volunteers, James Pinckney Henderson swiftly became one of the young Republic's leading statesmen, serving as attorney general, secretary of state, and diplomat to Europe. When Texas joined the Union, voters chose him as the state's first governor in 1846. He then led Texas troops as a major general in the Mexican War, earning a formal vote of thanks and a sword from Congress, before a late turn as U.S. senator.