Battles, service, and the memorials a country builds to remember them.
5,438 markers in this collection, across every conflict below — showing 2,881–2,940.
Mount Pleasant, PA · est. 1951
John W. Geary was born in this Westmoreland County town in 1819 and lived one of the most far-flung public careers of his generation. He served as the first mayor of San Francisco in the Gold Rush year of 1850, was appointed territorial governor of a bitterly divided "Bleeding Kansas" in 1856, rose to major general in the Civil War, and finally served as governor of Pennsylvania from 1867 until his death in 1873.
New Cumberland, PA · est. 1995
John W. Geary lived one of the most eventful public lives of 19th-century America. He served as a colonel in the Mexican War, became the first postmaster and first mayor of San Francisco during the Gold Rush, and was appointed governor of the volatile Kansas Territory during the "Bleeding Kansas" crisis over slavery. He then won distinction as a Union major general in the Civil War before serving two terms as governor of Pennsylvania from 1867 to 1873. His home stood just east of here in New Cumberland.
Dallas, TX
Kentucky-born John W. Lane came to Dallas in 1859 as a trained printer for the Dallas Herald, then joined the 18th Texas Cavalry in 1861 to serve in the Civil War. Returning home, he was elected mayor before resigning to serve as secretary to Governor James Throckmorton, and as a state representative he reshaped Dallas's future by amending 1871 legislation that redirected the route of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. That single change helped secure the city's growth into a rail hub.
Austin, TX
John W. McHorse, born in Alabama in 1819, marched with Hayden Arnold's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. His grave marker, placed by the state during the 1936 Texas Centennial, honors one of the ordinary soldiers whose eighteen-minute victory reshaped the map of North America.
Houston, TX
John W. Moore was in the thick of Texas's push for independence: he opposed the Mexican commander Bradburn at Anahuac in 1832, sat in the 1835 Consultation at San Felipe, and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. He then served as the first sheriff of Harris County and a Houston alderman before his death in 1846.
San Antonio, TX
A North Carolina native who drifted west through Illinois and Missouri, John W. Smith came to Texas with Green DeWitt in 1826 and settled in San Antonio, where he became a leading merchant and political figure. He fought in the opening "affair at Gonzales," the storming of Bexar, and the siege of the Alamo, from which he served as a courier, and later at the Battle of the Salado. Smith became San Antonio's first mayor in 1837, held numerous offices, and served the Republic as a senator until his death in 1845.
Round Mountain, TX
John Walton Harrington was barely a teenager when he joined the army of the young Republic of Texas in 1836, the year of the Texas Revolution, serving into 1837. For his service he received a bounty land grant of more than a thousand acres — the kind of frontier payment that turned soldiers into stockraisers. He went on to hold land across several Hill Country and East Texas counties and raised a large family, all born in Texas.
Woodville, TX
An Alabama native, John Wheat migrated to Texas in 1835 and claimed his headright and bounty lands here, naming many Tyler County creeks while hunting bear and other game. He served as a soldier in the Texas War for Independence, guarding a captured Mexican officer after the Battle of San Jacinto. Later a county commissioner, he donated the land for this cemetery and left descendants a wealth of frontier legends.
Kyle, TX
Born in Tennessee, John Wheeler Bunton came to Texas in 1833 and threw himself into the fight for independence, signing the Texas Declaration of Independence, helping draft a constitution, and fighting at the Siege of Bexar and the Battle of San Jacinto. A lawyer and rancher, he served in the first and third congresses of the Republic of Texas before settling in Hays County. In 1932 he was reinterred in the State Cemetery in Austin among the republic's honored dead.
Warrenton, NC
During the Civil War, John White served as North Carolina's commissioner sent to England to purchase ships and military supplies for the Confederate war effort, braving the risks of transatlantic wartime trade. After the war, in 1870, General Robert E. Lee visited White at his Warrenton home, which stood one block east. White's mission reflected the Confederacy's heavy reliance on European goods.
Aransas Pass, TX
Chartered on January 29, 1935 by World War I veterans, this VFW post grew from the fraternal veterans' movement that took shape after 1899 and helped win the federal veterans' benefits established in 1917. In 1945 the community raised funds for a Veterans Memorial Home that has since sheltered residents through hurricanes and served as a relief shelter, disaster center and Red Cross site. Its rolls have carried veterans from two world wars through Vietnam and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hallettsville, TX
John Wilkins Whitfield rose to brigadier general in the Confederate Army, leading the mounted command known as Whitfield's Legion. He fought at Pea Ridge and Iuka and commanded a brigade during the Vicksburg Campaign, later serving in the Texas legislature. His marker, erected by the state in 1963, records a career that spanned battlefield and statehouse.
Washington, TX
Virginia-born John William Smith fought as a soldier for the Republic of Texas and went on to serve in its Congress and become the first mayor of San Antonio. He died in 1845 at the town of Washington-on-the-Brazos, the very cradle of Texas independence, just as the Republic was folding into the United States. His life traces the short, dramatic arc of an independent Texas from revolution to statehood.
Huntsville, TX
Huntsville native John William Thomason Jr. taught school, studied art in New York, and worked as a Houston reporter before being commissioned a Marine officer in 1917. He saw some of World War I's fiercest fighting at St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne and won the Navy Cross for his valor at Soissons. A career Marine, he became a celebrated writer and illustrator whose 1926 book Fix Bayonets! brought national fame, and after further service in World War II he died in 1944—honored when a destroyer was named for him.
Latexo, TX
John Wortham (1804–67) helped shape Houston County from its beginnings, petitioning for its creation in 1837 during the Republic of Texas era. A soldier as well as a settler, he captained an independent ranger company, rose to major in the Republic's army, and served as quartermaster of the Texas Militia. Off the battlefield he was a college trustee and one of the Republic's first land commissioners, running a sawmill and gristmill on the East Texas frontier where he raised twelve children and was buried.
Johnson City, TX
In 1892 local Masons bought this land from Julia Ann Moore Johnson, widow of town founder James Polk Johnson, for a lodge cemetery. Its earliest marked graves date from the 1890s and include community leaders and veterans of conflicts from the War of 1812 to Vietnam. Among more than 250 burials is the celebrated Texas Ranger Cicero Rufus Perry, who died in 1898.
Cleburne, TX
Johnson County was created in 1854 and named for Middleton T. Johnson, a South Carolina native and former Alabama legislator who became a leading figure in early Texas, serving in the Texas Rangers and fighting in the Mexican War and the Civil War. The county seat moved twice before settling at Camp Henderson, a Confederate recruiting camp beside noted springs, which in 1867 was renamed Cleburne to honor the Confederate general Patrick Cleburne. The frequent moves reflect the unsettled, fast-changing character of the North Texas frontier.
Arlington, TX
Johnson Station began in the 1840s as a ranger station and trading post on the North Texas frontier, and its cemetery remains the clearest reminder of that vanished settlement. The oldest marked grave dates to 1863, though older, unmarked burials likely lie among them; here rest pioneer families, Civil War veterans, and charter members of an early Masonic lodge, in a district long since absorbed into Arlington.
Cleburne, TX
This marker honors the two Confederate officers who gave their names to Johnson County and its seat. Colonel Middleton T. Johnson, a legislator and Texas Ranger who had fought in the Mexican War, raised the 14th Texas Cavalry for Confederate service. General Patrick R. Cleburne, an Irish immigrant lawyer from Arkansas, rose to major general and led Texans of Granbury's Brigade with such tenacity that he became known as the "Stonewall Jackson of the West" before falling at the Battle of Franklin in 1864.
Lincoln, CA
This park honors Charles Joiner, born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1923, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy when the Second World War broke out and served in the North African theater. His dedication plaque ties a local Lincoln, California, park to the life of a sailor who answered the call in one of the war's early campaigns.
Cleburne, TX
John B. Joiner built a one-story farmhouse on this Cleburne land in 1895 and sold it in 1912 to the Long family. Banker Joseph Benjamin Long and his wife Lorena added the second story, and the couple raised their family here amid civic and church life. During World War II, with her two sons serving overseas, Lorena worked as a librarian with the Women's Army Corps — a chapter reflected in the home, which the family kept until 1997 and which blends Classical columns with Queen Anne details beneath a pronounced belvedere.
Georgetown, TX
In 1902 a handful of community leaders bought two acres near the San Gabriel River so that area residents could bury their dead free of charge, founding Jonah Cemetery for a then-thriving rural settlement. Among its graves are Confederate veterans and twin sisters interred near many of their combined twenty-two children. As the community around it dwindled, the cemetery endured as one of its last physical traces.
Carthage, TX
Kentucky-born Jonathan "Old Shelby" Anderson came to this region while Texas was still Mexican territory, then took up arms in the Texas Revolution and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. In 1848 he gave 100 acres to establish Carthage as the seat of the newly organized Panola County, and later served as sheriff and tax assessor-collector. The park on the old courthouse square was named in his honor in 1956.
Bastrop, TX
Jonathan Burleson was a soldier of the Texas War for Independence, serving in the campaigns at Velasco, Gonzales, Bexar, and finally San Jacinto—the 1836 victory that secured Texas's break from Mexico. The Gonzales and Bexar fights and the decisive rout at San Jacinto were the pivotal engagements of that struggle. His marker honors his part in winning independence for the young republic.
Lott, TX
Born in Georgia in 1806, Jonathan Cochran Pool came to Texas as a boy in 1815 and grew up to enlist in the Texian Army, taking part in early skirmishes of the Texas Revolution at Anahuac, Nacogdoches, and San Antonio. He later scouted for Gen. Sam Houston before settling in Falls County in 1852 as a farmer and stock raiser. A Civil War veteran, he was buried here on his plantation.
Seguin, TX
Born in Georgia in 1799, Jonathan Douglas fought for Texas independence as a private in Captain Splane's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 victory that secured the Republic of Texas. He and his wife Nancy lived out their lives in the Seguin area, where this marker honors their memory.
Palo Pinto, TX
Virginia-born Jonathan Hamilton "Ham" Baker reached Texas in 1858 and settled in Palo Pinto County, where he opened what is believed to be its first organized school and helped found its first Methodist church. On the exposed frontier he led local defenders against Comanche raids, rode with Lawrence Sullivan Ross in the 1860 recovery of Cynthia Ann Parker, and captained the home guard during the Civil War. He was also a trail-driving cattleman and tireless local officeholder whose decades-long diary preserves a vivid record of frontier Texas.
Asheboro, NC
Jonathan Worth managed North Carolina's finances as state treasurer during the Civil War, then won election as governor in 1865 amid the wreckage of defeat. A former Unionist, he struggled to steer the state through federal Reconstruction before being removed from office in 1868. His home once stood a block south of here.
Rusk, TX
John R. Jones and his wife Mary came from Jackson County, Alabama in 1853, established a farm, and built a log cabin on land in Cherokee County. When John died in 1857 he became the first person buried in what grew into the family cemetery, joined by Mary in 1864 and by generations of descendants — farmers, ranchers, and veterans of both the Seminole Wars and the Civil War. The ground stayed in Jones hands as a quiet testament to a pioneering family's role in settling the area.
Utopia vicinity, TX
In 1879 the Rev. Irvin Jones deeded two acres of his homestead to the Utopia Methodist Church for a cemetery, and his wife Elizabeth was buried at its center in 1886. Early settlers of the Taylor and Utopia communities rest here, alongside several Civil War veterans and the Mexican War veteran and Texas Ranger Ben Highsmith. Also interred is George Barker, the teacher credited with giving Utopia its name.
Anson, TX
This corner of west Texas was crossed by an emigrant trail and a frontier military road guarded by Fort Phantom Hill, founded in 1851. The county was named for Anson Jones, a San Jacinto veteran and the last president of the Republic of Texas. Phantom Hill served as a Butterfield Overland Mail station in 1858-61 and then as a Civil War patrol point trying to curb frontier raids, before the county was fully organized in 1881 with Anson as its seat.
San Antonio, TX
Born in San Antonio in 1783 to a wealthy ranching family, José Francisco Ruiz was educated in Spain and served as a city schoolteacher before joining the Mexican struggle against Spanish rule, a fight that forced him into exile in the United States. Returning home, he broke with Santa Anna's growing dictatorship and was elected a Bexar delegate to the 1836 convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, where he became one of only a few native Tejanos to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence. He went on to serve as Bexar's first senator in the Congress of the new Republic.
New Ulm, TX
Born on the Czech-Moravian border in 1806 and trained as a tailor, Josef Lidumil Leshikar became a voice for political freedom during the revolutions of 1848. In 1853 he led a party of immigrants to the new Czech settlements of Austin County, Texas. A committed opponent of slavery, he used Czech and American newspapers to argue against secession and civil war even as his adopted state marched the other way.
Wharton, TX
Ohio native Joseph Andrew Hamilton fought for the Union during the Civil War, then settled in Wharton around 1866 and took up a string of local political offices in a defeated but reorganizing South. He bought this property in 1885 and moved his family into an existing one-story frame house, which was dramatically enlarged in 1907 by raising the original structure and building a new floor beneath it. The result carries touches of the neoclassical style.
Newcastle, TX
Kentucky-born and Louisville-trained in law, Joseph Alfred Woolfolk came to frontier Belknap in 1858 to survey Peters Colony land grants and soon served as a Young County official. He joined a home-guard Ranger unit and then the Confederate army, was captured in West Virginia in 1863, and spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ohio. Back in Texas, he gained notoriety in 1871 when the court appointed him to defend the Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree at their murder trial after the Salt Creek raid.
St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1960
Joseph Armstrong settled this Franklin County land in the 1730s, on the contested edge of Pennsylvania's frontier. He served in the colonial Assembly and rose as a militia captain, and his home became a ranging station in 1757 for troops during the French and Indian War. It served the same purpose during Pontiac's War of 1763–64, when Native resistance again swept the backcountry.
Driftwood, TX
Joseph B. Rogers (1833–1912), son of settlers who reached Texas in 1831, rode with Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War before buying this Hays County land in 1869. In the early 1870s he hired local workmen to raise this native limestone house, built in the pioneer fashion with a central hall and a chimney at each end. His descendants preserved the home, replacing its wooden porch with concrete in 1916.
Austin, TX
Maine-born Joseph Baker helped launch the Telegraph and Texas Register at San Felipe de Austin in October 1835, giving the Texas independence movement a printed voice on the eve of revolution. He then took up arms, fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto, and served the new republic as first chief justice of Bexar County and a member of its Congress before his death in 1846.
Carthage, TX
Joseph Benedict Beauchamp, born in Kentucky in 1814, joined the Army of Texas in 1835 and took part in the Storming of Bexar, one of the first major clashes of the Texas Revolution. He died in 1862, the same year as his wife, Angelina Lindsay, and the two are remembered together on this Panola County marker.
Round Mountain, TX
North Carolina native Joseph Bird brought his family to the land between Cypress Creek and the Pedernales around 1854, and for half a century helped build Blanco County as a frontier Baptist circuit minister, postmaster, rancher, and county judge. The settlement that grew up around him was first called Birdtown before being renamed Round Mountain, where a post office opened in 1857. Bird rode a preaching circuit, founded churches, and served as a Confederate first lieutenant during the Civil War.
West Point, TX
Joseph C. Robinson was among the Texians captured in the Dawson Massacre of September 18, 1842, when a small volunteer company was surrounded and cut down by Mexican forces during General Adrián Woll's raid on San Antonio. He survived captivity and lived until 1861. His grave marker recalls one of the sharp, often-forgotten clashes of the independent Republic of Texas.
Houston, TX
Born in the Alsace region of France in 1792, Joseph Ehlinger was among the European-born settlers who cast their lot with the Texas cause. He served in Captain William J. E. Heard's company at San Jacinto in 1836, the battle that won Texas its independence, and lived out his years in Houston until his death in 1845.
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1928
This marker honors Joseph Elliot, a Revolutionary War soldier of the embattled Wyoming Valley frontier. He fought at Trenton on the night of December 25, 1776, and by tradition was given a sword by George Washington for his bravery. He survived the Wyoming Massacre of 1778 — breaking free at the Bloody Rock and swimming the Susquehanna with a bullet in his shoulder — and later, at the 1782 Battle of Lime Hill, helped rescue captured children.
Leonard, TX
This Star-and-Wreath grave marker honors Joseph F. Fenner, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence who served in Shackelford's Company under Colonel Fannin's command in 1836. Erected by the State of Texas in 1962, it commemorates one of the citizen-soldiers of the revolution that won Texas its independence. Fannin's command is best remembered for its tragic end at Goliad, making every survivor's story part of that fraught campaign.
Mexia, TX
Established in 1889, this 70-acre camp of the United Confederate Veterans hosted enormous annual reunions in an era when Texas still looked to its Civil War veterans for leadership. Each August, under the full moon, thousands gathered in tents and brush arbors for speeches, memorial programs, and feasts of barbecue and sweet potato pie, with special trains running from Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston; at its peak the encampment drew 5,000 people, and the Civil War cannon "Old Valverde" fired dawn and dusk salutes until 1940. The grounds remain dedicated to the memory of the Confederate veterans who once camped here.
Edenton, NC
Joseph Hewes built his fortune as an Edenton merchant and shipowner before politics carried him to the Continental Congress, where in 1776 he became one of North Carolina's signers of the Declaration of Independence. Overseeing naval matters, he is often remembered for helping lay the groundwork of an American navy. His store once stood a few blocks south of here.
Bern Township, PA · est. 1947
Joseph Hiester rose from Revolutionary War soldier—captured and held on a British prison ship—to a long career in public life, serving in Congress and then as governor of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1823. A son of the Pennsylvania German community, he lived at the Hiester Mansion here in Berks County. The property later became part of the county welfare farm.
Webberville, TX
Joseph J. Manor came to Texas from Tennessee at twenty and settled at Webberville, where he built a store and cotton gin and gathered land along the Colorado River. He and his wife Caroline lie here among other early pioneers, in a burial ground that honors veterans of nearly every American conflict from the War of 1812 through Vietnam. A descendants' association formed in 1982 now cares for the site.
Hallettsville, TX
Joseph Kent arrived in Texas around 1832, when the region was still a Mexican province stirring toward revolt. He took up arms in the Texas War for Independence, seeing action at the storming of Bexar in 1835 and at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, before settling and dying in Lavaca County in 1849.
Asheville, NC
Joseph Lane was born near this spot before rising to national prominence in the mid-nineteenth century. He won fame as a major general in the Mexican War, then became the first territorial governor of Oregon and later a U.S. Senator. In 1860 he ran for vice president on the Southern Democratic ticket with John C. Breckinridge, on the eve of the Civil War.
Hallettsville, TX
Joseph Lawrence volunteered in the Texas War for Independence and stood among the victors at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the fight that secured Texas's separation from Mexico. The State of Texas marked his memory with the star and wreath reserved for veterans of that founding struggle.
North Andover, MA
This memorial honors Joseph P. McDonough, a veteran of the World War and a North Andover town official, erected by his neighbors in 1931. In the years after the 1918 Armistice, New England communities raised countless tributes to residents who had served overseas and then returned to civic life. McDonough was remembered for both his wartime service and his work on behalf of the town.
Boston, MA
Dedicated to the veterans of "the World War" — the name Americans used for World War I before a second one made numbering necessary — this memorial honors the young men of a Boston neighborhood who answered the call in 1917 and 1918. More than four million Americans served in that war, and cities and parishes across the country raised tablets like this one to their local sons. The singular phrasing dates the memorial to the years before a second world war made "the Great War" one of two.
Groesbeck, TX
Born in Kentucky in 1810, Joseph Penn Lynch served as both private and captain in the army of the young Republic of Texas and took part in the 1836 San Jacinto campaign that won Texas independence. He died at Springfield, Texas, in 1860. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1962 to honor his service in the revolution.
Grapeland, TX
A native of Louisiana, Joseph Randolph Yarbrough served in the Texas War for Independence, standing guard at the camp opposite Harrisburg during the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He and his father signed the 1837 petition that created Houston County, and after marrying Phebe Clementine Crawford in 1840, he settled near Grapeland and raised a family of eleven children. His life traces the arc from revolutionary soldier to founding settler.
Raritan, NJ
By the summer of 1921, the guns of the Great War had been silent for over two years, yet the United States was still technically at war: the Senate had rejected the Treaty of Versailles, and no formal peace existed between America and the Central Powers. The resolution came on a quiet New Jersey weekend. Visiting the Raritan estate of his friend and ally Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, President Warren G. Harding sat down here on July 2, 1921, and signed the Knox–Porter Resolution, a joint act of Congress that at last declared the war with Germany and Austria-Hungary over. A momentous close to a world conflict was thus put to paper far from the marble of Washington, in a senator's country home.
Lancaster, PA · est. 2006
In the mid-1700s, Lancaster sat on the edge of the British colonies' expanding frontier, a bustling inland hub where traders outfitted expeditions toward the Ohio country and beyond. Joseph Simon, a Jewish merchant, built a far-reaching network of trade and land ventures that reached as far as the Mississippi, and when the Revolution came he helped arm the Continental cause. His home doubled as one of the earliest gathering places for Jewish worship west of Philadelphia.
Houston County, TX
Joseph T. Bowman came to Texas in 1835 as the son of Jesse B. Bowman, who would die defending the Alamo. That December he signed the Goliad Declaration of Independence calling for Texas to break free, and after the revolution he served in the army of the Republic of Texas. He settled with his family in the Houston County area around 1845.
Columbus, TX
Joseph V. Frnka, born in the Czech-Texan community of Industry, built this Columbus home in 1906 and taught himself law well enough to join the Texas Bar in 1915. He served in the Texas House in the 1920s, rose to assistant state attorney general, and after World War II sat as a prosecutor and judge with the U.S. military government in occupied Germany.
San Marcos, TX
Tennessee native Joseph W. Earnest came to Hays County with his family in 1854 and grew up to serve in both the Texas Rangers and the Confederate army before making his mark as a merchant and cattleman. In 1892 he hired local builder Charles Sinz to raise this Victorian home in San Marcos, where his niece Mary Cock was reared and which later passed to her and her husband Irvin Rylander.