Military & Wartime

Sherman, TX

Built before 1897 and designed by German-born John Tollouch, this Victorian home in Sherman first belonged to hardware merchant George E. Hardwicke. In 1902 it was bought by Dupont Lyon, then a U.S. Army officer who settled into life as a dairy farmer, lumberman, and mayor of Sherman before rejoining the army in World War I and retiring a major. The house was restored in 1974 by a later owner.

Agawam, MA

Displayed as a monument in Agawam, this decommissioned M-60 Patton main battle tank stands as a tribute to military veterans of every generation. Introduced in 1960, the M-60 was a mainstay of American armored forces through the Cold War, serving in various forms for decades before being retired and repurposed as memorials like this one in communities across the country. Static tank displays became a familiar feature of town greens, VFW posts, and veterans parks in the postwar era, turning surplus military hardware into a place for public remembrance.

Little Falls, NJ

This M5 light tank stands as a war memorial, its pedestal bearing the reminder that 'Freedom Is Not Free.' The M5 Stuart was a fast, lightly armored American tank used for reconnaissance and infantry support in World War II, crewed by four and mass-produced for U.S. and Allied forces. Displayed in the community, the vehicle honors the local men and women who served in the nation's wars.

Rosenberg, TX

Born in Mexico in 1920 and brought to Fort Bend County as a child farmworker, Macario García was drafted in 1942 and single-handedly destroyed two German machine-gun nests near Grosshau in November 1944, though wounded. President Truman presented him the Medal of Honor in 1945 — yet weeks later he was refused service and arrested at a Texas restaurant for being Hispanic. His case, taken up by LULAC and others, became an early rallying point in the postwar Mexican-American civil rights struggle.

City of Plattsburgh, NY

On September 11, 1814, the War of 1812 reached a decisive climax on the waters of Lake Champlain at Plattsburgh. A young American naval commander, Thomas Macdonough, anchored his outnumbered squadron in Plattsburgh Bay and, through clever positioning that let him wheel his ships to bring fresh guns to bear, shattered the British fleet as a large invading army watched from shore. The naval defeat forced the British land force to abandon its push south toward New York and retreat into Canada.

Hemphill, TX

Founded in 1885, Macedonia Baptist Church anchored an African American community in the pine country of East Texas, and its cemetery became a chronicle of that community's endurance. Among its more than 500 graves lie people born into slavery who lived to see freedom, veterans of both World Wars, and elders who passed the century mark. The roughly 193 unmarked graves speak as loudly as the headstones—a stark record of the poverty and inequality Black families faced at the turn of the 20th century.

Fort Hancock, TX

Benito Martinez grew up in the tiny border town of Fort Hancock, graduating from its high school in 1951 before shipping out to Korea. On September 6, 1952, near Satae-Ri, the young corporal made a lone six-hour stand, refusing offers of rescue so his unit could regain vital ground—an act of valor that cost him his life. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration.

Lincoln County, NC

Established as a Presbyterian burial ground in 1801, Machpelah Cemetery holds the graves of several figures central to the region's Revolutionary and early national history, among them Alexander Brevard and General Joseph Graham. It reflects the Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlement of the Carolina Piedmont.

Rocksprings, TX

When the U.S. Army built Forts Clark and McKavett in 1852, this rough frontier trail linked the two posts; after Fort Concho was founded in 1867 it was extended north toward present San Angelo. It later took the name of Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, the 1873 commander of Fort Clark, who rode it during his campaigns against Native peoples of the region. Along the way, Mackenzie Lake watered soldiers, cattle drives, settlers, and Texas Rangers patrolling the frontier.

San Augustine, TX

Nathaniel Hunt and his family had settled here by the time Texas became a republic in 1836, and his home doubled as a mail stop on the San Augustine–to–Houston route. The burial ground began as the Hunt Cemetery with John Neely's death in 1845, later taking the name Macune to honor Farmers' Alliance leader Charles Macune when the community's post office opened in 1888. Among its graves are Edwin Oswald LeGrand, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the War of 1812.

New Orleans, LA

Known as 'Madame John's Legacy,' this French colonial home was built in 1788 for the Spanish army captain Don Manuel Lanzos, on a site occupied since about 1725. It was the birthplace of Renato Beluche (1781–1860), a Baratarian associate of Jean Lafitte who fought in the Battle of New Orleans and later became an admiral in the Venezuelan navy. The earlier house here belonged to Jean Pascal, a sailor killed in the 1729 Natchez uprising, and the property took its literary nickname from a George W. Cable story before passing to the Louisiana State Museum.

Cumberland Township, PA

This War Department tablet records the service of the Madison (Mississippi) Light Artillery, Ward's Battery, on July 3, 1863. Its Napoleon guns took part in the tremendous cannonade that preceded Longstreet's assault — the charge remembered as Pickett's Charge — before withdrawing to a position nearby. The marker notes that the battery's howitzer was held in the rear and saw no action that day.

Madisonville, LA

First called "Cokie" for the shells heaped along its shores, this Tchefuncte-River town was renamed about 1811 to honor President James Madison. It hosted a U.S. Navy yard in the early 1800s, and tradition holds that Andrew Jackson paused here in November 1814 on his way to defend New Orleans. The settlement grew as a shipbuilding and maritime community on Lake Pontchartrain's north shore.

Madisonville, LA

In use from 1800 to the present, Madisonville Cemetery holds pre-Louisiana Purchase colonial settlers alongside veterans of the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and many others of local and national note. Its graves span the transformation of the Gulf Coast from French and Spanish colonial ground into an American community. The Daughters of the American Colonists placed the marker in 2015.

Madisonville, LA

After Union forces captured Madisonville, soldiers "on fatigue duty" dug these fortifications between January and March 1864 to guard the town against Confederate raids from the countryside. The line was a trench fronted by an abatis — a barrier of felled trees with sharpened points aimed outward — running westward across town. The Union held Madisonville to draw off its timber, lumber, turpentine, tar, and bricks for the Department of the Gulf.

Bethesda, MD

This is one of twelve identical "Madonna of the Trail" monuments the Daughters of the American Revolution placed across the country in 1928 and 1929, each a stern pioneer mother in bonnet and shawl striding westward with a child at her side. The DAR raised them to honor the women of the covered-wagon generation and to mark the National Old Trails Road, a coast-to-coast auto route that stitched together older paths of American expansion. As the inscription notes, this ground carried far older traffic too: in the spring of 1755 General Edward Braddock led his ill-fated British and colonial army along this corridor toward Fort Duquesne, in the opening campaign of the French and Indian War.

Burnet, TX

Ringed by a rock wall, this small family graveyard lies on what was the homestead of William H. Magill, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto who brought his family to Burnet County in 1850. He opened the cemetery in 1863 with the burial of his fifteen-year-old son John, and it holds his own grave, his second wife, and his parents, along with at least one unmarked burial.

Magnolia, TX

In use for decades before Tom J. Goodson and his wife Winnie May deeded it to the Baptist church in 1909, this burial ground later grew through gifts of land from their son and from local sawmill owner C.H. Daniel. Its earliest marked graves belong to the brothers James and William Proctor, who died just days apart in 1878 for reasons now forgotten. Buried here are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—generations of the Magnolia community.

Elkhart, TX

Like many early African American burial grounds, Magnolia Cemetery left little written record, and its story survives largely through oral tradition. Land was reportedly given by farmer E. P. Murray, and its oldest marked grave belongs to Isham Murray, a former slave born in 1805. At least sixteen other African Americans born in slavery rest here, alongside veterans of World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

El Paso, TX

Kentucky-born trader James Wiley Magoffin began buying land here in 1849, building a home and trading complex that became one of early American El Paso's four population centers. From 1854 to 1868 the U.S. Army post of Fort Bliss stood on his leased ground, and during the Civil War federal forces confiscated and damaged his property. After his 1868 death his family regained land, and his son Joseph became an early El Paso real estate and immigration promoter.

Bertram, TX

With graves reaching back to the 1850s, this burial ground served the neighboring Sycamore Springs and Mahomet communities before being formally deeded to Mahomet in 1909. Hundreds rest here, including many of Burnet County's earliest settlers and veterans of American wars from the Mexican War through Vietnam. Descendants still tend the active cemetery today.

College Station, TX

When Texas A&M opened in 1876, its federal mandate to teach military tactics gave rise to the Corps of Cadets and this central parade ground, where cadets drilled before and after class. The Main Drill Field also hosted horse-drawn artillery, early pilot training, the university's first football games, and decades of Aggie Bonfires. In 1920 the school planted oak trees ringed with markers to honor former cadets killed in World War I, and the field later took the name of Lieutenant General Ormond R. Simpson, a decorated alumnus who served in three wars.

Crosbyton, TX

In the early 1870s General Ranald Mackenzie led the U.S. 4th Cavalry across the West Texas plains in the army's campaigns to force the Comanches onto reservations. From a main supply camp on the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos — today's White River — he launched a drive against Quanah Parker's band, culminating in fights in Palo Duro and Tule Canyons. Those clashes were among the last between the Cavalry and Plains Indians in the region, and they broke the Comanche hold on the Panhandle.

Augusta, ME

Dedicated on October 19, 1985, the Maine Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Augusta was built by ordinary citizens to honor those who served in the Vietnam War and all who were touched by it. Its dedication came at a moment when the nation, after years of division, was finally building public memorials to reconcile with the war and its veterans. The inscription deliberately widens its embrace beyond soldiers to families and communities scarred by the conflict.

Hamden, CT

This plaque honors Major A. Frederick Oberlin, remembered by his Connecticut community as both a distinguished military officer and a valued citizen. Tributes of this kind were commonly raised to local men whose service in uniform was matched by leadership in civic life. Though the inscription is brief, it reflects a town's lasting pride in one of its own.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

During the Revolution, Carlisle held British prisoners of war far from the fighting on the coast. For a short time in 1776, Major John Andre and Lieutenant Despard were detained in a tavern on this site. Andre was later exchanged, returned to service, and after his involvement in Benedict Arnold's treason was captured again and executed as a spy.

Salado, TX

Archibald Johnson Rose made a fortune in the 1849 California Gold Rush before bringing his family to Texas, serving as a Confederate major, and settling in Salado in 1870. A progressive farmer, he helped found the first Texas Grange in 1873 and then the statewide Grange, building cooperatives, textile mills, and an insurance company while lobbying for farmer protections and better schools. He served on school boards and the boards of Salado College, Mary Hardin-Baylor, and Texas A&M.

San Angelo, TX

Dubbed the "Mystery Man of the Confederacy," Ben Ficklin packed extraordinary adventure into 44 years: a corporal in the Mexican War at 18, a pioneer of Western stagecoach and mail lines, a founder of the Pony Express in 1860, and an early promoter of the transcontinental railroad. During the Civil War he ran Union blockades as a Confederate purchasing agent, and afterward won a U.S. mail contract, headquartering near Fort Concho—until he died in 1871 from swallowing a fish bone. A town later named for him became Tom Green County's first seat until an 1882 flood destroyed it.

Bryan County, GA

This emplacement, placed nearest the enemy, held an 8-inch columbiad commanded personally by Major John B. Gallie at Fort McAllister. The fort's earthwork batteries traded fire with Union warships pressing up the Ogeechee River toward Savannah. Gallie was killed during the bombardment of the fort in 1863.

Detroit, MI

This Detroit monument honors Alpheus Starkey Williams, called a 'hero of two wars' for his service in the Mexican-American War and as a Union general in the Civil War, where he led troops from Antietam to Gettysburg and through the Georgia and Carolinas campaigns. Beyond the battlefield he was a judge, newspaper editor, postmaster, diplomat, and member of Congress. The equestrian statue on Belle Isle marks him as one of the city's most distinguished public servants.

Hoquiam, WA

This monument honors Major General Eldon A. Blackwell, remembered on the Washington coast at Hoquiam. The rank of major general marks a career of considerable command responsibility in the nation's armed forces, and communities often raise such tributes to native sons who rose to senior military leadership.

Robertson County, KY

On a nearby hilltop lie the home site and grave of Major George M. Bedinger (1756–1843), a Pennsylvania-born patriot who fought in the Revolution—helping defend Boonesborough in 1779 and serving at the siege of Yorktown in 1781. Returning to Kentucky in 1784, he was among the first to survey this region, later serving in the state legislature and in Congress. An opponent of slavery, he freed his enslaved people when each reached the age of thirty.

Matagorda, TX

George Morse Collinsworth commanded the Texan volunteers who seized the fort at Goliad on October 9, 1835, one of the opening actions of the Texas Revolution. Coming just days after the fighting at Gonzales, the capture cut a key Mexican supply and communication point on the road to the coast. Mississippi-born, Collinsworth lived until 1866, long enough to see the republic he fought for absorbed into the United States and then convulsed by civil war.

Jones Creek, TX

Guy M. Bryan rode a mule to Texas in 1831 to join his uncle, Stephen F. Austin, and grew up to serve as a private in the war for independence, then as a legislator, congressman, and delegate to the Secession Convention. Enlisting again as a private when the Civil War came, his political skill quickly made him an indispensable troubleshooter — arranging conferences of Trans-Mississippi governors, pressing Jefferson Davis for a strong military department west of the river, and untangling disputes over the cotton trade that was the Confederacy's lifeblood. He served as confidential adjutant to Davis and the region's commanding general before dying in 1901.

Livingston, TX

Henry W. Augustine moved from Alabama to East Texas in 1827, in the years when the region was filling with Anglo settlers under Mexican rule. He fought in the 1832 Battle of Nacogdoches, served as a delegate to the 1835 Consultation that set Texas on the road to revolution, and took part in the Cherokee War of 1838. For his battle injuries and service to the Republic of Texas he received both a land grant and a wooden leg.

Houston, TX

Isaac N. Moreland came to Texas from Georgia in 1834, in time to fight in the storming of Bexar and to command the artillery at San Jacinto, the battle that won Texas its independence in 1836. Promoted to major that summer, he went on to practice law with interim president David G. Burnet and served as chief justice of Harris County until his death in 1840. Houston's Masons and military companies buried him with honors.

Crockett, TX

Isaac Watts Burton was a soldier of the Texas Revolution who fought at San Jacinto in 1836 and then led a cavalry company nicknamed the "Horse Marines" for its daring seizure of Mexican supply vessels along the Gulf coast. He went on to serve in the Congress of the young Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1839, one of the founding generation who tried to build a functioning nation out of a hard-won independence. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1936, the centennial of the revolution he helped win.

Stonewall, TX

A Civil War veteran turned stage-line operator, Israel M. Nunez founded the community of Stonewall in 1870 and named it in tribute to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Raising a family of nine south of town, Nunez helped anchor the settlement by donating land in 1886 for Stonewall School No. 18. His life traces the arc of a defeated Confederacy rebuilding itself in the Texas Hill Country.

Edna, TX

James Kerr carried a full American life into early Texas: born in Kentucky, a veteran of the War of 1812, and a sheriff, legislator, and senator in Missouri before he came south as surveyor-general of DeWitt's Colony. He laid out the town of Gonzales in 1825 and settled in Jackson County, where he helped draft the framework for a proposed state of Texas and, in July 1835, chaired an early public protest against Mexican rule. He later served in the Republic of Texas Congress—and practiced medicine besides.

Tyler, TX

James P. Douglas came to Texas in 1848 and in 1861 led Tyler and Dallas men to form the Good-Douglas Battery, the only Texas artillery unit to serve east of the Mississippi. Praised for his gallantry at Chickamauga, he returned home to a remarkable civil career as newspaper editor, lawyer, state senator, railroad president, and pioneer of East Texas's fruit and canning industries. A local school bears his name.

Jones Creek, TX

A close friend of Stephen F. Austin, James Peckham Caldwell received a Mexican land grant in 1824 and became an early industrialist, running what was said to be the first sugar mill on the Brazos. As adjutant of the Texas army he was wounded at the 1832 Battle of Velasco, and he was guarding civilians when Texas won its independence at San Jacinto in 1836. He married Ann Munson, widow of his friend Henry W. Munson.

Austin, TX

Major John B. Jones took command of the newly created Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers in 1874, stationing six companies a hundred miles apart and patrolling more than 22,000 miles in the first six months. He broke up rustling rings, quelled violent feuds like the Mason County War and the El Paso Salt War, ran down the Sam Bass gang, and helped track Victorio's Apaches. A Civil War veteran of Terry's Texas Rangers, he became adjutant general of Texas in 1879 and lies buried in Austin.

York, PA · est. 1949

When the Continental Congress fled to York in the fall of 1777, this quiet Pennsylvania town briefly served as the seat of a young nation at war. Major John Clark, who lived on this site, was a trusted Revolutionary officer who served as aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Greene and later as an auditor of the Continental Army — one of the many soldiers and administrators whose unglamorous labor kept Washington's army supplied and solvent.

Tyler, TX

Major John Dean's family bought this East Texas land in 1863 with pay he sent home while serving the Confederacy, and after the war he built a home worthy of it. Using heart-pine lumber he milled and seasoned himself, and brick fired from farm clay by a formerly enslaved man named Jesse Duckinfield, Dean raised the finest house in the community in 1872. Generations of his family have kept it since.

Galveston, TX

John M. Allen fought at San Jacinto in the war that won Texas its independence, then went on to serve as the first mayor of Galveston. Kentucky-born, he died in 1847, only a year after the Republic joined the United States. This state marker remembers a founder who helped launch one of the young state's leading port cities.

Galveston, TX

Born in Germany in 1807 as Feist Emanuel Heim, Leon Dyer came to Baltimore as a child in a family of Jewish meat packers and rose to prominence in the city's Hebrew congregation. Drawn into the Texas Revolution in 1836, he landed at Galveston, supplied Houston's army, and was commissioned a major by President Burnet, later serving to clear western Texas of Mexican troops. He is remembered as a businessman, soldier, and diplomat, and is buried in Galveston's Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery.

Town of Caneadea, NY

In 1782, as the Revolutionary War's frontier violence dragged on in western New York, the American soldier Major Moses Van Campen was taken captive by the Senecas — the "keepers of the Western Door" of the Iroquois Confederacy. At their village along the Genesee River near Caneadea, he was forced to run the gauntlet, a customary ordeal, racing some thirty rods to the Seneca council house. That council house survived and was later relocated and preserved in Letchworth State Park, a tangible link to this dramatic moment.

Jones Creek, TX

Reuben R. Brown joined the Matamoros Expedition in January 1836 during the Texas War for Independence and rode in the detachment that captured horses from the Mexican general Urrea's forces. Taken prisoner in a counterattack, he endured eleven months of captivity in Mexico before escaping, and in old age lived with his daughter — who had married into the family of Moses Austin, whose vision first opened Texas to colonization.

Houston, TX

Richard 'Dick' Dowling fled the Irish potato famine as a boy, prospered as a Houston saloonkeeper and entrepreneur, then won lasting fame in the Civil War. On September 8, 1863, commanding just 47 men and six cannon at Fort Griffin, he repelled a Union fleet of 27 ships and 5,000 troops at Sabine Pass in barely 45 minutes. The Confederate Congress hailed the victory as one of the war's most brilliant feats; Dowling returned to business and died of yellow fever at just 30.

Hutto, TX

Robert McNutt was a veteran of the War of 1812 who, two decades later, commanded Texas forces at the Harrisburg camp during the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto — the decisive fight that won Texas its independence. Born in 1795, he lived until 1853 and is remembered here alongside his wife, Mary Jackson McNutt. The State of Texas erected this marker to his service across two wars.

Terrell, TX

William Francis "Bill" Long came to Texas as a teenager and found his life's work in the air, flying as an observer with an aero squadron in World War I before building a chain of flight schools across the state. Known as "Mr. Love Field," he trained pilots and mechanics through the 1920s and 30s, then answered the nation's call as war loomed again. During World War II his four schools trained roughly a tenth of U.S. Army aviators and a third of Britain's RAF cadets who came to America, including the No. 1 British Flying Training School at Terrell.

Austin, TX

This state marker honors Major William Cooke, born in Virginia in 1808 and buried in Guadalupe County, Texas, in 1847. His military title and his years place him among the officers of the Republic of Texas era, when Anglo-American settlers were fighting to establish and defend the new nation. Texas raised the marker to his memory in 1936, its centennial year.

Chappell Hill, TX

William Edward Howth left New York City for a Texas in revolt, taking part in the 1835 capture of San Antonio from Mexican forces and serving as a major in the Army of Texas during the 1836 fight for independence. He lived on into the era of statehood, dying in 1859.

Austin, TX

William "Buck" Walton left Mississippi for Austin in 1853, studied law, and partnered with A. J. Hamilton, later a governor of Texas. He enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862, serving with the 21st Texas Cavalry, and was elected state attorney general in 1866 during the turbulent early Reconstruction years. Renowned as a land-litigation and criminal-defense attorney, he remained a prominent public figure until his death in 1915.

York County, SC

On October 7, 1780, this ground near the North Carolina line saw the Battle of Kings Mountain, a turning point in the American Revolution's southern campaign. Frontier militia known as the Overmountain Men surrounded and crushed a Loyalist force under Major Patrick Ferguson in about an hour of fierce fighting. Major William Chronicle, a young Patriot officer leading his Lincoln County men, was killed early in the assault at the spot this stone marks.

Greenville, TX

What began in 1941 as a federally aided civilian airport for Greenville quickly grew, with Congressman Sam Rayburn's help, into a $5 million Army Air Forces training base. Named for Lt. Truett Majors, the first Hunt County pilot killed in World War II, the field opened fully in January 1943 and trained cadets in BT-13s and P-47s. Alongside American airmen, it trained Women's Army Corps members and Royal Air Force and Mexican Air Force pilots before deactivating in July 1945.

Erie, PA · est. 2015

In the summer of 1813, with British warships massing on Lake Erie, seven Erie women stayed behind while others fled south and stitched the battle flag Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry would fly at the Battle of Lake Erie. Led by Margaret Forster Steuart and her sister Dorcas, the seamstresses emblazoned it with the dying words of Perry's friend James Lawrence: "Don't Give Up the Ship." The banner survives at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, and its motto endures across the Navy.

Man, WV

In the coalfields town of Man, in Logan County, West Virginia, this memorial is dedicated to local soldiers who gave their lives in service to their country. Small-town war memorials like this one gather a community's grief and gratitude in a single place, often honoring the fallen across multiple generations and conflicts.

Jewett, TX

Georgia-born Manaen Turnbull Smith arrived in present-day Shelby County in 1822, during the era of Mexican Texas, and took up the cause of independence—serving in the Texas Army and taking part in the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. After the revolution he farmed, ranched, and traded land across several counties before settling in Leon County and later running a hotel in Jewett, where he died in 1886.

Benton County, WA

Built in a matter of months during World War II, Hanford's B Reactor was the world's first full-scale reactor designed to produce plutonium. The plutonium made here fueled the Trinity test and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, part of the secret, sprawling Manhattan Project. Today it is preserved as a National Historic Landmark within the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.