Military & Wartime

Manor, TX

Tennessee-born James Manor reached Texas in the early 1830s and helped settle the area that took his name, where a town grew up in the 1840s and a Methodist congregation organized in 1854. Manor deeded the land for a church and cemetery in 1871, and the graveyard now holds more than a thousand people, including Manor himself, Lt. Governor T.B. Wheeler, and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to Vietnam. A separate Hispanic and Catholic section reflects the community's mix of settlers.

Mansfield, TX

Partners Julian Feild and Ralph Mann, who had met in Harrison County around 1850, came south of Fort Worth and in the winter of 1859–60 raised a three-story steam-powered grist mill on the ruins of an earlier one. The mill drew business from San Antonio to the Oklahoma Territory, and the town that grew up around it — first "Mansfeild," then Mansfield — took its founders' names. During the Civil War the Confederacy claimed a share of its output, and afterward federal contracts kept its flour moving to army forts.

Omaha, NE

Near this site the fur trader and Indian commissioner Manuel Lisa built Fort Lisa in 1807 as a trading post on the Missouri River. Through his personal influence, the Omaha, Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe, and Sioux tribes were kept loyal to the United States during the War of 1812.

Somerville, MA

In 1775 and 1776 the hills around Charlestown and Boston bristled with earthworks as the Siege of Boston opened the Revolutionary War. This map recalls the fortifications thrown up across the landscape—including the heights where the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought—while colonial forces hemmed in the British-held town. The ground it depicts is now Somerville and its neighbors, though the ridgelines that shaped the siege remain.

Minden, TX

Maple Grove Cemetery began in sorrow, with the 1879 burial of Paul and Martha Rettig's infant son Joseph on the family's Rusk County land. When two children of the tenant-farming Kinsey family were laid to rest nearby in 1883, the plot gradually became a community burial ground, formally cared for by a committee organized in 1895. Its roughly 600 graves hold three generations of area families and veterans of wars from the Texas Revolution through World War II.

New Cumberland, PA · est. 2001

Marcus A. Reno, whose farm lay near here, is remembered for one of the most scrutinized moments in American military history. As a major in the 7th U.S. Cavalry, he led a battalion at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876; while George Armstrong Custer and the men with him were annihilated, Reno and most of his command dug in and survived. Earlier, during the Civil War, he had helped defend this stretch of Pennsylvania against Confederate incursions.

Greene Township, PA · est. 1961

Born on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1751, Margaret Cochran Corbin followed her husband into the Continental Army and was beside him at the defense of Fort Washington in November 1776. When he was killed at his cannon, she took his place and kept firing until she too was gravely wounded. Congress later granted her a soldier's pension and a place in the Invalid Regiment, and she was buried with honor at West Point.

New York, NY

During the British and Hessian assault on Fort Washington in November 1776, Margaret Cochran Corbin stepped into the gun crew when her husband John was killed at his cannon, keeping the piece firing until she too was gravely wounded. She is remembered as the first woman to take a soldier's place in combat during the Revolutionary War and later became the first woman to receive a military pension from the Continental Congress. This marker near the old fort's ground honors her stand.

Mobile, AL

This memorial honors United States Marines and their service tracing back to November 10, 1775—the date the Continental Congress resolved to raise Marine battalions, an act traditionally linked to Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. From that Revolutionary beginning, the Corps grew into one of the nation's most storied fighting forces. The marker gathers every generation of Marines under a single act of remembrance rather than commemorating one battle or war.

Marion Township, PA

Small townships across Pennsylvania have long set aside a place to honor their own who answered the nation's call to arms. A memorial like this gathers the service of local men and women across generations into a single act of public remembrance, the kind of civic gesture that turns private gratitude into something permanent and shared. It belongs to the deep American tradition of town-square war memorials that took root after the Civil War and spread to nearly every community in the country.

Louise, TX

Marion Wesley "Baldy" Crowell served with distinction in an engineer company of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I before settling in Louise, Texas, in 1933. There he became a fixture of civic life — twice commander of the local American Legion post, first president of the chamber of commerce, and a leader in religious and political affairs. A neighbor's affectionate verse, "Leave it to Baldy," preserved on the marker, captures the trust his community placed in him.

Graham, TX

Begun in 1881 beside the old Plum Grove School, the Markley cemetery had fallen to neglect by 1890, when rural neighbors organized an annual "Graveyard Working Day" each May to clean the grounds and lay wildflowers on the graves. Families came by wagon and horseback, some camping overnight, and the observance — later a Sunday gathering — endures as a social tradition that decorates, among others, the graves of thirteen Confederate veterans buried here.

New York, NY

This statue honors the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French nobleman who crossed the Atlantic to fight for American independence and became one of the Revolution's most beloved allies. The monument was itself a gift from France to New York City, offered in gratitude for the sympathy Americans extended during France's ordeal in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The paired inscriptions bind two moments together: Lafayette's pledge of 1776 that his 'heart was enlisted' the instant he heard of American independence, and France's answering thanks nearly a century later.

New York, NY

The Marquis de Lafayette was a young French aristocrat who crossed the Atlantic to join the American cause, serving without pay as a trusted general and confidant of George Washington during the Revolutionary War. This Brooklyn monument was the gift of Henry Harteau, a prominent local citizen, who wanted a lasting public tribute to Lafayette's role in helping win American independence. Lafayette's later triumphal tour of the United States in 1824–25 cemented his place in the national memory as the young republic's most beloved foreign friend.

Brackettville, TX

Fort Clark was established in 1852 to guard the western Texas frontier and the Mexican border, and it swelled in the 1870s as the Army stationed a regiment there during the Indian Wars. This U-shaped limestone duplex, raised by 1875, housed married officers and their families amid that expansion. When the fort closed in 1944, later owners folded the quarters into a single family home.

Florence County, SC

At the height of Cold War tension in March 1958, a B-47 bomber on a training flight bound for England accidentally released an atomic bomb over the South Carolina countryside near Mars Bluff. The weapon carried no nuclear core, but its conventional trigger charge detonated on impact, blasting a crater dozens of feet across and demolishing the farmstead of railroad conductor Walter Gregg. Gregg's family and a niece were injured by the concussion, and buildings for miles around were shaken.

Farmers Branch, TX

Harrison and Mary "Polly" Marsh brought their five children from Missouri to Texas in 1844, settling in Peters Colony along Farmers Branch Creek where they raised stock and farmed. Polly helped charter the church that became First Baptist of Farmers Branch, and the family prospered across farming, ranching, and civic life — with sons Thomas Corbin and John David serving in the Confederate Army. In the 1880s John David donated an acre for a family graveyard whose earliest recorded burial dates to 1874.

San Francisco, CA

Planted in 1921 by Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France, this tree honors the general who served as Supreme Allied Commander in the final year of World War I and accepted the German armistice in November 1918. His visit to San Francisco came during a celebrated tour of the United States thanking Americans for their part in the Allied victory.

San Francisco, CA

This tree was planted in 1922 by Joseph Joffre, the Marshal of France who commanded French forces at the outset of World War I and won fame for halting the German advance at the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. His postwar visit to San Francisco was part of a triumphal American tour honoring the Allied victory.

Marshall, TX

Founded in 1839 and named for U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, this East Texas town became a strategic hub during the Civil War, housing supply, ordnance, medical, telegraph, and military headquarters. When Federal forces overran Missouri, that state's Confederate government relocated here, making Marshall the wartime capital-in-exile of Missouri. Rail lines and trade cemented its role as a regional center long after the war.

Marshall, TX

Marshall was founded around 1841 after landowner Peter Whetstone offered land for a courthouse, church, and school, and representative Isaac Van Zandt named it for U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall. By 1850 it ranked among the wealthiest towns in East Texas. During the Civil War it was a major Confederate stronghold, home to the exiled Missouri state government and the postal headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department; afterward it hosted a Freedmen's Bureau office and, with the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railway, became a regional education center anchored by Wiley and Bishop colleges.

Marshall, TX

Incorporated in 1849, this cemetery is the resting place of a remarkable roster of early Texas leaders. Among them are Edward Clark, governor of Texas in 1861 and a Confederate colonel; Walter P. Lane, a veteran of the Texas Revolution and Mexican War who rose to Confederate general; John T. Mills, a Republic of Texas supreme court justice; and Horace Randal, a Confederate general — with two Texas counties named for men buried here. A United Daughters of the Confederacy obelisk honors unknown soldiers who died in local hospitals.

McAdoo, TX

Raised in the tiny community of McAdoo, Marshall Clinton Formby, Jr. devoted his life to the betterment of West Texas. He served as Dickens County judge, won a Texas Senate seat interrupted by his service as an Army captain in the European theater of World War II, and built businesses in farming, oil, radio, newspapers, and cable television. As a member and chair of the Texas Highway Commission in the 1950s, he championed farm-to-market roads and the state's interstate highway system, and he served for years on the boards guiding Texas Tech and higher education.

Marshall, TX

When Vicksburg fell to Union forces in 1863, the Confederacy's Trans-Mississippi Department was cut off from the arsenals of Richmond and had to make its own war materiel. Late that summer the ordnance works from Arkadelphia, Arkansas, were relocated to Marshall, where crews built shops, a magazine, and a powder mill that ran at full tilt in 1864. After the surrender, occupying Federal troops began dismantling the machinery when an explosion killed three soldiers and wounded two more.

Marshall, TX

During the Civil War, Marshall became one of the Confederacy's most important centers west of the Mississippi, housing the Trans-Mississippi Department's medical, postal, and ordnance operations, hospitals, and an arsenal that produced arms, saddles, and clothing. After Union forces occupied Missouri, its exiled Confederate government made Marshall its wartime capital from 1863 to 1865, and governors and generals met here in a series of conferences. The town produced Texas governors, senators, and generals, and after Appomattox some officials fled from here to Mexico rather than surrender.

Wallis, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1780, Martin Allen surveyed roads with his father before joining the ill-fated Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition to wrest Texas from Spanish rule in 1812–13 — a fight that cost the lives of his father and nephew at the Battle of Medina. In 1821 he came to Texas as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists, among the first to settle along the Colorado River. Later established at Eight Mile Point, the Allens ran a "Public House" frequented by a young William B. Travis, and Martin, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence, was buried nearby.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 2003

Educated in Chambersburg as the son of a free mother and an enslaved father, Martin Delany became one of the most formidable Black voices of his century. He published the antislavery newspaper The Mystery, joined Frederick Douglass in the abolitionist cause, and in 1865 became the first African American commissioned as a field officer in the United States Army. Physician, editor, and activist, he pressed for freedom on many fronts.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1991

From an office near this spot in Pittsburgh, Martin R. Delany published The Mystery, an early African American newspaper, and became a leading voice for Black self-determination and emigrationist thought decades before such ideas were widespread. He studied briefly at Harvard Medical School, practiced medicine in the city, and during the Civil War was commissioned a major—among the first Black field officers in the U.S. Army.

Mineola, TX

Martin Varner reached Texas before 1820 and became one of the "Old Three Hundred" families who settled Stephen F. Austin's first colony, building a plantation near Columbia. He took up arms in the pivotal clashes of the Texas independence struggle, fighting at Velasco in 1832 and at San Jacinto in 1836. Varner moved to Wood County late in life and died in 1844 of wounds from a quarrel over a debt.

Mineola, TX

This state marker honors Martin Varner as a volunteer soldier who fought for Texas independence at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That short, decisive engagement secured the young republic's break from Mexico. Erected by the State of Texas in 1962, the marker stands near Varner's Wood County resting place.

Bastrop, TX

Martin Walker enlisted from the Mina district — the early name for the Bastrop area — and fought in the Texas War for Independence in 1836. The State of Texas placed this 'Star and Wreath' marker in 1962 to commemorate his role among the volunteers who secured the Republic.

Martinez, CA

This marks the site of the Martinez Troops-in-Transit Canteen, which operated from October 1943 to February 1946. Staffed by 1,348 volunteer hostesses, it offered rest and refreshment to more than 401,000 servicemen and women, escorts, and children passing through by rail during World War II. Such canteens were a nationwide grassroots effort to comfort the millions in uniform on the move.

Van, TX

This Van Zandt County cemetery grew from the Marvin Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, South, founded in the 1860s pioneer community of Owlet Green. The first recorded burial was Nannie E. Graham in 1872, though older unmarked graves suggest earlier interments, and land gifts in 1884 and 1885 expanded the grounds. Among those buried here are area pioneers and veterans of every American conflict from the Mexican War to Vietnam.

Milwaukee, WI

This 1932 memorial honors Mary E. Spence, a past national president of the American War Mothers, dedicated by Milwaukee's chapters. The American War Mothers formed after World War I to unite the mothers of servicemen in remembrance and mutual support, and its leaders were prominent public figures in the interwar patriotic movement. Spence's national role placed her at the head of one of the era's most influential women's organizations.

New York, NY

On August 27, 1776, in the Battle of Brooklyn (also called the Battle of Long Island), the first major engagement after the Declaration of Independence, a small regiment of Maryland soldiers made a series of desperate charges against a far larger British force near the Old Stone House. Their stand held the enemy back long enough for George Washington to pull the battered Continental Army out of a trap and across the East River to fight another day. Roughly 250 of these men fell, and tradition holds that Washington, watching from a distance, lamented the brave fellows he was losing. This monument in what is now Prospect Park honors that sacrifice.

Spotsylvania County, VA

On May 8, 1864, the fighting at Spotsylvania Court House opened as Union troops of the V Corps tried to break through Confederate positions guarding this vital Virginia crossroads. This monument marks the ground reached by the Maryland Brigade of the 2nd Division during that first assault, its inscription preserving the urgent cry to press forward past cannon and rifle fire. The clash was part of Ulysses S. Grant's relentless Overland Campaign, in which the Union army, rather than retreating after brutal losses, kept driving south toward Richmond in a grinding war of attrition against Robert E. Lee's forces.

Frederick County, MD

On July 9, 1864, the fields along the Monocacy River south of Frederick became the stage for a desperate delaying action in the Civil War's final year. Confederate General Jubal Early, driving north through Maryland toward a lightly defended Washington, D.C., collided with a badly outnumbered Union force under General Lew Wallace. Wallace lost the battle but won the day that mattered: the hours his men bought held Early up just long enough for veteran reinforcements to reach the capital's forts before he did.

Towson, MD

This memorial in Towson honors the troopers of the Maryland State Police who gave their lives in the line of duty. Maryland organized a statewide police force in the early 1920s, part of a nationwide move to professionalize law enforcement for the automobile age. Rather than marking a single loss, the monument holds the collective memory of generations of officers who did not return home.

Maysville, KY

Established by Virginia's legislature in 1788 out of Bourbon County, Mason County once sprawled across the area of some sixteen present-day counties. It was named for George Mason, author of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights—a foundation for the U.S. Bill of Rights—and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Mason vicinity, TX

Created and organized in 1858, Mason County took its name from Fort Mason, the frontier post garrisoned on and off from 1851 to 1869. The fort honored Lt. G. T. Mason of the U.S. 2nd Dragoons, killed near Brownsville in 1846. It was one link in a chain of Army posts spaced a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, built to shield settlers from Apache and Comanche raids.

Maysville, KY

In 1792 the frontiersman Simon Kenton proposed to General Charles Scott that a company of trained "spies," or scouts, be raised to guard Kentucky's exposed pioneer settlements. The volunteers served short-term duty—most from May to December 1792—ranging ahead of the settlements and earning a reputation for daring against Native raiders during the violent border warfare of the early republic. The marker names the company's members, from Mercer Beason and Archibald Bennett to Cornelius Washburn.

Mason, TX

Founded in 1904 by pioneer settlers as the German American National Bank of Mason, this institution anchored the finances of a heavily German Hill Country community. Anti-German feeling during World War I pushed the board to rename it Mason National Bank in 1918, even as it led local Liberty Bond drives. It weathered the Great Depression through a 1932 merger and early FDIC certification.

Manheim Township, PA

The Mason-Dixon Line began as the peaceful settlement of a long and bitter boundary quarrel between the Penn family of Pennsylvania and the Calverts of Maryland. Between 1763 and 1767 the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon ran the line westward with remarkable precision, setting stone markers as they went; at every fifth mile they planted an ornate "crownstone" carved with the coats of arms of the two proprietary families. A crown marker like this one, re-dedicated in 1984, honors that painstaking survey and the famous boundary it fixed across the York County countryside.

Kent County, MD

This is a crownstone — one of the ornate boundary markers set along the Mason-Dixon Line, the border that surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon painstakingly ran between 1763 and 1767 to settle a bitter, decades-long dispute between two proprietary families. The heraldic crests carved into its faces name those families: the Penns of Pennsylvania looking east, the Calverts of Maryland looking west. Unlike the plainer mileposts, crownstones like this one were imported from England and placed every five miles, each a small monument to a border drawn with astronomical precision through colonial wilderness.

Gonzales, TX

The Gonzales Masonic Lodge No. 30 bought eleven acres here in 1849 for a cemetery, though two graves already predated the lodge's ownership. Buried among the grounds are veterans of the Texas Revolution—men like Andrew Ponton and Amasa Turner—along with three Texas Masonic grand masters and prominent local citizens. The lodge expanded the site in 1903.

Halifax County, NC

Chartered in 1767, this Halifax Masonic lodge erected its building in 1769, making it one of the oldest in North Carolina. Buried there is Joseph Montfort, appointed "Grand Master of America" — a title of unusual reach across the colonies. The lodge stood at the center of colonial Halifax's civic life on the eve of the Revolution.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1964

Raised in 1823-1824 as the Cumberland Valley was settling into the young republic, this hall was built expressly for Masonic fellowship and has served that purpose ever since — a rare continuity for an early American fraternal lodge. Its most dramatic hour came in July 1864, when Confederate cavalry put much of Chambersburg to the torch after the town refused to pay a ransom, yet this building was left standing amid the ruins.

Cameron, TX

Massillon Farley served in the Texas army during the revolution of 1836, stationed at the camp at Harrisburg on April 21 — the day Texas independence was won at nearby San Jacinto. He went on to help build the new civil order of the fledgling republic, becoming the first chief justice of Milam County. His life spanned the arc from battlefield soldier to frontier jurist.

Matagorda, TX

Founded around 1829 as part of Stephen F. Austin's colony, Matagorda Cemetery is among the oldest burial grounds in Texas, its weathered stones chronicling the hardships of coastal frontier life. Those interred include victims of the 1862 yellow fever epidemic, soldiers of the Texas Revolution and Civil War, Karankawa people, and Samuel Rhoads Fisher, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Bay City, TX

Near the mouth of the Colorado River stood Matagorda, one of early Texas's busiest ports and, during the Civil War, one of eight Texas harbors that blockade runners used to ship out cotton and bring in guns and supplies for the Confederacy. Federal ships claimed a blockade but could never truly occupy the peninsula, resorting to hit-and-run raids on salt works. In a failed December 1863 landing near Caney Creek, a sudden norther swamped Confederate skiffs and drowned twenty-two men, including the young brother of their commander.

Queen City, TX

William Franklin Mathews, a Confederate veteran and farmer, built this Victorian residence in 1878 shortly after moving to the newly founded town of Queen City, where he prospered as a merchant. After passing through several owners, the house was bought in 1918 by Ross A. Powell, another local merchant, and it remains owned and preserved by a Powell descendant. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1973.

Lancaster, PA · est. 2000

From 1740 to 1771 the gunsmith Mathias Roeser worked here in Lancaster, at the heart of colonial Pennsylvania's craft economy. His shop was central to the development of the Pennsylvania rifle, the long, accurate frontier firearm that became famous in American hands. Family members and his apprentice William Henry, Sr., went on to lead the trade and supply arms to the patriot cause during the Revolution.

Pittsburg, TX

Local tradition holds that this cemetery began in 1871 when W. P. Jones buried his wife, Delila, here, meaning only to move her later to an established graveyard — but her grave stayed and became its first. In 1883 O. S. and Jane Bradfield deeded the land to the Fairview Baptist Church. Annual spring cleanups, a tradition since 1909, still draw the descendants of pioneers, lodge members, and veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam who rest here.

Houston, TX

Matthew Burnett and his wife Sarah came from Arkansas in 1831 and settled on Cypress Creek near the Harrisburg Road. Their homesite became a waypoint of the Texas Revolution: the Republic's interim government paused here in March 1836, and on the evening of April 16 Sam Houston's army of some 1,100 men camped here, consuming the family's livestock and grain before marching on. Four days later that army won independence at San Jacinto, and the Burnetts—refugees of the Runaway Scrape—returned to make their home a well-known tavern on the road to Houston.

Marshall, TX

This state marker honors Matthew Duncan Ector, a Texas lawyer and legislator who rose to brigadier general in the Confederate army. He led troops through some of the war's hardest fighting in the Western Theater — Richmond in Kentucky, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and the Atlanta Campaign — before helping defend Mobile. Texas erected the memorial in 1962, a century after the conflict that defined his public life.

Corpus Christi, TX

Orphaned and brought to Corpus Christi as a boy in 1845, Matthew Nolan served as a bugler through the Mexican-American War, rode with the Texas Rangers under 'Rip' Ford, and became Nueces County sheriff in 1858. He fought for the Confederacy along the Texas coast, returned to the sheriff's office as a major, and was murdered in 1864; he lies in Old Bayview Cemetery beside the brother who died as his deputy.

Ennis, TX

Pearl C. Matthews bought this Ennis property in 1900 when he and his brother Will, owners of a McKinney department store, opened a second store in town, and he built the present house in 1908 after years in a cottage on the site. Arkansas native Harry Atwood purchased the home in 1917, and it stayed in the Atwood family for decades. His grandson Felix Atwood, a lieutenant colonel in World War II, later lived here while practicing law in Dallas.

New Diana, TX

Families from Alabama and Georgia settled this area in the 1850s, and oral tradition holds that enslaved people were among the first buried here, with the earliest recorded grave that of Milla Ann Greer Oliver in 1861. Deeded for a church and cemetery by William and Martha Greer in 1887, the "Old Family Cemetery" holds more than four hundred burials, including veterans of every conflict from the Civil War to Vietnam. A cemetery association formed in 1970 to care for the grounds.

Killeen vicinity, TX

One of the oldest cemeteries in Bell County, this burial ground began in the 1860s serving the rural community of Pleasant Grove. When Frank N. McBryde, Sr. — who donated the land — secured a post office in 1883, the settlement took the name Maxdale. Its earliest documented grave is that of a young woman who died in 1867, and among those laid to rest here are pioneer settlers and veterans reaching from the Civil War through Korea.

Manassas, VA

In the early months of the Civil War, Confederate forces fortifying the strategic rail junction at Manassas threw up earthen defenses to guard the approaches to the vital Orange & Alexandria and Manassas Gap railroad lines. The Mayfield earthworks were part of this network of hand-dug forts ringing the town, built from the very soil soldiers stood upon. Manassas Junction sat at the heart of the war's opening campaigns, drawing two major battles to its fields in 1861 and 1862.