Military & Wartime

Cairo, GA

This retired U.S. Army helicopter stands as a static-display memorial in Cairo, Georgia, dedicated simply 'in honor of our troops.' Aircraft like it were mounted in parks and town squares across the country to honor local men and women who served. With no single war named, it speaks to military service broadly rather than to one campaign.

Westminster, MD

In the first days of July 1863, the roads of northern Maryland filled with the men and horses of the Union Army of the Potomac as it raced to intercept Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North. This tablet marks the movements of the army's cavalry on July 3 — the climactic day at Gettysburg, just across the Pennsylvania line — as brigades of the First Cavalry Division shifted from Taneytown and Emmitsburg toward the fighting, while Westminster served as a vital supply and staging hub along the army's rear. These War Department itinerary tablets, placed to trace exactly where each command marched, turn quiet crossroads towns into legible chapters of the campaign.

Straban Township, PA

In the first days of July 1863, the fields and farmhouses south and east of Gettysburg were transformed into a vast open-air hospital as the Army of the Potomac's Medical Department fought to save thousands of wounded men. Under the reforms of medical director Jonathan Letterman, the army had built a system of forward field hospitals, ambulance corps, and triage that was tested here at an unprecedented scale. This ground in Straban Township marks where surgeons worked around the clock amid the aftermath of the war's bloodiest battle.

Dallas, GA

In late May 1864, Gen. James McPherson's Army of the Tennessee swung west through Van Wert and crossed Pumpkin Vine Creek as part of Sherman's drive on Atlanta. On May 26 the 15th and 16th Corps converged on Dallas, entering the town by early afternoon before pushing east against opposing Confederate cavalry. The maneuver was part of the wider flanking campaign that repeatedly turned Joseph Johnston's defensive positions.

Brackettville, TX

Standing on the site of Fort Clark's first guardhouse, this 1938 frame building served as the post's Army Service Club — a recreation center for soldiers and, during World War II mobilization, a non-commissioned officers' club — until the Army closed the fort in 1944. Set on a limestone webwall foundation, its banks of casement windows and louvered vents were built to catch the South Texas breeze. In later years it lived on as a country club and community center.

Morristown, NJ

During the bleak winter after his daring victories at Trenton and Princeton, George Washington made Morristown a refuge for the Continental Army, and Colonel Jacob Arnold's tavern served as his headquarters from January to May of 1777. While the general planned from the tavern on the town green, his troops encamped in the nearby Lowantica Valley, rebuilding an army worn thin by the campaign. Morristown's hills and distance from British-held New York made it a natural stronghold in the middle years of the war.

Menard, TX

The Spaniards who garrisoned Presidio de San Sabá between 1757 and 1770 gave this stream — today called Celery Creek — the name Arroyo de Juan Lorenzo. They quarried stone from its bluffs to raise the presidio's walls, but the creek's deep banks cut both ways, giving hostile Indians concealed approaches from which to strike the fort just half a mile to the southwest. The presidio marked Spain's fragile northern frontier in central Texas.

San Antonio, TX

Prompted by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, the U.S. Army secured land at San Antonio for an arsenal in 1858, and the post soon became headquarters for the Army's Department of Texas. This thick-walled limestone magazine—still under construction when the Civil War began—was among the Federal properties surrendered in 1861 and completed for Confederate Texas, its carefully spaced vents guarding against sparks in the stored gunpowder. It armed south Texas and frontier defense, supplied the 1862 Sibley expedition, and served the U.S. Army as a frontier supply depot until 1947.

Corpus Christi, TX

After Texans accepted annexation on July 4, 1845, General Zachary Taylor massed some 4,000 U.S. troops at Corpus Christi, holding the new state's coast for eight months before marching to the Rio Grande and the opening of the Mexican-American War. Among the men encamped here were three future presidents—Taylor, Pierce, and Grant. A sulphur-rich artesian well drilled beside the camp later became the heart of Artesian Park, deeded to the city in 1854 as one of Texas's earliest public parks and cherished for generations after.

Twiggs County, GA

Arthur Fort (1750–1833) came to Georgia as a boy from North Carolina and served as a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, sitting on the Council of Safety during the conflict's darkest days. As a Wilkinson County legislator, he introduced the bill that created Twiggs County in 1809, then settled and died there. This marker honors the founding public servant near his burial place in the Bullard community.

Hallettsville, TX

Born around 1807, Arthur Henry Vollentine came to Texas about 1833 as a colonist of empresario Martin de Leon and served in the Republic of Texas Army at Goliad during the revolution. He and his family fled during the Runaway Scrape in 1836, later returning to the Lavaca River country to farm and ranch under his V5 cattle brand. Appointed one of Lavaca County's first commissioners in 1846, he helped make Hallettsville the county seat and lies buried here with his family.

Nobleboro, ME

This monument honors Arthur Noble, a Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Massachusetts Regiment who took part in the 1745 siege and capture of the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. The expedition, mounted largely by New England colonial militia, was one of the most striking colonial military feats of the era, seizing a stronghold thought nearly impregnable. Noble, a settler of the Maine coast, was among the New Englanders drawn into the imperial wars between Britain and France.

Hallettsville, TX

Arthur Pendleton Bagby was an Alabama-born West Point graduate who cast his lot with the Confederacy, rising from colonel of the 7th Texas Cavalry to major-general. He rode in Sibley's ill-fated 1862 New Mexico campaign, helped defend Galveston, and led a brigade at the Louisiana battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign. He lived to become the last surviving member of his 1852 West Point class and is buried at Hallettsville.

Unity Township, PA · est. 1946

In a quiet hollow south of this spot stood the final home of Arthur St. Clair, a Scottish-born soldier who gave much of his life to the young United States. He fought as a general in the Continental Army, served in the Continental Congress, and became the first governor of the vast Northwest Territory that would one day form the heart of the Midwest. He died in relative obscurity, and his grave lies at Greensburg.

Greensburg, PA · est. 1995

Born in Thurso, Scotland, Arthur St. Clair rose to Major General in the Continental Army during the Revolution and served as President of the Continental Congress in 1787. He was later appointed the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, the vast lands between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers being opened to American settlement. A longtime Westmoreland County figure, he spent his last years on Chestnut Ridge and is buried just east of this marker.

York, PA · est. 2001

In 1777, with the Revolution's outcome still uncertain and Philadelphia in British hands, the Continental Congress met in the York County Courthouse. There, on November 15, they adopted the Articles of Confederation — the young nation's first written constitution, binding the thirteen states into a single government. The Articles carried the United States through the war and the difficult 1780s until the present Constitution replaced them in 1789.

Cambridge, OH

On September 11, 2001, the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center fell, and 343 New York City firefighters died rushing in to save others. In the years afterward, salvaged steel and artifacts from the towers were distributed to communities across the country so that towns far from Ground Zero could build their own places of remembrance. This memorial in Cambridge, the seat of Guernsey County in eastern Ohio, holds one such artifact, dedicated to the firefighters it honors.

Raleigh, NC

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, North Carolina became the first state to provide artificial limbs to its Confederate amputees, running a factory here from 1866 to 1867. The war had left tens of thousands of maimed veterans, and the program was an early public effort to care for the disabled survivors of the conflict. It marked a first, halting step toward veterans' welfare in the South.

Rutersville, TX

Asa Hill came to Texas in 1835 and served the young republic in 1836, riding ahead of the enemy to warn settlers in the army's path. In 1842 he and two sons joined the ill-fated Mier Expedition into Mexico, where Hill drew a white bean in Santa Anna's deadly lottery and escaped execution, though he languished in prison until 1843; his youngest son, John C.C., was famously adopted by Santa Anna himself. Hill settled at Rutersville, enrolling eight children in its pioneering college before his death in 1844.

Albemarle County, VA

Ash Lawn–Highland was the Albemarle County plantation home of James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, who lived here from 1799 to 1828. Monroe deliberately settled near his friend and mentor Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and the two estates sit within sight of one another in the rolling Piedmont countryside. While here, Monroe served as governor of Virginia, secretary of state, secretary of war, and ultimately president, presiding over the era of the Monroe Doctrine. This marker was placed in 1985 by the Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the site.

Baytown, TX

Born in Connecticut and Yale-educated, Ashbel Smith (1805–1885) arrived in Texas in 1837 and was soon appointed surgeon-general of the Texas army. He served the Republic as secretary of state and as minister to Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Spain, then sat in the state legislature after annexation. A Confederate colonel in the Civil War, he also presided over the first Board of Regents of the University of Texas and championed its Galveston medical branch.

Blessing, TX

After riding with Terry's Texas Rangers in the Civil War, New Jersey native William Erastus Moore settled northeast of Blessing and named the farming community for Colonel Henry M. Ashby, a Tennessee commander he had served under. Moore ran a ranch, store, and post office and donated land for the Ashby Methodist Church. Nearby, freed slaves founded the Wilson Creek Community, organizing their own Baptist church and school, until cleared river channels and wartime out-migration slowly emptied the combined settlement.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the Ashland (Virginia) Artillery, Woolfolk's Battery, part of Colonel E. P. Alexander's battalion in Longstreet's Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Armed with 20-pounder Parrott rifles and Napoleon smoothbores, the battery took its place in the great Confederate gun line at Gettysburg. Alexander's massed artillery anchored the bombardment that preceded the Confederate assault of July 3.

Galveston, TX

Completed in 1859, Ashton Villa is a stately Galveston mansion built of imported European materials in an ornate Mediterranean style. During the Civil War the grand house served in turn as headquarters for both Confederate and Federal forces occupying the island city. It survives as one of the earliest brick residences in Texas and a showpiece of antebellum Gulf Coast wealth.

Banquete, TX

In the opening weeks of the Texas Revolution, a party of Texan volunteers under Dr. James Grant was caught by General José Urrea's Mexican cavalry near the forks of the Agua Dulce on March 2, 1836. Grant, Major Robert C. Morris and roughly a dozen others were killed in a running fight across the coastal brush country southwest of San Patricio. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1936 to name the fallen on the revolution's centennial.

Flint, TX

In July 1839 the army of the young Republic of Texas gathered at this site under commanders including Edward Burleson, Thomas J. Rusk, and Albert Sidney Johnston before marching against Chief Bowles and his Cherokee and allied warriors. The clash on July 16, 1839, ended the Cherokees' presence in East Texas as the Republic forced them from their lands. The battle was a decisive and bitter chapter in the Republic's Indian policy.

Gatesville, TX

This burial ground is nearly all that remains of Ater, a small Coryell County community first known as Sardis that took its name from storekeeper and postmaster Joe Ater. Gravestones dating to 1868 mark the resting places of some of the area's earliest settlers, and among the dead lie veterans of conflicts stretching from the War of 1812 through the Korean War. As the little town faded, a cemetery association took up the work of preserving its heritage, and the state recognized the site as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2002.

Athens, PA · est. 1947

Where the Chemung meets the Susquehanna, this river junction has funneled travelers for as long as people have moved through the region — long enough that Native peoples knew it as Teaoga, and later generations as Tioga Point. Connecticut settlers laid out a village here in 1786, but a decade earlier the same ground had served as a staging area for General Sullivan's 1779 Revolutionary campaign against the Iroquois towns of central New York. Its position made it, for centuries, the natural gateway between the New York interior and Pennsylvania.

Athens, TX

Laid out in 1850 and named — like so many hopeful young American towns — for the ancient seat of learning in Greece, Athens became the seat of Henderson County in the pine-and-prairie country of East Texas. During the Civil War it served as a supply depot and training ground, sending roughly a thousand men to the Confederate armies. In peacetime it leaned into manufacturing, farming, and folk tradition, later billing itself as the 'Black-eyed Peas Capital of the World' and home of the Old Fiddlers' Contest.

Athens, TX

When an informal burial ground closed in 1857, the town of Athens established this cemetery on land donated to a Masonic lodge, beginning with the grave of a prominent planter and, beside it, a child who could not be buried in the Masons' ground. Over the following century the adjoining plots merged and grew through repeated gifts of land, with a trust still funding its care. Its rows hold the pioneers who forged the community alongside veterans of conflicts from the Indian wars through Vietnam.

Jefferson, TX

This late Greek Revival house was probably built in 1860 by T. O. Alley, son of Jefferson co-founder Daniel N. Alley. Later owners included steamboat captain James M. Tucker, who served in the 16th Texas Dismounted Cavalry of the Confederate Army, and W. T. Atkins, an official of the Jefferson Iron Company who held the home the longest, from 1892 to 1923. Its succession of owners mirrors the rise and fall of a busy riverport town.

Bartow County, GA

On May 19, 1864, Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston entrenched on the ridge east of this spot near Cassville, intending to give battle to Sherman's advancing armies. When Sherman threatened his flank and his corps commanders objected to the position, Johnston instead withdrew to the strong defenses at Allatoona Pass. Rather than assault it, Sherman again slipped around, moving toward New Hope Church.

Gordon County, GA

On May 13–15, 1864, the opening major clash of the Atlanta Campaign unfolded near Resaca, where Confederate lines north and west of town held firm against Federal attacks. Unable to break the position by assault, Sherman executed a flanking movement to the west and south that rendered Johnston's line untenable. The Confederates were compelled to fall back deeper into Georgia, setting the campaign's pattern.

Novice, TX

Settlement of this Coleman County area began in the 1850s around Camp Colorado, a U.S. cavalry outpost held by Texas State Troops and Rangers during the Civil War. After the war, families from the South established farms and ranches and the Atoka community grew up with a store, a church-school, and a cotton gin. The 1880 cemetery holds early pioneers including former Texas Ranger and Republic of Texas soldier Rev. Hugh Martin Childress, his son the county's first sheriff, Civil War veterans, and workers killed in a 1910 railroad-bridge explosion.

Jonesboro, GA

When Gen. John Bell Hood tried to protect Atlanta's last open railroad, the fighting at Jonesboro on August 31 and September 1, 1864, decided the city's fate. On August 31, the corps of Hardee and S.D. Lee attacked the entrenched Federal 15th Corps between the town and the Flint River. Lee's three divisions struck the Union line at the river but, lacking support on their left, were driven back.

Atlanta, GA

During the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, Confederate divisions under Gen. George Maney and Gen. Patrick Cleburne struck the front and rear of Giles Smith's Union division on the Flat Shoals Road, forcing it back to Leggett's Hill. Aided by Stevenson's division from the city fortifications, the Confederates hammered the 17th Corps from front, flank, and rear. Despite repeated assaults, they failed to dislodge the entrenched Union defenders.

Attleboro, MA

In 1908, the people of Attleborough raised this monument to the local men who marched off to preserve the Union between 1861 and 1865. Like hundreds of New England mill and factory towns, Attleborough sent a generation of its sons into the Civil War, and a generation later their neighbors gathered to fix that sacrifice in bronze and stone. Such Grand Army of the Republic–era tributes turned public greens across the North into open-air memorials to a war that touched nearly every household.

Cross Plains, TX

Settlers reached this corner of Callahan County even before it organized, and many more arrived after the Texas and Pacific Railroad came through in 1880. The town was named Atwell in 1898 for a U.S. district attorney, and in 1917 the Howells deeded land for a shared burial ground to the community's Baptist, Christian, and Methodist churches. Among the graves are military headstones, including two young men killed in France during World War I — quiet markers of a farm town that peaked with stores, a gin, and a school before fading after World War II.

Auburn, WA

Placed by a local service club in 1978, this memorial honors those who served their country in pursuit of freedom and peace, a civic tribute in the heart of Auburn. Community organizations like the Lions Club have long taken the lead in raising such monuments to honor veterans and the values they defended. It reflects the postwar wave of local remembrance across American towns.

Auburn, MA

This stretch of roadway is set aside by the town of Auburn to honor residents who served in the nation's armed forces. Memorial corridors like this one became a common way for New England communities to keep the memory of local veterans present in everyday life. Rather than marking a single battle, it gathers the service and sacrifice of generations of townspeople under one dedication.

Auburn, MA

In the New England town of Auburn, just south of Worcester, this park gathers the memory of local citizens who took up arms across more than a century of the nation's history. Its span — from the American Revolution through the trenches of World War I — reflects the long tradition of the citizen-soldier in Massachusetts, a state whose towns sent men to nearly every major American conflict. Rather than marking a single battle, the park honors the accumulated service of a community, the kind of quiet civic memorial that anchors countless New England commons.

Celeste, TX

Born to tenant farmers near Celeste in 1924, the sixth of nine children, Audie Murphy left school after the eighth grade and honed his marksmanship hunting for the family table. Rejected by the Marines for his slight build, he enlisted in the Army on his eighteenth birthday and became the most decorated American soldier of World War II, earning the Medal of Honor and two dozen other decorations. He later portrayed himself in the film of his memoir, To Hell and Back, before dying in a 1971 plane crash.

Roanoke County, VA

Atop Brush Mountain in Roanoke County stands a stone monument marking the spot where Audie Murphy, the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, died in a plane crash in May 1971. A poor Texas farm boy who lied about his age to enlist, Murphy earned the Medal of Honor and dozens of other awards before becoming a Hollywood film star and country songwriter. The remote ridgeline memorial draws hikers and veterans who climb to pay their respects far from any battlefield.

Farmersville, TX

On his 18th birthday Audie Murphy enlisted in the U.S. Army, and over more than two years of combat across North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France he became the most decorated American soldier of World War II, earning every Army valor citation, including the Medal of Honor. When he came home to Farmersville on June 15, 1945, thousands packed the town square, and Life magazine put the reunion on its cover.

Grapeland, TX

In continuous use since the 1850s, this cemetery rests on four acres donated by Lucinda Sheridan Murchison, widow of an early landowner, with its earliest documented grave dating to 1854. Among those buried here are pioneers, children—including an unidentified girl who died passing through with a wagon train—victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic, and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars. A cemetery association formed in 1950 to care for the grounds.

Gonzales, TX

Augustus H. Jones took up arms during the pivotal year of 1835, when Texian colonists rose against the Mexican government and set the Texas Revolution in motion. He fought at the Storming of Bexar, the hard street-by-street fight that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and served in the Goliad area, another flashpoint of that struggle for independence. The state honored his service with a marker bearing the star and wreath, a tribute erected nearly a century and a quarter later.

Atlanta, GA

During the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, the hilltop plantation of Augustus F. Hurt became a nerve center of the Union advance. On July 22, as McPherson's Army of the Tennessee fought off a fierce Confederate assault to the south, Sherman himself directed the fighting from command posts on this rise. The Hurt house — mistakenly recorded in the Official Records as the Howard house — was torn down by Federal forces, and it was here that the body of the slain Gen. McPherson was carried from the field.

Atlanta, GA

This hill overlooking the Augustus Hurt plantation was a hinge of the Union lines outside Atlanta in July and August 1864. After Confederate defenders abandoned the outer defense works on its eastern slope, Schofield's 23rd Corps marched in via the Williams Mill Road and entrenched, supporting the right of the Army of the Tennessee during the Battle of Atlanta. As Sherman shifted forces around the city, this position swung from the far right to the far left of the Federal line.

Aurora, TX

Aurora Cemetery holds graves dating to the 1860s and grew after Confederate veteran Finis Dudley Beauchamp donated the site to a Masonic lodge in 1877. A deadly 1891 epidemic — likely a form of meningitis — added hundreds of graves, and one poignant child's epitaph is still widely quoted. The cemetery is also famous for the legend that an airship crashed nearby in 1897 and its pilot was buried here; bypassed by the railroad, the town faded but the burial ground endures with over 800 graves.

Austin, TX

During the Civil War, Austin was no sleepy statehouse town but a working engine of the Confederate effort. Behind the secession convention and the wartime legislative sessions ran a gritty industrial machine: an arsenal on Waller Creek, a gun-cap factory turning out shells by the thousands, and a foundry casting cannon. Citizens paid for it with hardship — fever and diphtheria, food shortages, and hotels that demanded gold or tobacco before they would rent a bed.

Franklin Township, OH

In the decades before the Civil War, the hill country of Clermont County sat on the Ohio River frontier directly across from slaveholding Kentucky, making it a crossroads of the antislavery cause and a corridor for freedom-seekers moving north. This parcel once held the home of Arthur Fee (1791–1879), remembered here as part of a family that earned a reputation for abolitionist conviction in an era when opposing slavery could mean social scorn and real personal risk. A marker on a former house site like this one preserves the memory of ordinary households that turned private principle into public stand.

Monterey County, CA

Dedicated on November 11, 2011—at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, echoing the Armistice—this Avenue of Honor remembers local Monterey County veterans killed in action in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and later conflicts. Spanning generations of service under the motto "Lest we forget," it gathers a community's war dead into a single place of remembrance.

Peoria, IL

When this stone was raised in September 1919, the guns of the Great War had been silent for less than a year, and the small industrial community of Averyville along the Illinois River was still counting its cost. Neighborhoods across America erected monuments like this one — funded by ordinary townspeople — to fix in stone the names and sacrifice of the local men who had shipped overseas. Averyville was later absorbed into Peoria, but its wartime memorial endures.

Gwinnett County, GA

On the evening of December 6, 1953, four F-84 jets of the Georgia Air National Guard's 128th Fighter Bomber Squadron went down near this spot while returning from weekend training and trying to land at Dobbins Air Force Base in bad weather. All the pilots were killed, though no one on the ground was hurt — the family whose home was destroyed happened to be away. Investigators traced the disaster in part to confusion reading the aircraft altimeter, prompting the U.S. Air Force to redesign the instrument.

Grand Prairie, TX

With housing critically short near defense plants in the early 1940s, federal officials seized on Avion Village as an experiment in fast, low-cost quality housing through prefabrication and mutual home ownership. Designed by Roscoe DeWitt and David Williams with modernist architect Richard Neutra, the 300-unit project launched in May 1941 amid a publicized race that saw the first house framed in under an hour and the whole development finished in 100 days. Workers from North American Aviation were the first residents, and in 1948 they bought the community, which remains resident-owned.

Lost Prairie, TX

This marker honors Azariah G. Moore, who served as a soldier and ranger in the Texas War for Independence and rode with Captain Billingsley's Mina Volunteers in 1836. Erected by the State of Texas in 1962, it preserves the memory of one of the many ordinary men who took up arms in the revolution that created the Republic of Texas.

Orange, TX

Alabama native B. H. Norsworthy came to Texas in 1860 and, during the Civil War, organized a Confederate unit known as the Lone Star Rifles. He was wounded at the Battle of Thompson's Station in Tennessee and the Battle of Jonesboro in Georgia, rising to lieutenant colonel. After the war he settled in Orange as a merchant and rice farmer and was elected to three terms as the city's mayor.

Whitfield County, GA

On the antebellum lands of Joel Babb, at the foot of Rocky Face Ridge near Dug Gap, cavalry probed and skirmished on May 8, 1864, as Sherman opened his drive toward Atlanta. Confederate horsemen under Col. W. C. P. Breckinridge patrolled out from Dug Gap and found Dogwood Valley swarming with Federals, then fell back before advancing Union brigades. By mid-afternoon Geary's division had reached this vicinity and deployed to storm the gap.

Frisco, TX

Henry Cook, a War of 1812 veteran, arrived here in 1845 as a member of the Peters Colony, building a log house that became a landmark on the Shawnee Trail cattle route. He opened this family cemetery in 1847 to bury his young son Daniel, and his daughter Rachel Cook Baccus later deeded the ground to his heirs and gave land for the Baccus Christian Church. Named in her honor around 1915, the cemetery remains in use today.

Alma, GA

Bacon County was carved out by the Georgia legislature in 1914 and named for Augustus O. Bacon, a four-term U.S. senator who had died in office earlier that year. A Georgian who served as adjutant of the 9th Georgia Regiment in the Civil War, Bacon rose to national prominence as an authority on Mexican affairs, and his death came at a tense moment in U.S.-Mexico relations. The marker also records the county's first slate of local officers.