Military & Wartime

Austin, TX

This green stretch along Shoal Creek began as part of the early plantation holdings of Elisha Marshall Pease, a Texas governor of the 1850s. In the years after the Civil War it served as a camping ground for federal troops during the military occupation of Texas, and in 1875 Governor Pease and his wife gave the acreage to the city as a public park. Long a favored spot for firemen's outings and community celebrations, it remained largely undeveloped for decades and still keeps its natural beauty.

Crowell, TX

At the Battle of Pease River in 1860, Texas Rangers under Captain L. S. Ross attacked a Comanche encampment and took a woman they recognized as Cynthia Ann Parker, seized as a nine-year-old in the 1836 raid on Fort Parker. By then she had lived a quarter-century among the Comanche as Naduah, wife of Chief Peta Nocona and mother of the future leader Quanah Parker. Returned to her Anglo relatives with her infant daughter, she never adjusted, tried repeatedly to escape, and died in 1864.

McKinney, TX

This ground began as a Republic of Texas land grant in 1845, just four years after Dr. William E. Throckmorton led his family from Tennessee to found the first permanent settlement in the area. By the 1850s it held its first burials, and public ownership followed in 1870; a shady stand of trees gave the place its name. Among those honored is Dr. James Webb Throckmorton—Confederate general, Governor of Texas, and long-serving congressman.

Hamilton, TX

In the 1870s and 1880s, pioneer families settled the country along the Lampasas River near Lookout Mountain, opening a school and, in 1893, beginning burials at what became Pecan Wells Cemetery. Civil War veteran W. M. Kemp and his wife Margaret formally donated the ground in 1904, reportedly on the condition that graves always remain free. As nearby schools consolidated in 1921, the community took the name Pecan Wells, and its cemetery grew to hold more than 200 graves.

Bowie, TX

In the years after the Civil War, Confederate veterans around the young town of Bowie gathered on land bought by Captain John J. Carter to reunite, mourn, and remember. In 1901 the Bowie Pelham Camp of United Confederate Veterans purchased acreage that was to be forever dedicated to veterans past, present, and future, building a pavilion, wells, and a dining shed. As the old soldiers died off, the camp deeded the grounds to the city in 1923, and Pelham Park grew into a community gathering place for celebrations, trading days, and rodeos.

Center Point, TX

The Penateka, or "honey eaters," were the southernmost band of the Comanche, ranging across the Edwards Plateau and following the buffalo on which they depended for food, clothing, and shelter. Renowned horsemen, they made settlement west of this area perilous for decades. Pressure from Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army's Second Cavalry, reservation removals, and the Red River War of 1874–75 forced the Comanche onto reservation lands, where the breakup of holdings in 1901 scattered the people — who have since worked to rebuild their shared culture.

Falmouth, KY

Pendleton County, established in 1798 from parts of Bracken and Campbell counties, honors the Virginia patriot-statesman Edmund Pendleton (1721–1803). A longtime member of the House of Burgesses, he served in the First Continental Congress, presided over Virginia's 1776 constitutional convention, and led the 1788 state convention that ratified the Federal Constitution. He capped his career as chief judge of Virginia's Court of Appeals until his death.

Prairie Lea, TX

Pendleton Rector was one of the citizen-soldiers who won Texas its independence from Mexico. He was present at the 1832 clash at Velasco, the 1835 Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, where Sam Houston's army secured the Republic of Texas in less than twenty minutes of fighting. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1962 to honor his service.

Peninsula Township, MI

Erected by Cherry Center Grange No. 1850, this memorial honors the young men and women of Peninsula Township who served in both World War One and World War Two. On the orchard-covered peninsula reaching into Grand Traverse Bay, the Grange was the heart of rural community life, and its tribute reflects how deeply small farming towns felt the reach of two global wars. Honoring "the boys and girls" alike acknowledges that service took many forms at home and abroad.

Peñitas, TX

Established in 1836, Peñitas Cemetery served the settlers of one of the Rio Grande Valley's historic communities, with its earliest marked grave dating to 1894 and older unmarked burials likely beneath. Among those resting here are two Tejano Union veterans of the Civil War — Private José María Loya and Sergeant Ignacio Zamora — alongside pioneer families and veterans of other wars. Marble tombstones, homemade crosses, and religious statues mark the graves, still tended by residents.

Georgetown, TX

John Parker Pennington was born in Fannin County during the days of the Republic of Texas, came of age amid the dangers of frontier Arizona Territory, served in the Civil War, and brought his family back to Texas in 1867. This family burial ground opened in 1872 with the grave of his sister, and it holds Pennington, his two wives, and their descendants. The cemetery reads as a compact record of a restless nineteenth-century family's travels across a still-forming West.

Monroe Township, PA · est. 1947

On October 16, 1755, a war party struck the scattered settlers along Penns Creek, killing, wounding, or carrying off some two dozen people. Coming just weeks after General Braddock's catastrophic defeat near Fort Duquesne, it was the first such attack to fall on the Pennsylvania frontier as the French and Indian War spilled eastward. The raid shattered the colony's fragile peace and sent shockwaves through the backcountry.

Monroe Township, PA · est. 1919

In October 1755, along the banks of Penn's Creek, frontier families were attacked and roughly two dozen settlers were killed, wounded, or carried off into captivity. The raid came just months after General Edward Braddock's disastrous defeat near the Monongahela, which shattered British prestige and emboldened France's Native allies. It is remembered as the first such outbreak of frontier violence within Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1947

This state-line marker distills Pennsylvania's founding story into a single boast worth unpacking. In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn a vast tract of North American land, which Penn envisioned as a haven for his fellow Quakers and a 'holy experiment' in religious tolerance and representative government. A century later, Philadelphia became the crucible where the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and where delegates drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

Frederick County, MD · est. 1948

This border marker salutes Pennsylvania, chartered to William Penn in 1681 as a Quaker 'holy experiment' founded on religious tolerance and fair dealing. Penn's colony grew into one of the most prosperous and diverse in British America, its capital of Philadelphia becoming the beating heart of the Revolution. There the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 and the Constitution framed in 1787 — the two documents that gave the United States its birth and its enduring form.

South Creek Township, PA · est. 1948

This marker greets travelers at the Pennsylvania line with the colony's founding story: chartered in 1681 to William Penn as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and fair dealing. A century later, Philadelphia became the cradle of the American nation, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were both debated and signed. Few places can claim so central a role in the birth of the republic.

New Garden Township, PA · est. 1948

In 1681 William Penn received a royal charter and founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and fair dealing. Within a century its chief city, Philadelphia, became the cradle of American nationhood, where delegates debated and adopted the Declaration of Independence and later framed the Constitution of the United States. This marker greets travelers entering a state that helped author the nation's founding ideals.

Cumberland Valley Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 William Penn received a royal charter and founded Pennsylvania as a "holy experiment" — a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and fair dealing. Less than a century later, its chief city, Philadelphia, would host the two gatherings that gave the nation its founding words: the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution of the United States in 1787. This commemorative marker distills that arc from colonial founding to national birth.

Morrisville, PA · est. 1949

This marker distills Pennsylvania's outsized place in the American founding into a few lines. William Penn secured his charter in 1681 and built a colony rooted in Quaker ideals of tolerance and self-government. A century later its capital, Philadelphia, hosted the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

Marcus Hook, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

Springfield Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

North East Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker commonwealth built on religious tolerance and self-government, an experiment that drew settlers of many faiths to the Delaware Valley. Within a century that colony became the setting where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were written. This state-line marker greets travelers with that founding heritage.

Foster Township, PA · est. 1949

This keystone marker salutes the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania itself, founded in 1681 when William Penn received his charter and launched a Quaker "holy experiment" grounded in religious tolerance and representative government. A century later, Pennsylvania stood at the center of the nation's birth, hosting in Philadelphia both the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the framing of the United States Constitution in 1787. Few places carry so much of the American founding.

South Pymatuning Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a Quaker "holy experiment," a colony grounded in religious tolerance and self-government that drew settlers of many faiths and nations. That founding spirit ripened in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 and the United States Constitution was framed in 1787. This state commemorative marker salutes the commonwealth as the cradle of the nation's two founding documents.

Dingman Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn a vast American territory to settle a debt, and Penn used it to launch a bold experiment in religious tolerance and self-government rooted in his Quaker faith. That founding vision helped make Philadelphia a natural cradle for the young republic: within a century the colony hosted the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This state-line marker greets travelers with that heritage as they enter Pennsylvania.

Genesee Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn a sweeping American territory, which Penn shaped into a Quaker commonwealth built on religious freedom and representative government. That founding ethos helped make the colony the setting for the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This marker welcomes travelers into Pennsylvania with a reminder of that legacy.

Addison Township, PA · est. 1949

William Penn received his American charter in 1681 and founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker commonwealth grounded in religious tolerance and self-rule. That heritage helped make the colony the birthplace of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Standing at the state's edge, this marker announces that founding story to arriving travelers.

Great Bend Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1681 William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker commonwealth devoted to religious liberty and representative government. Within a century that spirit helped make the colony the setting for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This boundary marker carries that legacy to travelers entering the state.

Hanover Township, PA · est. 1949

This marker distills the whole arc of Pennsylvania's founding into a few proud words. William Penn received his charter in 1681 and built a colony on Quaker ideals of religious tolerance and fair dealing, drawing settlers of many faiths to a "holy experiment" in self-government. A century later Philadelphia became the stage where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the U.S. Constitution was drafted, giving Pennsylvania a double claim as the cradle of the American republic.

Brookville, PA · est. 2019

A generation after the Civil War, the men who had served the Union were aging, and their families often had nowhere to turn. In 1890 Kate Scott and Annie Wittenmyer of the Woman's Relief Corps founded a home in Brookville that broke new ground: it took in not only veterans but also their wives, children, widows, and orphans. It is remembered as the first such home in the nation to care for whole families.

Frederick County, MD

On July 9, 1864, the fields along the Monocacy River in Frederick County became the site of a desperate delaying action as a Union force under General Lew Wallace met Confederate General Jubal Early's army marching north toward Washington. Outnumbered, the defenders — including the Pennsylvania regiments this monument honors — were pushed from the field, but the hours they cost Early proved decisive. That single day's delay let Union reinforcements reach the capital's defenses before the Confederates arrived, earning Monocacy its name as 'the Battle That Saved Washington.'

Erie, PA · est. 2015

The 112th Infantry Regiment traces its lineage to the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, raised in Erie in 1861 as the Civil War began. Reorganized over the decades, it became part of the 28th Division, the oldest continuously serving infantry division in the U.S. Army, and its soldiers fought in the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, Korea, and Iraq. For ninety years those units mustered at the Erie Armory, a building now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012

Built about 1697 where a Lenape trail forded Pennypack Creek, this modest triple-arched stone span is reckoned the oldest roadway bridge in continuous use in the United States. It carried the King's Highway, one of colonial America's great overland routes, and in 1781 bore the tramp of American and French troops marching south with Rochambeau toward the decisive siege of Yorktown. Widened only once, in 1893, its upstream face looks much as it did when William Penn's colony was young.

Perkiomen Township, PA · est. 1946

This Montgomery County house served as George Washington's headquarters in the autumn of 1777, during the fraught campaign around Philadelphia in the Revolutionary War. Generations later it became the beloved home of Samuel W. Pennypacker, who served as governor of Pennsylvania in the early 1900s and died here in 1916. Few homes can claim to have sheltered both a founding general and a modern governor beneath one roof.

West Columbia, TX

Stephen William Perkins and his wife Anna came to Texas in 1840 and settled near Velasco, where they built a home and started a small family graveyard after the death of a child around 1843. Four of their five children, their mother, and a number of enslaved people were interred here. Perkins served the Republic of Texas Congress and later the state legislature and senate, spent twelve years as Brazoria County's chief justice, and captained a Texas volunteer company during the Civil War.

Sherman, TX

Planned in early 1941 as an Army Air Corps basic flight training field, this Grayson County base was still under construction when the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the nation into World War II. Its first class of cadets graduated in February 1942 at ceremonies dedicating the field to Lt. Col. Elmer D. Perrin, a Texas test pilot killed in the line of duty. For three decades pilots trained here flew on to serve in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam before the base closed in 1971.

Cypress, TX

The Perry Cemetery grew up around the graves of the Grant and Perry families in the southern part of Harris County, its first marked burial dating to 1878. When Thomas and Drucilla Perry sold their land in 1886, they insisted the existing graveyard be preserved, and later owners added still more acreage. Family names like Anderson, Franklin, Hargrave, and Williams fill its rows, alongside a "strangers' rest" set aside for those without local kin.

Bloomfield, PA · est. 1982

Perry County was set off from Cumberland County in 1820 and named in honor of Oliver Hazard Perry, the naval hero whose victory on Lake Erie became one of the proudest moments of the War of 1812. This rural county along the Juniata proved a fertile ground for public men, sending sons on to serve as governors of Pennsylvania and of three other states. Its seat, Bloomfield, was incorporated in 1831.

Pinckneyville, IL

Displayed beside a retired military jet, this monument in Pinckneyville honors the fallen soldiers of Perry County, Illinois, who died in the nation's wars. Pairing a static-display aircraft with a memorial is a familiar way rural communities commemorate service and sacrifice. It gathers the county's war dead into a single act of remembrance.

Marysville, PA

This memorial wall honors the sons and daughters of Perry County who served in uniform, and especially those who gave their lives in that service. Rural Pennsylvania counties like Perry sent generations of young people to the nation's wars, and communities gathered to inscribe their names so they would not be forgotten. The wall draws that shared sacrifice into one place of remembrance.

Erie, PA · est. 1946

In the spring of 1813, with the War of 1812 raging on the Great Lakes, American shipwrights raced to build a fleet at the foot of this street in Erie. The vessels launched here — among them the Lawrence, the Niagara, and the Ariel — carried Oliver Hazard Perry to his famous victory at the Battle of Lake Erie that September. Warehouses, a blockhouse, and a lookout once clustered along this shore to guard and supply the yard.

Forestburg, TX

The oldest marked grave in this Montague County burial ground belongs to an infant who died in 1862, and its early plots read like a chronicle of frontier hardship: a well-digger killed in an 1863 Indian raid, and two former Confederate soldiers who had been captured at Lookout Mountain. In 1883 Levi Perryman — himself a Confederate veteran, Indian fighter, and sheriff — bought the site and deeded it to the county. Still in use, the cemetery keeps the memory of the district's pioneers.

Littleton, NC

An "ordinary" was the colonial term for a tavern offering meals and lodging at a fixed rate, and this one was in operation by 1770 as a stagecoach stop on a well-traveled route. Through the Revolutionary era it served travelers along the road and took its name from the family of Thomas Person, a prominent Revolutionary patriot for whom Person County is named. It was later restored by the Littleton Woman's Club.

San Jacinto, TX

This burial ground near the San Jacinto battlefield holds the remains of Lorenzo de Zavala (1789–1836), the statesman who served as the first vice president of the Republic of Texas, along with generations of his family. It also received figures caught up in the 1836 revolution, including the Mexican general Manuel Fernández Castrillón, who fell at San Jacinto, and other men who died that pivotal year. The recorded roll of names spans from the republic's founding into the early twentieth century.

Lynchburg, VA

Built around 1840, Lynchburg's "Pest House" was a quarantine hospital meant to isolate victims of contagious diseases like smallpox—a common practice in 19th-century towns dreading epidemics. During the Civil War, as Lynchburg became a major Confederate hospital center, the building took on grim new duty quarantining sick and dying soldiers from 1861 to 1865. The structure was torn down in 1880, leaving only the memory of the contagion it once held at bay.

Nanticoke, PA · est. 2003

Pete Gray grew up in the coal town of Nanticoke, where a boyhood accident cost him his right arm — yet he taught himself to bat, field, and quickly transfer the ball from glove to bare hand. Named MVP of the Southern Association with the Memphis Chicks in 1944, he reached the majors the next year, playing 77 games in the outfield for the wartime St. Louis Browns. His single big-league season made him one of baseball's most improbable and inspiring figures.

San Marcos, TX

Dr. Peter Cavanaugh Woods, a Kentucky-trained physician, settled near San Marcos in 1854 and won a reputation for a little-known aseptic surgical technique that gave his patients unusually high survival rates. In 1862 he was elected colonel of the 32nd Texas Cavalry, which guarded the Rio Grande and Gulf Coast to protect the cotton trade and later fought in the Louisiana campaigns, where Woods was wounded in the arm. After the war he freed the people he had enslaved, gave them tracts of land, and returned to medicine and farming.

Nescopeck, PA · est. 1970

Born in Nescopeck on July 8, 1812, Peter F. Rothermel rose to become one of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania's most celebrated painters. His monumental canvas of the Battle of Gettysburg, commissioned by the State Legislature, remains among the most ambitious American history paintings of its era. The marker honors the small river town that produced an artist whose brush helped shape how a generation pictured the Civil War's defining battle.

Belton, TX

Peter Hansbrough Bell's life reads like a roll call of the Texas frontier's founding decades. He charged with Sam Houston's army at San Jacinto in 1836, rode with the Texas Rangers and mounted volunteers through the Mexican War, then traded the saddle for the statehouse as Texas's third governor before serving in the U.S. Congress. This granite monument was raised by the state in 1936, the centennial of Texas independence, to honor a man who helped both win and govern the young republic.

Cohasset, MA

Cohasset, like many Massachusetts towns, set aside its street corners as living rolls of honor for residents lost in the nation's wars. This square remembers Peter J. Albiani, Jr., paired with the word "Vietnam" — the long and divisive Southeast Asian conflict that drew American servicemen through the 1960s and into the 1970s. A dedicated square keeps a young man's name woven into the everyday map of his hometown.

San Jacinto, TX

Peter Jefferson Duncan, born in New York in 1799, took part in the capture of San Antonio in 1835 and served in the army during the 1836 campaign for Texas independence. He lived out his life in Harris County, where he died in 1870. His marker commemorates one of the volunteers who fought to establish the Republic of Texas.

Tivoli, TX

Tennessee-born Peter Teal (1812–1854) took up arms in the fight for Texas independence, serving in the Army of the Republic in 1835 and 1836. The State of Texas placed this marker at his grave in 1936 as part of its centennial remembrance of the men who won the Republic.

Victoria, TX

Peter Underhay Pridham was one of the Atlantic-world adventurers swept into the Texas Revolution: born on Guernsey, schooled in London, and drawn through Montreal to a homestead on the San Jacinto River by 1834. He fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 that won Texas its independence, later stood against Comanche raiders at Plum Creek in 1840, and settled into civic life in Victoria as its county tax assessor.

Pampa, TX

Virginia-born Peter W. Gray came to Texas in 1838 and became a leading figure of the Republic and state, serving as district attorney, judge, Texas Supreme Court justice, and legislator. A delegate to the Secession Convention, he later served the Confederacy, and in 1864 became Treasury Agent for the Trans-Mississippi region, in effect running Confederate finances for a war-torn territory dependent on smuggled currency, blockade-runners, and couriers. Gray County was named in his honor, and the state erected this memorial to him in 1963.

Sherman, TX

Peter Wagener Grayson, born in 1788 into a prominent Kentucky family, served in the War of 1812 and practiced law in Louisville before coming to Texas in the early 1830s, where he became a friend and advisor to Stephen F. Austin. He helped secure Austin's release from a Mexican prison, outlined plans for an independent government, and after San Jacinto served as Attorney General, signing the Treaties of Velasco. A gifted but troubled man, he took his own life in 1838 while a candidate for the Texas presidency, and the legislature later named Grayson County in his honor.

Goliad, TX

John Freeman Pettus left Virginia as a young man to join Stephen F. Austin's first colony in the 1820s, the vanguard of Anglo-American settlement in Mexican Texas. When revolution came he fought with Ben Milam at the Siege of Bexar and stood in the ranks at San Jacinto, the battle that won Texas its independence. Late in life he moved his family to Goliad County and set aside this ground as a family burying place, becoming its first occupant in 1878.

Orange, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1815, Peyton Bland enrolled at Orange in 1835 to fight in the Texas Revolution, taking part in the Grass Fight and the siege of San Antonio before later standing guard duty during the San Jacinto campaign. He settled on a farm along Cow Bayou, raised thirteen children, ran a store, and drove cattle to market in New Orleans, cutting a physically imposing figure remembered for the pistols on his hips. When the Civil War came he enlisted again, in the Orange County Coast Guard, and afterward briefly served as a county commissioner.

Lometa, TX

In 1851–52 the U.S. Army reorganized its frontier defenses, building a line of seven forts from the Red River to the Rio Grande to guard remote settlements and the roads west to California. Fort Phantom Hill, established in 1851, was tied to headquarters in Austin by the Phantom Hill Road—the first road in Lampasas County—along which mule and ox trains of up to twenty-four wagons hauled supplies. Used by the military until the fort's 1854 abandonment, the road later served settlers before traffic shifted to a stage station around 1870.

Bay City, TX

Chartered in 1940, this Bay City VFW post first met under a World War I veteran, Col. Wyatt O. Selkirk, and gathered in courthouses, halls, and USO buildings before finding a home in 1948. It took the name of Army Air Forces Capt. Philip Hackley Parker, killed in action in 1945 while piloting his P-51D Mustang over China. Through fire and rebuilding, the post and its ladies auxiliary have aided needy veterans, sponsored student contests, and helped identify the graves of more than 3,000 Matagorda County veterans.