Military & Wartime

Greenville, KY

This marker records the names of Revolutionary War veterans who settled in Muhlenberg County after independence. Drawn from many states, these men traded wartime service for land and new lives on the Kentucky frontier, becoming founders of their communities. Their listed names preserve a roster of the county's earliest citizen-soldiers.

Bethlehem, PA

During the Revolutionary War, the Moravian town of Bethlehem served as a refuge and a major Continental Army hospital, and scores of soldiers who died of their wounds or of camp diseases were buried in its ground. Two centuries later, when those long-forgotten graves were disturbed or rediscovered, the remains were gathered and reinterred with honor, marked by this monument dedicated on May 25, 1996. The stone stands not for a battle but for the quiet toll of the war's sick and wounded far from any front line.

Frankfort, KY

This monument, presented by the Kentucky Society of the Sons of the Revolution, honors the many Revolutionary War veterans who went on to lead the new state of Kentucky. Governors such as Isaac Shelby, James Garrard, Christopher Greenup, Charles Scott, George Madison, and John Adair, along with early U.S. Senators from Kentucky, had all served in Continental or state forces during the fight for independence. Their military ranks are recorded alongside their offices.

Rice, TX

The Rice community grew up in the late 1860s, named for William Marsh Rice, the merchant who donated land for its railroad station and later endowed Rice University. The citizens received land for this cemetery in 1868, and it was moved to its present site in the 1870s. Its graves span Texas history — a veteran of the Texas War for Independence lies here alongside Civil War, Spanish-American War, and two World Wars' veterans, while rows of small stones testify to high infant mortality and the early-20th-century flu epidemic.

Tyler, TX

Richard Bennett Hubbard, a Georgia-born lawyer, settled in Tyler in 1853 and became a leading voice of the Texas Democratic Party. He raised a battalion at the Civil War's outbreak—it became the 22nd Texas Infantry, which fought at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield—then turned to railroad building when Reconstruction hemmed in his law practice. Elected lieutenant governor in 1873, he became governor in 1876 and later served as U.S. minister to Japan.

Henderson, TX

Richard Brown embodied the perilous decade after Texas won its independence, when the young Republic and Mexico still traded raids across a contested border. A Philadelphia doctor's educated son turned frontier soldier, he joined the ill-fated 1842 Mier Expedition, was captured, and famously cheated a firing squad by drawing a white bean in the notorious black-bean lottery—only to endure two years in a Mexican prison. He returned to build a settled life as teacher, surveyor, and farmer, helping found a local church and Masonic lodge.

Robert Lee, TX

Richard Coke (1829-1896) was a Virginia-born Texan who backed secession, served as a Confederate captain in the Trans-Mississippi campaigns, and later sat briefly on the state supreme court before Reconstruction authorities removed him. His 1873 defeat of Governor E. J. Davis, and Davis's grudging departure, is often marked as the political end of Reconstruction in Texas. Coke went on to serve nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate; this memorial was erected by the state in 1963 to Texans who served the Confederacy.

Sabine Pass, TX

On September 8, 1863, Lt. Richard W. Dowling and forty-seven men of the Davis Guards held a small mud fort at Sabine Pass against a Union flotilla and hundreds of federal troops. Firing with cool precision, the tiny Confederate garrison crippled the attacking gunboats and captured hundreds of prisoners without losing a man. The lopsided victory turned Dowling and his largely Irish-immigrant company into enduring Texas legends.

Bastrop, TX

Around 1910, Bastrop merchants Theodore and Mary Hasler hired architect Gus Brieger to build a home for their daughter Annie and her husband — Gus's own brother, Richard. The late Victorian Queen Anne house, home to the Briegers and their five children, became a favorite setting for social gatherings. During World War II it took on a new role, sheltering wives of soldiers stationed at nearby Camp Swift.

Fredericksburg, VA

On the bloody slopes below Marye's Heights, during the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina is remembered for an act of mercy amid carnage. As wounded Union soldiers lay crying out between the lines, Kirkland reportedly gathered canteens and crossed into the open ground to bring them water, exposing himself to fire from both armies. The monument, set near the stone wall and Sunken Road where Federal assaults were repulsed, honors him as the "Angel of Marye's Heights."

Austin, TX

Born in 1906 in the Pleasant Valley community, Richard Overton enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 and served in the segregated 1887th Engineer Aviation Battalion across the Pacific, helping clear the airstrip on Guam that became Andersen Air Force Base. He returned to East Austin, built a home, and worked as a courier, becoming a beloved fixture of his neighborhood. Recognized in his final years as the oldest living American man and the nation's oldest World War II veteran, he was honored at the White House before his death in 2018 at age 112.

Lometa, TX

Richard S. Stokes came of age in the divided South, enlisting as a Confederate private in 1861 and rising to lieutenant before the war's end. Like thousands of Southerners, he headed west afterward, settling in Lampasas County, Texas, in 1868 to ranch, farm, and raise a large family. His most remarkable moment came in 1911, when at age 73 he pulled three young people from the Colorado River at Chadwick's Mill—an act of courage that earned him a Carnegie Hero Medal.

Jefferson, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1833, Richard Waterhouse served in the U.S. war with Mexico before becoming a Texas businessman and, in the Civil War, colonel of the 19th Texas Confederate Infantry. He was commended for gallantry at Milliken's Bend during the Vicksburg Campaign and fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in the Red River Campaign, rising to brigadier general. He died in 1876.

Reagor Springs, TX

John I. Richardson, a county surveyor and Mason who rode with the 12th Texas Confederate Cavalry, married Ann Elizabeth Reagor in 1865, both descendants of the family that gave Reagor Springs its name. The graveyard began with the 1879 burial of a Richardson cousin and was formally deeded for use as a cemetery in 1890. Holding about thirty graves, it became the resting place of the Richardsons and other early Ellis County families before the couple left the area near the turn of the century.

Northampton Township, PA · est. 2007

This was one of thirteen Nike missile sites ringing the Philadelphia area during the Cold War, part of a nationwide air-defense shield built to guard American cities against Soviet bombers. From the mid-1950s, radar here guided Ajax anti-aircraft missiles skyward from launch magazines nearby. As missile technology advanced and arms-control agreements took hold, the system was phased out by the early 1970s.

Sulphur Springs, TX

In 1872, as new farming settlements spread across Northeast Texas, a Baptist congregation and a country school took root at Richland, and the burying ground beside them became the community's enduring anchor. Its graves hold the area's early families and more than a dozen Civil War veterans, with reinterments carrying the record back to the early 1870s. The church and school are long gone, but caretakers have tended the cemetery through societies formed in 1922 and 1962.

Mertens, TX

After bringing their family from Georgia to Texas in 1858, Jesse and Mary Ann Thomas settled along Richland Creek and in 1883 deeded three acres for a community burial ground. The oldest documented grave, from that same year, belongs to Mary E. McCleskey. Five generations of the Thomas family rest here alongside area pioneers and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Richland, TX

Richland rose in the 1870s after the Houston & Texas Central Railroad bypassed older villages, drawing settlers like the Patrick family who relocated a store to the new rail town. The community's first burials began in 1895 on an acre donated from the estate of railroad investor William Marsh Rice, and neighbors long tended the grounds through an annual 'All-Day Working.' The cemetery holds veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II alongside Navarro County's founding families.

Fredericksburg, TX

This modest vernacular home went up in 1909 in the German settlement of Fredericksburg, built by Franz Stein for the Riley family. In 1912 it passed to Charles Enderlin, a German immigrant and Civil War veteran who reshaped the house to fit his large family and kept it in Enderlin hands for more than seventy years. Its side-gabled roof, shed-roof porch, and distinctive pair of front doors reflect the plain, practical building traditions of the Texas Hill Country.

Rio Grande City, TX

During the Civil War, this booming border town on the Rio Grande served as a Confederate port of entry and customhouse — a key terminus of the "cotton road" that funneled Southern cotton to neutral ships in the Gulf and returned with European arms, medicine, and supplies. Blockaded on every ocean coast, the Confederacy depended on this frail international lifeline through Mexico. Federal troops seized the town in 1863, and it changed hands again in 1864 amid raids, smuggling, and cross-border intrigue.

Orange, TX

When the U.S. Navy placed shipbuilding orders in Orange on the eve of World War II, a sleepy Sabine River town of 7,400 swelled past 60,000 as Depression-weary workers chased steady wages at the Levingston, Consolidated Western, and Weaver yards. To house them, the federal government threw up the Riverside Addition in 1942 — thousands of prefabricated 'demountable' duplexes, three schools, and shops, all within walking distance of the yards to conserve rationed fuel and tires. Billed as the largest federal housing project ever undertaken, it was always meant to be temporary, and after the war the units were sold, moved, or torn down, with the last gone by the 1980s.

Asheville, NC

Riverside Cemetery, laid out in the 1880s on a hillside above the French Broad River, became the resting place for some of North Carolina's most celebrated figures. Among them are novelist Thomas Wolfe, whose 'Look Homeward, Angel' immortalized his native Asheville, and short-story master William Sydney Porter, better known as 'O. Henry.' They lie near Zebulon B. Vance, the Civil War-era governor, and two men who served the state in the U.S. Senate, Thomas L. Clingman and Robert R. Reynolds. This marker points the way to a quiet green acre where literature and statecraft share the same ground.

Riverside, CA

This memorial honors the men and women of Riverside County who have served in the United States armed forces across generations. Riverside County, in inland Southern California, sent many of its sons and daughters to every major American conflict of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The monument gathers that collective service into a single place of remembrance.

Dare County, NC

Established in 1863 by Union troops, the Freedmen's Colony on Roanoke Island was the first refugee community for formerly enslaved people in North Carolina. On land nearby extending to the south, thousands of freedpeople built homes, schools, and churches as they made the first fragile steps into freedom. The colony endured until 1867, when the government returned the land to its prewar owners.

Ranger, TX

When World War I drove oil demand sky-high, Texas Pacific Coal Company manager W.K. Gordon gambled on deep drilling, and in October 1917 the McClesky No. 1 blew in as a 1,700-barrel-a-day gusher a mile south of here. Later wells yielded many thousands of barrels daily, and a village of a dozen houses exploded into a boomtown so crowded that beds were shared in shifts and stuffed chairs were rented for sleeping. Amid a two-year sea of mud, easy money drew both fortune-seekers and vice, until lawmen cracked down after five murders in a single day.

Terrell, TX

Robert Adams Terrell wandered from Tennessee through Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana before reaching the Republic of Texas around 1840. As a surveyor he located headright land grants across North Texas—paid in vast tracts of land—served in Republic expeditions, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. The town of Terrell rose on land he had surveyed and took his name.

Wortham, TX

Robert B. Longbotham (1797–1883) was born in Sunderland, England, and crossed the Atlantic as a carpenter's apprentice aboard ship. After marrying in Alabama, he came to Texas in 1832, secured a land grant from Mexico, and fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution and in Indian conflicts of 1839. He settled at this place in 1848, and the town bore his name until its post office was renamed Wortham in 1874.

Houston, TX

Robert Barr fought at San Jacinto, the 1836 battle that won Texas its independence, and went on to serve the young Republic of Texas as postmaster general under both Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar. An Ohio native, he died of yellow fever in Houston in 1839, a reminder of how disease stalked the coastal republic. His burial by the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges and the Milam Guards reflects the tight civic fraternity of frontier Houston.

Salado, TX

Arriving in Bell County around 1853, Georgia-born Robert B. Halley helped turn a frontier settlement into a working community, running a liquor distillery and a flour-and-grist mill on the Lampasas River. He served as county commissioner and a state Democratic convention delegate, then recruited and captained a volunteer cavalry company during the Civil War. Elected county sheriff in 1874, he died in office the following year.

Chico, TX

Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.

Seguin, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1806, Robert D. McAnelly came to Texas in 1835 and joined the army marching on San Antonio. He was among the storming party that entered Bexar on December 5, 1835, one of the opening blows of the Texas Revolution against Mexican rule. He lived out his days in Guadalupe County, dying there in 1888, and the State of Texas raised this marker to him in 1962.

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth native Robert David Law enlisted in the Army in 1967, trained as an airborne infantryman, and joined a Ranger company of the 75th Infantry in Vietnam. On February 22, 1969, while on a small patrol near the Cambodian border, his rangers came under fire and a grenade landed among them—Law threw himself onto it, dying instantly to save his comrades. In 1970 President Nixon presented his family with a posthumous Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor.

Rio Grande City, TX

This house overlooking a Rio Grande steamboat dock served as field quarters for Colonel Robert E. Lee in 1860, when he commanded U.S. Army forces in Texas along the turbulent Mexican border. Its main rooms were lined with military maps of the surrounding country, reflecting the strategic concerns of the era. Within a year Lee would resign to lead Confederate armies, making his Texas posting one of the last chapters of his prewar career.

Dallas, TX

On land once part of a Republic-era grant, a streetcar company opened Oak Lawn Park in 1903, luring weekend riders and prospective buyers out on a nickel fare. The City of Dallas bought the leafy grounds in 1909, and in 1936 the Dallas Southern Memorial Association placed a bronze statue of Robert E. Lee here, unveiled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; a scaled replica of Lee's Arlington home followed in 1938. The park long remained one of the city's most popular retreats.

Leming, TX

Robert E. Neill came to Texas as a small boy in the 1830s and, though a childhood accident crippled his left arm, went on to soldier through three of the era's conflicts. He served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War of 1847, rode with the Texas Rangers on frontier duty, and closed his military life fighting for the Confederacy. Afterward he returned to ranching in Atascosa County, where he raised five children and died in 1878.

Independence, TX

R.E.B. Baylor, a Kentucky native who served in the War of 1812 and the Creek War, rose in law and politics before moving to Texas in 1839. He became a judge of the Republic of Texas Supreme Court and, after a religious conversion, helped found the Texas Baptist Education Society and worked with W.M. Tryon and J.G. Thomas to charter Baylor University in 1845. The university opened at Independence, where Baylor taught law without pay and served as a trustee before his death in 1873.

Lincolnton, NC

Robert F. Hoke of Lincolnton became one of the Confederacy's youngest major generals, promoted after his victory at the Battle of Plymouth in 1864, and led troops through the campaigns of Virginia and North Carolina. His home still stands just east of this marker.

Longview, TX

A largely self-educated native of Vermont, Robert G. LeTourneau built his first plant in 1921 and went on to invent components that became standard in construction equipment worldwide. During World War II his company built roughly seventy percent of the earthmoving machinery used by U.S. forces, and afterward he moved to Longview, opened a plant, and founded the technical institute that became LeTourneau University. He poured much of his fortune into a worldwide Christian missionary foundation and became one of Longview's most influential civic leaders.

Cornish, NH

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw commanded the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first Black regiments raised in the North during the Civil War. On July 18, 1863 (the inscription's July 23 marks his death and burial in the aftermath), Shaw led his men in the doomed but valiant assault on Fort Wagner guarding Charleston Harbor, and fell at the parapet alongside scores of his soldiers. Confederate troops buried the young officer in a common grave with his Black troops, an insult his abolitionist family embraced as an honor. This memorial in Cornish echoes the celebrated Saint-Gaudens relief that immortalized Shaw and the regiment.

Boston, MA

This memorial honors Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the Union's first Black regiments raised in the North during the Civil War. In the summer of 1863 the regiment led a desperate twilight assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold guarding Charleston harbor in South Carolina; Shaw, a young Boston officer who had volunteered to command them, was killed at the parapet alongside scores of his men. Though the attack failed to take the fort, the courage of the 54th under fire became national news and helped open the ranks of the U.S. Army to Black soldiers.

New Summerfield, TX

Born in North Carolina, Robert Graves Stadler had already served in the War of 1812 and fought for Texas independence before buying land here in 1845 near the community of Griffin. By 1853 he had drawn relatives from North Carolina to settle around him, laying the groundwork for the farming community that became Blackjack. He died just as the Civil War began.

Victoria, TX

Robert Clark, a Pennsylvania native and Mexican War veteran who was severely wounded in that conflict, built his fortune in South Texas as a merchant and cattle trader in partnership with Charles Stillman. After an 1875 hurricane battered the port of Indianola, he moved his family inland to Victoria, where in 1877 he raised this frame Greek Revival house with its central portico and boxed columns. He and his wife Pauline are remembered for their civic contributions to the growing town.

Sadieville, KY

Robert H. Brooks left Sadieville in the years before World War II and entered a National Guard tank unit that had been all-white, serving as a private in the 192nd Tank Battalion in the Philippines. On December 8, 1941 — hours after Pearl Harbor — he was killed during the first Japanese bombing of Clark Field. Officially recognized as the first U.S. Armored Forces casualty of the war, he was honored when Fort Knox named its main parade ground Brooks Field just weeks later.

Flatonia, TX

This grave marker, set with the Star and Wreath of the Texas Revolution, honors a man who fought through the pivotal campaigns of Texas independence. Robert Hancock Hunter stood at Gonzales — where the "Come and Take It" defiance sparked the revolt — through the Siege of Bexar, and finally at San Jacinto in April 1836, the eighteen-minute battle that won the Republic of Texas. The State of Texas placed this memorial in 1962.

Bryan, TX

Born in Ireland in 1801, Robert Henry came to America in 1820 and to Robertson's Colony in Texas in 1832. In the 1836 war for independence he served with the 2nd Regiment of Texas Volunteer Infantry and was among the victors at San Jacinto. A staunch Presbyterian who prized his faith and a prominent figure in public life, he held a justice-of-the-peace court in the shade of trees and raised thirteen children whose descendants became noted Texans.

Columbus, TX

A Georgia-born doctor's son, Robert Henry Harrison earned his medical degree in 1846 and served as a Confederate colonel before settling in Columbus in 1869. From his office on the town square he became a founder and president of the State Medical Association, helped create Texas' Board of Health, wrote prolifically on medicine, and in 1880 built a hospital for railway workers.

Spring Creek Township, PA · est. 1997

On the family farm at this spot in 1892 was born Robert H. Jackson, one of the towering American lawyers of the twentieth century. He climbed from country attorney to U.S. Solicitor General, Attorney General, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, where he was known for defending civil liberties. He is best remembered as the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, where the Nazi leadership was held to account after World War II.

Victoria, TX

This late-Victorian house was built in the 1890s for Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898), a Presbyterian theologian, teacher, and author who had served as chief of staff to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in 1862. After teaching in Austin and helping establish a school of theology there, Dabney and his wife settled in Victoria and built this home. In 1922 it passed to Dr. Oscar McMullen, Victoria's first city health officer, and remained in his family for generations.

Crowell, TX

Foard County honors Robert L. Foard (1831–1898), a Maryland-born lawyer who came to Texas in 1853 and served the Confederacy as a major in the 13th Texas Infantry. His regiment guarded the Texas coast against Union raiding parties and briefly campaigned in Louisiana in 1863, as the South fought to keep the Mississippi River open. The State of Texas erected this memorial in 1963 to Texans who served the Confederacy.

Medina County, TX

Robert Lee Bobbitt rose from a North Texas farm to the heights of state government, serving as a World War I infantry officer, a legislator, Speaker of the Texas House, and Attorney General by 1929. As chairman of the Texas Highway Commission from 1937, he helped drive the state toward a connected system of paved roads during a transformative era for travel. His long public career touched nearly every branch of Texas government across four decades.

Robert Lee, TX

Established in 1891, two years after the town of Robert Lee was founded, this West Texas cemetery was sold for a token dollar by a land and cattle company to the local Masonic lodge for use as a burial ground. Already holding a few graves, it became the resting place of the community's founding families. Among them lie 34 Civil War veterans, along with soldiers of later American wars.

Bastrop, TX

Robert Love Reding, born in Tennessee in 1810, joined the Army of Texas and took part in the capture of Goliad on October 9, 1835, one of the opening actions of the Texas Revolution. He was also a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence, an early call for Texas separation from Mexico. He died in 1849, and this marker in Bastrop County honors his part in the fight for Texas independence.

Coleman, TX

Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in 1832 and threw himself into the revolution, commanding volunteers at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. As a delegate he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and then served as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later took up arms as a Texas Ranger on the frontier before his death in 1837.

Tehuacana, TX

Robert M. Love was among the armed men who helped seat the 14th Texas Legislature in 1873 during the tense standoff when outgoing Governor E. J. Davis contested Richard Coke's election. A Confederate veteran of Ross' brigade, he went on to serve as Limestone County deputy sheriff and sheriff, president of the Texas Sheriff's Association, U.S. Marshal, and finally state comptroller from 1901 to 1903. His career threads through some of the sharpest political conflicts of Reconstruction-era Texas.

Round Mountain, TX

Robert Price served in the Texas Revolution, detailed to guard the army's baggage at Harrisburg on April 21, 1836—the very day Sam Houston's forces won independence at nearby San Jacinto. He lived on for another six decades, dying in 1900 at the age of 89. His marker preserves the memory of one of the ordinary men whose service secured the young republic.

Austin, TX

Born in Virginia in 1753, Robert Rankin served as an officer in the Continental Army's Virginia troops from 1776, in the same company as his kinsman John Marshall, the future Chief Justice. He fought at Brandywine, Germantown, and Stony Point and endured the Siege of Charleston. His sons carried the family's service into the War of 1812, one of them killed in the 1813 massacre at Fort Mims in Alabama, before several of them died in Texas.

Brenham, TX

Robert Starke Armistead and his wife Ann came to Texas from Alabama in 1835, and he served in the Republic of Texas army in 1836 and again defending San Antonio during the Vasquez Invasion of 1842. A charter trustee when Baylor University was founded in 1845, he built a large farm near this site, where the family graveyard began at his death in 1866.

Brenham, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1800, Robert Starke Armistead brought his family to Texas in 1835 on the eve of revolution, served in the Republic's army in 1836, and helped defend San Antonio during the 1842 Vasquez raid. A charter trustee of Baylor University in 1845, he built a large farming enterprise in Washington County, where he and his wife are buried nearby.

Stratham, NH

In the summer of 1860, seventeen-year-old Robert Todd Lincoln was boarding at Phillips Exeter Academy, cramming to make up for a failed Harvard entrance exam, while his father Abraham Lincoln campaigned for the presidency back in Illinois. During the town's Fourth of July celebration that year, the young man climbed atop this rock in Stratham and read aloud the Declaration of Independence to the gathered crowd. It was an ordinary holiday ritual made quietly extraordinary by who was reading and by the storm gathering over the country — within a year the nation would be at war and his father in the White House.

Marshall, TX

Robert W. Loughery, born in 1820, became one of East Texas' most influential newspapermen through his Harrison County papers, above all Marshall's Texas Republican. A fierce partisan, he used his columns to champion slavery, secession, and the Confederacy while lambasting his critics. After the war he wrote across the state, served briefly as U.S. Consul in Acapulco, and died in Marshall in 1894.