Military & Wartime

Brownsville, TX

During the Civil War, Brownsville and the twin towns of Bagdad and Matamoros across the Rio Grande became a vital loophole in the Union blockade. Because Mexico was neutral, Confederate cotton hauled overland from as far as Arkansas could be ferried across the river and shipped to Europe, returning as guns, medicine, cloth, and shoes. This border trade was, as the marker says, the South's lifeblood when its own ports were sealed.

Elysian Field, TX

Bailey Anderson (1754–1840) fought as a young soldier through eleven years of the Revolutionary War across Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas, losing his father and two brothers to the conflict. A restless frontiersman, he pushed westward across a lifetime — from Virginia and South Carolina to Kentucky, where he sat in the state legislature, then Indiana, and finally East Texas around 1818, weathering Spanish attempts to expel American settlers. He is buried in the nearby family cemetery on land granted to his son, a soldier of the Texas Revolution.

Muleshoe, TX

Bailey County carries the name of Peter James Bailey, a young Kentucky lawyer who died defending the Alamo in 1836. Carved from the vast Bexar Territory, the county was created on paper in 1876 but not formally organized until 1918, when enough settlers had arrived on the high plains to sustain a government, with Muleshoe as its seat.

Muleshoe vicinity, TX

When Mariah 'Aunt Rye' Long died in 1918, Emil and Anna Wellsandt gave a parcel of their land for a public burying ground—and it filled quickly, many of the first graves belonging to victims of that year's influenza epidemic. A cemetery association formed at once, and a 'Hill-Top' section was later set aside for the county's indigent dead. After decades of neglect and vandalism the association reorganized in 1996 to preserve the resting place of Bailey County's pioneers and veterans.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1971

From 1773 to 1780, Francis Bailey ran a printing office on this Lancaster site, serving as official printer to both the Continental Congress and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In an age when the press was a weapon of revolution, his shop turned out patriot documents—including Thomas Paine's "Crisis No. 4," one of the essays meant to steel American resolve through the darkest stretch of the war. Bailey is also credited with being among the first to call George Washington "Father of His Country" in print.

Village of Bemus Point, NY

Bainbridge Colby (1869–1950) was an American statesman remembered here in the lakeside village of Bemus Point, where he kept a home on Chautauqua Lake. A founder of the Progressive "Bull Moose" Party, he later served as the last Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson from 1920 to 1921, helping guide American diplomacy in the difficult aftermath of World War I. This modest monument honors him with the simple epitaph "Faithful Public Servant."

Clayton County, GA

As the Atlanta Campaign reached its climax on August 30, 1864, Davis's 14th Corps moved from Red Oak toward the Fayetteville Road, splitting into columns for the approach. At this crossroads on the Flat Shoals Road, Baird's division swung northeast and then southward, its march briefly halting the passage of two divisions of the 4th Corps until it could complete the turn. The realignment set the stage for the fighting at Jonesboro that would finally sever Atlanta's supply lines.

Kemp, TX

When the Baker family's infant son William was buried in 1848, this Illinois-emigrant family plot was born. Over the decades it grew into a three-acre community cemetery of more than 800 graves. Among the dead are veterans of the Republic of Texas Army, the Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War.

Atlanta, GA

On July 22, 1864, during the Battle of Atlanta, Baker's Alabama brigade of Clayton's division was drawn northeast to form the far left of the Confederate attack against the Union 15th Corps. Facing Woods's Federal division across a swampy gap in the Clear Creek valley, the assault at first threatened the Union line and the DeGress battery near the Troup Hurt house. But a Federal counterattack retook the guns and forced Baker's Alabamians to withdraw.

Alvarado, TX

This burial ground was established in 1856 beside the Balch Cemetery to serve Alvarado's African American community, its first grave that of an enslaved girl killed by a black bear. Over the decades it received victims of smallpox, diphtheria, and other epidemics, many of them children, and in 1911 undertaker A. J. Senter donated land that gave the renamed Senterwood Cemetery its name. Those laid to rest here include business owners, church leaders, and veterans of the World Wars and Vietnam.

Milesburg, PA · est. 1947

Where Spring and Bald Eagle Creeks meet stood a Delaware Indian village named for the noted Munsee chief Woapalanne, whose name translates to "Bald Eagle." During the Revolutionary era this settlement was a staging point for raids against frontier settlements, part of the brutal borderland warfare that engulfed central Pennsylvania. The chief's name endures across the region today in creeks, mountains, and towns.

Ballinger, TX

Founded as Hutchins City and promoted by the Santa Fe Railway, this West Texas town was renamed for Judge William Pitt Ballinger, a railroad attorney and townsite official. Ballinger was also a noted Texas statesman — a Mexican War veteran who during the Civil War helped organize the defenses of Galveston, served the Confederacy, and was later sent to negotiate peace for Texas. The town he lent his name to grew into a county seat and farm-and-ranch hub known for its rodeo and livestock shows.

Baltimore, MD

Across the United States, towns and city neighborhoods raised memorials like this one to the local men and women who left home for military service in World War II, the vast global conflict that consumed the nation from 1941 to 1945. The plaque's language frames that sacrifice in the war's own terms—a fight to see that freedom and justice would endure against Axis tyranny. Simple community tributes such as this turned an abstract world war into something rooted in a single Baltimore block, honoring neighbors by name or by the streets they came from.

Bandera vicinity, TX

This gap through the mountains has been a celebrated crossing since the earliest days of Spanish settlement, linking the Medina and Guadalupe river country. Generations of frontier fighting and raiding passed through it, and it served as an old Texas Ranger trail as well as a U.S. Army route between frontier posts. Its narrow passage made it a natural chokepoint in the contested Hill Country.

Aledo, TX

Nicknamed the "Broadway of America," the Bankhead Highway was one of the first transcontinental auto routes, organized in 1916 as the nation looked to move troops and goods more reliably after the First World War. Stretching more than 900 miles across Texas from Texarkana to El Paso, it helped launch modern tourism and commercial trucking. Near Aledo, travelers can still spot old dairy farms and rows of sycamores planted in memory of the community's World War I veterans.

Banquete, TX

During the Civil War, the little town of Banquete meant water, supplies, and repairs to the thousands hauling cotton along the Cotton Road toward Mexico. With Confederate ports blockaded, long trains of wagons and ox carts lumbered for weeks across the arid brush to the border towns of Bagdad and Matamoros, trading cotton for the guns, medicine, shoes, and clothing scarce at home. Banquete's water made those grueling hauls possible, giving a town named for an 1832 fiesta a strategic role in the Confederacy's lifeline to the outside world.

Edenton, NC

The Barker House was home to Thomas Barker, North Carolina's colonial agent to England, and his wife Penelope, remembered as the reputed leader of the Edenton 'Tea Party' of 1774. That October, some fifty women signed a public resolution to boycott British tea and cloth, one of the earliest recorded political actions by American women. The house stands three blocks south, overlooking Edenton Bay.

Sutherland Springs, TX

Alabama natives Emory Barker and Leah Humphreys came to the Cibolo Valley as children in the 1850s; Emory rode with Terry's Texas Rangers in the Civil War before the couple married in 1866. Their 1871 home, built of sawn red sandstone, was one of the valley's few rock houses and a popular stagecoach and wagon stop thanks to its spring-fed well. After several owners, the Huebinger family bought it in 1916 and held it into the 21st century.

Beeville, TX

Barnard Elliott Bee, Sr. was a South Carolina lawyer and colonel who cast his lot with the young Republic of Texas after moving west in 1836. He rose quickly through its government, serving as the Republic's first Secretary of the Treasury, then Secretary of War, and finally as its diplomat to Mexico and the United States—where he helped secure formal U.S. recognition of Texas in 1843. Both Bee County and Beeville carry his name, given at his son's urging.

Lower Paxton Township, PA · est. 1947

During the bloody frontier years of the French and Indian War, Joseph Barnett's fortified log house near the head of Beaver Creek became a refuge for settlers fleeing raids between 1756 and 1763. The war struck this family directly: Barnett's young son William was carried off in a 1756 raid and not returned until 1763, freed in the settlement that followed Colonel Henry Bouquet's campaigns. Such private strongholds were the thin line of defense along a violent borderland.

Brookeland, TX

Barney C. Lowe joined the 1835 capture of San Antonio, one of the opening victories of the Texas struggle for independence. Born in Kentucky in 1817, he lived out his years on the East Texas frontier, and in 1936 — the centennial of Texas independence — the state marked his and his wife Philiann's resting place. The stone ties an ordinary settler's grave to the extraordinary events of the revolution.

Glasgow, KY

Formed in 1798 from Green and Warren counties, Barren County took its name from the open 'barrens,' or prairies, that drew early explorers and settlers. During the Civil War the area saw hard use: the first two of Morgan's Raids passed through in 1862, the same year General Braxton Bragg's Confederate army entered Kentucky here.

Glasgow, KY

In 1862 the Confederate government authorized a Medal of Honour, awarded not by generals but by vote of the soldiers themselves after every signal victory—each company choosing its most worthy man. More Confederate soldiers from Barren County received this honor than from any other Kentucky county. The medalists listed here earned it in the bloody fighting at Stone's River and Chickamauga in 1862 and 1863.

Collinsville, TX

John Barron, a Virginia-born Civil War veteran, bought a farm in this Grayson County community in 1870 and about 1875 gave land for a church-school and this cemetery. He and his large family lie among some six dozen interments, the earliest belonging to fellow Confederate veteran William Jenkins. Closed around 1920, the grounds are still tended by descendants who organized a cemetery association in 1971.

Everman, TX

Built in November 1917 as Taliaferro Field No. 2, this was one of three World War I flight-training fields around Fort Worth, first used by Canadian cadets before American units arrived in 1918. Renamed Barron Field for a cadet killed in a flying accident, the 600-acre camp trained hundreds of airmen and sent six air squadrons to France before the Armistice. It closed in 1921, leaving only its munitions building.

Halifax County, NC

Bartholomew F. Moore was one of antebellum North Carolina's most respected lawyers, serving as state attorney general from 1848 to 1851 and compiling the state's Revised Code in 1854. A staunch Unionist, he opposed secession as the sectional crisis deepened. He was born about three-quarters of a mile to the west.

Dallas, TX

Kentucky-born Barton Warren Stone reached Dallas from Tennessee in 1851 and prospered at farming and law. He helped lead the 1852 settlers' rebellion against Peters Colony land agent H. O. Hedgecoxe, and though he first opposed secession, he raised and commanded two Confederate cavalry regiments during the Civil War. After a spell in Missouri he returned to Dallas in 1879 to practice law once more.

Cartersville, GA

Carved out of Cherokee lands in 1832, this northwest Georgia county was first called Cass before the Civil War swept away its old name. In December 1861, with the Confederacy newly formed, Georgia rechristened it for Francis S. Bartow, a Savannah lawyer and politician who had marched off to Virginia at the head of his brigade. Bartow was killed that July at the First Battle of Manassas, one of the earliest prominent Confederate officers to die in the war, and his reported last words—urging his men never to give up—made him a martyr to the Southern cause.

El Paso, TX

When the railroads reached El Paso in 1881, their tracks became a wall through the growing downtown, snarling pedestrians and cars for decades. Between 1948 and 1950, an enormous civil-engineering effort sank the main lines into a trench below street level, excavating over 4,500 carloads of dirt and spanning the cut with eight bridges. Dedicated in 1950, the project was named for the American and Filipino prisoners of war who died after the fall of the Bataan Peninsula — many of them trained at nearby Fort Bliss.

Atlanta, GA

On July 20, 1864, at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the right of Bate's division of Hardee's corps rested here on Clear Creek before joining the Confederate assault. Moving northwest through wooded ground, Bate led off the attack against Newton's Union division posted on the ridge above Collier Road. The stroke was part of Hood's aggressive first battle after taking command of the Army of Tennessee, an attempt to smash the Federals before they could close on Atlanta.

Butler, MO

This tribute honors the men and women of Bates County, Missouri who served the nation in war and peace, active and reserve. It deliberately spans every era and branch rather than commemorating a single conflict, framing service itself as the thing worth remembering. Its "Freedom is not free" theme places it in the tradition of community-built veterans tributes.

Cape Elizabeth, ME

Completed in 1903, Battery Blair was part of the ring of coastal artillery fortifications built to defend Portland Harbor at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the United States modernized its seacoast defenses with heavy disappearing and barbette guns. It was named for Francis P. Blair Jr., a Missouri politician who served as a general in the Mexican and Civil Wars before entering the U.S. Senate. Its two twelve-inch guns stood guard over the approaches to Casco Bay.

Town of Dover, WI

This monument depicts the battlefield cross—a helmet and dog tags, an inverted rifle, and combat boots—the soldier's improvised memorial long used by troops to mark a fallen comrade in the field. Each element carries meaning: the boots for the last march, the rifle for a moment of prayer, the tags for a name never to be forgotten. Rendered in permanent form here, it brings a soldiers' ritual of grief into a public place of remembrance.

Stinnett, TX

On November 25, 1864, Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson led a column of U.S. troops against a large force of Kiowa and Comanche near the ruins of an old trading post known as Adobe Walls. Sheltering behind the crumbling walls, Carson's men fought a hard engagement before withdrawing from the far more numerous warriors. It proved to be the famed frontiersman's last battle.

Agua Dulce, TX

In the winter of 1835–36, as Texas fought for independence from Mexico, a freelance expedition led by Dr. James Grant and Frances W. Johnson set out to seize Matamoros — a scheme Sam Houston distrusted and that bled away recruits before it reached the Nueces. General José de Urrea's cavalry ran the scattered volunteers down, overwhelming Johnson's camp at San Patricio and then surprising Grant's horse-hunting party at Agua Dulce Creek. The clash fell on March 2, 1836 — the very day delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Alamance County, NC

On May 16, 1771, militia loyal to Royal Governor William Tryon met the Regulators — backcountry farmers rebelling against corrupt officials and unfair taxes — and defeated them at this spot. The clash ended the War of the Regulation and scattered the movement. Some have seen this frontier uprising as a prelude to the American Revolution that would follow within the decade.

Bertie County, NC

On May 5, 1864, the Confederate ironclad ram Albemarle, under Capt. James W. Cooke, steamed across Batchelor's Bay and gave battle to a squadron of seven Union warships in the waters of Albemarle Sound. The powerful ram had already broken Union control of the Roanoke River, and this clash was part of the fierce naval struggle for northeastern North Carolina's rivers and sounds. The fighting the marker recalls took place some fifteen miles to the east.

Atlanta, GA

By accident of timing, the Battle of Atlanta ignited near this spot on July 22, 1864. Sweeny's division of Dodge's 16th Corps, held in reserve and marching to support Blair's 17th Corps, halted here at noon to await orders. When Confederate divisions under Walker and Bate swept forward aiming at the rear of Blair's line, they instead collided with Mersy's and Rice's brigades posted here — a chance encounter that touched off one of the campaign's largest battles.

Augusta, KY

By September 1862, the Ohio River town of Augusta had sent some 6,000 Union men to war, leaving barely a hundred Home Guards under Colonel Bradford to defend it. On September 27, Confederate Colonel Basil Duke struck with 350 of John Hunt Morgan's raiders; the guards fought from concealment in houses until the raiders shelled and burned their way through. Though the town fell, Confederate losses in men and ammunition forced Morgan to abandon his planned crossing into Ohio.

Baton Rouge, LA

In September 1779 the fighting of the American Revolution reached the Gulf Coast, where Spanish forces under Governor Bernardo de Gálvez captured the British-held fort at Baton Rouge. As Spain's ally-in-effect against Britain, Gálvez opened a southern front far from the thirteen colonies, and this marker recalls the men who fought there. It stands as a reminder that the Revolution was won on a wider map than the eastern seaboard alone.

Johnston County, NC

Over three days in March 1865, the fields near Bentonville saw the last major Confederate offensive of the Civil War, as General Joseph Johnston tried to stop William T. Sherman's army sweeping north through the Carolinas. It was the largest battle ever fought on North Carolina soil, pitting a thin gray line against Sherman's overwhelming numbers. Within weeks Johnston would surrender, and the war in the East was over.

Baldwin County, AL

On April 9, 1865 — the very day Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox in Virginia — Union forces stormed the Confederate earthworks at Blakely, near Mobile, in one of the last full-scale battles of the Civil War. Thousands of Federal troops, including several regiments of United States Colored Troops, overran the fortifications guarding the eastern approach to Mobile Bay, effectively sealing the fate of the last major Gulf port still in Confederate hands. Word of the war's end had not yet reached the men who fought and died here.

East Bradford Township, PA · est. 1952

On September 11, 1777, the largest battle of the Revolution unfolded across the fields and fords of Brandywine Creek. British troops under Lord Cornwallis, having crossed the creek's upper branches, wheeled southeast near here in the early afternoon to strike the rear of the American right wing commanded by General John Sullivan. Confused and contradictory scouting reports had left Sullivan unable to form a proper line in time.

Kennett Township, PA · est. 1952

Here, in the early morning hours of September 11, 1777, General William Howe divided the British army for a two-pronged assault on Washington's line along the Brandywine. Knyphausen's column pressed east to fix the American center at Chadds Ford, while a wing under Cornwallis marched a long roundabout route—north, then east—to fall upon Washington's exposed right flank from behind. It was a textbook flanking maneuver that echoed Howe's tactics at Long Island the year before.

Kennett Township, PA · est. 1952

On September 11, 1777, some 11,000 Continental soldiers under George Washington took position along Brandywine Creek to block a British thrust toward Philadelphia. They faced roughly 18,000 British and Hessian troops under General William Howe. In a long day of maneuver and hard fighting near Chadds Ford, the outnumbered and outflanked Americans were driven from the field.

Birmingham Township, PA · est. 1952

On September 11, 1777, the fields around Birmingham Meeting House became the crisis point of the Battle of Brandywine, the largest single-day engagement of the Revolutionary War. British and Hessian troops, having flanked the American army by a long march, struck Washington's right wing here late in the day. General John Sullivan threw together a defensive line that fought hard before being pushed back toward Dilworthtown, while reinforcements from Chadds Ford bought time for the army to withdraw.

Chadds Ford Township, PA · est. 1952

On September 11, 1777, the fields around Chadds Ford became the setting for the largest land battle of the American Revolution. George Washington positioned roughly 11,000 Continental troops to block General William Howe's drive toward Philadelphia, but Howe's larger British and Hessian force outflanked the American line. The defeat opened the road to the rebel capital, which fell to the British later that month.

Chadds Ford Township, PA · est. 1952

As darkness fell on September 11, 1777, the Battle of Brandywine wound to its close with the British holding the ground and Washington's defeated army pulling back toward Chester. Amid the confusion of the retreat, the young French volunteer Marquis de Lafayette — wounded in the leg — worked to rally the withdrawing Continentals, while Casimir Pulaski's cavalry screened them from pursuit. Both foreign officers were early proof that the American cause had drawn allies from across Europe.

New Castle County, DE · est. 1952

This marker traces the tactical crux of the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, where General Anthony Wayne held the American center near Chadds Ford, facing west across the creek. While Washington's attention was fixed on Cornwallis's flanking march three miles to the north, General Knyphausen's British and Hessian division forced a crossing of the Brandywine and drove Wayne's men back. The double blow — a flanking column and a frontal assault — unhinged the whole American position.

Wilcox County, GA

On March 9, 1818, near this spot, 34 men of the Telfair County Militia under Major Josiah D. Cawthon clashed with about 60 Creek warriors. The fight left four Indians and five white men dead, including Capt. Benjamin Mitchell Griffin, and several wounded — among them Mark Willcox, later a major general, who was carried to safety under fire by Nat Statham and Wiley Ellison. It was remembered as the last battle between Indians and settlers in this part of Georgia.

Screven County, GA

In the winter of 1779, British and American armies faced each other across the Savannah River, with control of Georgia and possibly the whole war in the balance. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln maneuvered to flank the British, but on March 3 Gen. Augustine Prevost's forces executed a bold night march and surprise assault that shattered Gen. John Ashe's American command. The rout ended in disaster, redeemed only by the desperate last stand of Georgia Continentals and militia under Gen. Samuel Elbert and Col. McIntosh, who fought until nearly all were dead or wounded.

Newnan, GA

In July 1864, as the Atlanta Campaign raged, Union Brig. Gen. E.M. McCook led 3,600 cavalry on a raid to wreck the railroads feeding Atlanta and free the thousands of Federal prisoners held at Andersonville. Three miles south of Newnan, Confederate Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler caught the raiders with a far smaller force and routed them, capturing some 2,000 men, a battery, and freeing 500 Confederate captives.

Taylor, TX

In the winter of 1839, the young Republic of Texas was still contesting its frontier with the Comanche, whose horseback raiders ranged across the Blackland Prairie. After a retaliatory raid on area homesteads killed settlers and carried off captives, a hastily gathered militia pursued the raiders to Brushy Creek, where the fighting cost the lives of Jacob Burleson and several companions. It proved the last major clash between settlers and Native people in Williamson County.

Boston, MA

On June 17, 1775, this shoreline saw British reinforcements come ashore during the Battle of Bunker Hill, one of the first major engagements of the American Revolution. Though the British ultimately took the hill, they suffered staggering losses against the entrenched colonial militia, proving the Americans would stand and fight. This tablet marks the landing point of those reinforcements.

Charlotte, NC

On September 26, 1780, British forces under Lord Cornwallis marched into Charlotte and clashed with local Patriot troops led by William R. Davie. Though the Americans were driven off and the town captured, the stubborn resistance around Charlotte contributed to the region's reputation for defiance — Cornwallis reportedly dubbed it a "hornet's nest" of rebellion during the Revolution's hard-fought southern campaign.

Baker County, GA

In July 1836, amid the violent upheaval of the Creek War in the Deep South, some 300 warriors fortified an island in Chickasawachee Swamp after a deadly raid on nearby settlers. Georgia militia under Col. Thomas Beall pursued them into the swamp, where a fierce fight left casualties on both sides and recovered plunder taken in the raid on Roanoke. The battle scattered the warriors and broke their planned march toward Florida.

San Bernardino County, CA · est. 1986

By the 1860s, settlers pressing into the rich lands of the San Bernardino Mountains collided with the Native people whose gathering grounds these highlands had long been. That struggle came to a head at Chimney Rock in February 1867, where the outnumbered defenders fought hard before being driven into the desert, losing access to their traditional food-gathering areas in the years that followed.

Fannin, TX

After the fall of the Alamo in March 1836, Colonel James Walker Fannin and some 400 men, many of them volunteers from the United States, were ordered to retreat from Goliad toward Victoria. General Urrea's Mexican force surrounded them near Coleto Creek on March 19, and after fierce fighting the outnumbered Texans surrendered, expecting to be treated as prisoners of war. Instead, on Palm Sunday they were marched out and executed at Goliad on Santa Anna's orders—an atrocity that, with the Alamo, gave the victors at San Jacinto their cry, "Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad."

Culloden, GA

On April 19, 1865—days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox—part of Wilson's Federal cavalry raid pressing toward Macon met the local "Worrill Grays" near Culloden. Fewer than 200 strong and badly outnumbered, the Georgians fought a stubborn two-hour battle before yielding, leaving their dead and wounded on the field. The fighting was fierce enough that the two Indiana soldiers who seized the unit's flag received the Medal of Honor.

Atlanta, GA

On July 28, 1864, during the struggle for Atlanta, the divisions of Gen. J.C. Brown of S.D. Lee's Confederate corps launched the opening assaults of the Battle of Ezra Church against the Union right flank. Brantly's Mississippians briefly carried the Federal log barricades before being thrown back by a counterattack, and a renewed effort by Walthall's division met the same fate.