Military & Wartime

Hoboken, NJ

This memorial field honors Sergeant William Fesken of Hoboken, killed in action in Vietnam on May 2, 1967, and through him all local men and women who died in that conflict. Presented by Teamsters Local 560, it reflects how working-class communities across the industrial Northeast marked the personal cost of the Vietnam War. The naming of a neighborhood athletic field is a distinctly American form of remembrance — turning a place of everyday life into a living tribute.

Port Lavaca, TX

William Henry Barnes enlisted in the Union Army in early 1864, joining the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War. That September he was wounded storming the Confederate works at the Battle of New Market Heights in Virginia—valor that earned him the Medal of Honor. Promoted to sergeant and posted to the Texas border, he died of consumption in 1866 and was ultimately reinterred in the San Antonio National Cemetery.

Albany, TX

Created in 1858 and organized in 1874, Shackelford County was named for Dr. Jack Shackelford, captain of the 'Red Rovers,' an Alabama company that joined Fannin's command in the Texas Revolution. Shackelford was among the few spared in the Goliad Massacre of 1836. Albany serves as the county seat.

Lampasas, TX

This house was raised during the Civil War era by Shadrick T. Denson, who served in Forney's Brigade of the Confederate Army. He later became sheriff of Lampasas County from 1870 to 1874, a lawman's post in a hard-fought frontier county wracked by deadly feuds, and he died from a wound suffered in the line of duty.

Center, TX

Shady Grove Cemetery began in September 1878 with the burial of Anna Sparks Ramsey, laid to rest here when impassable roads kept her from the family plot at nearby Bobo. Within a year, landowners deeded two acres for a shared burial ground, school, and Methodist church, whose sanctuary later moved beneath the oaks near a spring after fire. Generations of families — the Cammacks, Bakers, Ramseys, and others — have fenced and tended it, and its headstones record the veterans, farmers, teachers, and preachers of the community.

Winnsboro, TX

One of the oldest burial grounds in Wood County, Shady Grove served the pioneer community of the same name, whose leading settler Reuben Elledge arrived around 1845 and helped organize the county as a commissioner and judge. In 1850 he donated land for a school and Methodist church, and an acre was later set aside for this cemetery, where young Bobby Scoggins—drowned in 1855—may be the earliest burial. Rock cairns, obelisks, Woodmen of the World stones, and graves of Civil War veterans mark the site of early settlement.

Grand Prairie, TX

Shady Grove Cemetery began in 1877 when Louis H. Caster deeded an acre for a community graveyard, church, and schoolhouse near Grand Prairie, with his son-in-law Lewis Dowd adding land in 1888. Once the social heart of the pioneer Shady Grove settlement, the site saw its church and school relocated while the cemetery, with its oldest marked grave dated 1878, stayed in use. Among its 450 marked graves rest veterans of the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Korean War, and a cemetery association formed in 1962 still tends the grounds.

Plymouth, PA · est. 2003

As the Revolution began, the Continental Congress ordered a chain of frontier forts to shield settlers in the contested Wyoming Valley, and Shawnee Fort was one of them. It guarded Connecticut-backed Yankee settlers — both from British-allied raiders and from Pennsylvanians who claimed the same lands — and served as the garrison of Capt. Samuel Ransom's company, which fought under Washington. Burned after the bloody Battle of Wyoming in 1778 and rebuilt, it was finally swept away by a flood in 1784.

Center, TX

This corner of East Texas lay within the lawless 'neutral ground' between 1803 and 1819 before Anglo-American settlement began in the 1820s, first organized as the district and then municipality of Tenehaw. Renamed in 1836 to honor Revolutionary War officer Isaac Shelby, the county sent delegates to Texas's early conventions and soldiers to San Jacinto, and its seat moved from Shelbyville to Center in 1866. From 1841 to 1844 it was torn by the Regulator-Moderator Feud, a bloody vigilante conflict finally ended when Republic of Texas troops under Gen. James Smith restored order.

Shelbyville, TX

Shelby County lay in the old "Neutral Ground," a long-disputed no-man's-land where law was thin, and between 1841 and 1844 it erupted into the Regulator-Moderator War—a violent, unorganized feud that cost many lives and much property. The turmoil grew so severe that President Sam Houston ordered General James Smith and Republic of Texas troops to intervene. Remarkably, Smith restored order and ended the uprising without firing a single shot.

Canton, TX

As the Confederacy collapsed in the spring of 1865, Gen. Joseph O. Shelby's First Missouri Cavalry refused to lay down arms. Marching by way of Clarksville, Grand Saline, and Canton, the command camped at Stone Point from late April into May while Shelby attended a Confederate conference at Marshall. Rather than surrender after Lee gave up in Virginia, these die-hards pressed on toward Mexico, keeping order in a devastated postwar Texas as they went.

Eagle Pass, TX

Three months after Lee's surrender, Confederate General Joseph O. Shelby led his un-surrendered Missouri cavalry brigade across Texas toward Mexico, unwilling to lay down arms. On July 4, 1865, at the banks of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, his command gathered for a final ceremony: to drum and bugle, their battle flag was folded, weighted, and sunk into the muddy river. It is remembered as the last flag to fly over an organized Confederate force.

Madison County, NC

In the mountains of western North Carolina, the Civil War was often a brutal neighbor-against-neighbor conflict, and Madison County's Shelton Laurel valley became one of its darkest scenes. In early 1863, thirteen men and boys suspected of Union sympathies were rounded up and killed by Confederate soldiers, an atrocity that scarred the region for generations. The victims' graves lie about eight miles east of this marker.

Santa Clara County, CA

Shenandoah Plaza honors the fourteen officers and men lost when the Navy airship USS Shenandoah broke apart in a violent storm over Ohio on September 3, 1925. The Shenandoah was America's first rigid airship built with domestically produced helium, a proud symbol of the Navy's experiment with lighter-than-air flight. The accompanying aviator's prayer speaks to the perils faced by these early pioneers of the sky.

Wichita Falls, TX

Named in 1941 for U.S. Senator Morris Sheppard days after his death, Sheppard Field opened as an Army Air Forces aviation mechanics school and basic training center just as America entered World War II. Training classes swelled to accommodate thousands of mechanics, glider crews, and pilots, and by October 1945 the base peaked at 46,000 personnel. Reactivated for the Cold War, it became a permanent Air Force base and a leading center for ballistic-missile and international jet-pilot training that continues today.

Houston, TX

This was the homesite of General Sidney Sherman (1805–1873), who commanded the left wing of the Texas army at the Battle of San Jacinto. He later served in the Texas Congress from 1842 to 1843 and built the first railroad in Texas. The original house burned in 1853, and the State of Texas marked the site in 1936 for the independence centennial.

Goldsboro, NC

After cutting through Georgia and the Carolinas, General William T. Sherman's army reached Goldsboro on March 21, 1865, making the rail town its chief objective in North Carolina. Here Sherman's forces rested and resupplied in the closing weeks of the Civil War. Within weeks the Confederacy's last major eastern army would surrender nearby.

Buckhorn, TX

Sherwood Y. Reamos, born in South Carolina in 1812, stood among the Texian soldiers who guarded 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 out his years in Texas until his death in 1887, one of the ordinary men whose service secured the new republic.

Sutherland Springs, TX

The Shiloh community grew up along the Lodi–Sutherland Springs Road in Wilson County, and by 1886 landowners had formalized this burial ground already in use, later adding land for a Methodist church and a school. Its graves include Florence Price, buried in 1884, and James Madison Smith, a Confederate veteran of the 2nd Florida Cavalry, with the last known burial in 1939. Today the cemetery's mix of headstones and unmarked graves is one of the few surviving traces of the settlement.

Ovilla, TX

Burials at Shiloh began with the Peters Colony pioneers who founded Ovilla in 1844, the oldest marked grave being that of Mary C. Patton, who died in 1851. The Berry family and the Rev. Finis E. King deeded land for the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian church and its cemetery, whose stones record the pastors who served the congregation, two nineteenth-century Ovilla postmasters, and veterans from the Civil War through Korea. It is a chronicle of one of North Texas's earliest settlements.

Winchester, TX

First known as Winchester Colored Cemetery, Shiloh has served the town's Black community since 1890, when residents bought the 3.6-acre plot during a local boom. Segregation shaped even the dead: it abuts the white public cemetery, and after its original access road was fenced off following World War II, visitors could reach it only by a dirt drive. Renamed Shiloh in the 1980s for the churches that used it, the cemetery holds ex-slaves, church founders, and decorated veterans — including men honored for valor at Iwo Jima and in Korea.

Hutto, TX

The community of Shiloh took shape in 1848 with stores along Brushy Creek near a much-used crossing, and its cemetery sits on land granted to the heirs of William Gatlin for his service in the Texas Revolution. The first burials, in 1853, were two Kuykendall brothers who died of smallpox — one stricken while nursing the other. William McCutcheon deeded the ground as a cemetery in 1890, and it holds veterans of conflicts from the Texas Revolution through World War II.

Shiner, TX

Emigrants from Bohemia and Moravia settled the Vlastenec area south of Shiner in the mid-1880s, carrying with them the Brethren faith of the old Czech lands. After years worshiping in a schoolhouse, they organized formally and in 1905 consecrated a wooden church, which soon hosted a convention that founded a mutual-aid society. Services and records stayed in Czech into the mid-20th century, and during World War II the congregation hung a service flag with a star for each of sixteen young men who served.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

Edward Shippen was one of colonial Lancaster's leading citizens, a lawyer and judge who chaired the local Committee of Observation as the Revolution approached. His home stood here for three decades in the mid-1700s, an era when Lancaster was among the largest inland towns in the colonies. He is remembered too as grandfather of Peggy Shippen, who married Benedict Arnold and became entangled in the most infamous treason of the war.

Tenaha, TX

Families from Henry County, Alabama, settled this Shelby County land in 1846, and the ground became a cemetery in 1854 when six young cousins died within a single summer, likely of the same illness. A chapel, a post office, and the community of Eagle Mills grew up around it. Veterans of conflicts reaching back to the U.S.-Mexico War lie here, their graves marked by prominent Masonic and Woodmen of the World stones.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1997

Built in 1808 by Thomas Sparks and John Bishop, this was the first shot tower in the United States, where molten lead was dropped from a great height to form perfectly round hunting shot as it cooled. When the works began producing ammunition for the War of 1812, Bishop, a Quaker opposed to war, sold his share. The Sparks family kept the tower in operation until 1903.

Victoria, TX

Sidney Roper Weisiger grew up in a pioneer Victoria County family, steeped in the region's early history. After serving as county sheriff and in the Navy during World War II, he spent his final years preserving local heritage, writing "Vignettes of Old Victoria" and "Sidney's Journal" for The Victoria Advocate from 1971 until his death in 1975. His widow Hilda later gave his research collection to Victoria College.

Stratford, TX

Sidney Sherman was a Cincinnati businessman who threw himself into the Texas Revolution, selling off his interests to recruit and equip 52 Kentucky volunteers who sailed for Texas under a homemade "Liberty or Death" flag. He commanded the Second Regiment at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, opening the attack that broke the Mexican army, and was long credited with the cry "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" He went on to serve the Republic of Texas as a legislator and militia general and helped launch the state's first railroad.

Washington, NC

Union troops seized the port town of Washington in March 1862, and it remained a contested Federal outpost deep in eastern North Carolina. Confederate efforts to retake it failed in 1862 and again in 1863, and the Union army finally withdrew on its own in April 1864. The struggle for the town reflected the wider fight for control of the state's rivers and sounds.

Cumberland Township, PA

This memorial tablet honors the U.S. Signal Corps for its service at Little Round Top on July 2–4, 1863, and across the battlefields of the Civil War. From the heights, signal officers used flags to relay observations of enemy movements, giving Union commanders a crucial view of the field. The Signal Corps was then a young branch, and Gettysburg showcased the value of rapid battlefield communication.

Pompano Beach, FL

During World War II, the ground around Colony Club Road served as the corrals and paddocks for the U.S. Coast Guard's Silver Thatch Mounted Beach Patrol. From here, riders swept the shoreline on horseback, watching for the German U-boats and would-be saboteurs that prowled dangerously close to Florida's Atlantic coast. The mounted patrols were part of a nationwide home-front effort to secure thousands of miles of vulnerable beach.

Silver Valley, TX

The first known grave here belongs to Helen A. Averitt, an early spiritual leader and educator buried in 1881, two decades before the land was formally designated a cemetery. Originally called Robinson's Peak Cemetery, it holds early settlers, veterans of every branch of the U.S. military, and the families of Mexican railroad workers who came to the region in the early 20th century. An association formed in 1958 keeps the still-active grounds.

Victoria, TX

Silvestre De León (1802–1842) was a son of empresario Martín De León, founder of the De León Colony and the city of Victoria. Active in the church and serving as alcalde of Victoria, he was a soldier and Indian fighter who was taken prisoner by the Mexican Army during the Texas War for Independence. He also owned and traded vast herds of horses, mules, and cattle.

Denton, TX

Built in 1915 by civic leader James W. Simmons and his wife Susan—granddaughter of Denton County founder Darius Gregg—this Arts and Crafts Mission-style home reflects the era's taste for open plans, stucco walls, and leaded glass. In 1948 it passed to Colonel F.W. Maxwell, a decorated veteran of both World Wars who was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, and his wife Louise, honored by the American Red Cross for four decades of volunteer service.

East Donegal Township, PA · est. 1951

Simon Cameron was born in 1799 in a log house that once stood on this site, rising from modest beginnings to become one of the most powerful figures in Pennsylvania and national politics. A U.S. Senator and shrewd party organizer, he served briefly as Abraham Lincoln's first Secretary of War at the outbreak of the Civil War before a diplomatic posting to Russia. He died in 1889 at nearby Donegal Springs, having shaped his state's political machine for a generation.

Susquehanna Township, PA · est. 2001

Born near this spot, Simon Girty became one of the American frontier's most divisive figures. Captured by Native forces in 1756 as a boy, he spent years among the Senecas, mastering their language and ways, and later served the American army as an interpreter before deserting in 1778. Thereafter he led British and allied Native war parties against frontier settlements and remained hostile to the United States through the War of 1812, dying in exile in Canada.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2017

Born near Harrisburg, Simon Girty was captured and adopted by the Seneca as a teenager in 1756, and he came to move fluidly between Native and colonial worlds. He worked as an interpreter at Fort Pitt before defecting to the British in 1778, after which he advised and accompanied Native war parties in raids on frontier settlements during the Revolution. Reviled by many American settlers, he remains a deeply contested figure and is buried in Canada.

Muldoon, TX

Simon Peter Ford came to Texas in 1830 as a teenager and, at twenty, fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in Captain William Wood's company—the decisive 1836 clash that secured Texas independence. He lived on into the 1890s, a link between the revolutionary generation and the settled state. Texas erected his marker in 1962, its Star and Wreath honoring a veteran of the founding fight.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

Simon Snyder was born here in 1759 and rose from humble beginnings to serve three terms as governor of Pennsylvania, from 1808 to 1817. A champion of the common citizen in the Jeffersonian mold, he pressed for a strong defense and sound money during the War of 1812. His long tenure made him one of the defining figures of Pennsylvania's early statehood.

Palo Pinto County, TX

Simpson Crawford carried a soldier's life west: a Kentucky native, he fought in the Mexican War at Vera Cruz and Mexico City before marrying and moving to Texas in 1852. By 1854 he had settled in the Keechi Valley of Palo Pinto County, part of the Peters Colony land-grant settlement, where he built a home and grew a ranch of some 3,100 acres. He also rode with the Texas Rangers, patrolling a still-dangerous frontier.

Matagorda, TX

A South Carolinian and a soldier of the War of 1812, Sinclair David Gervais came to Texas with two daughters in 1835, on the eve of the Texas Revolution. Provisional governor Henry Smith named him the first alcalde of the municipality of Mina, later Bastrop, and after moving to Matagorda in 1837 he was appointed the county's second chief justice by President Sam Houston. His career places him among the officeholders who built local government in the earliest days of the Texas Republic.

Surfside, TX

The Canadian-owned sidewheel steamer Acadia set out on her maiden voyage in December 1864, running the Federal blockade to carry food, hardware, and clothing to hard-pressed Texans. In heavy fog on February 6, 1865, she grounded in sticky clay just offshore here; her crew and cargo reached the beach safely. When the fog cleared, Union guns shelled the stranded ship, but Confederate cavalry on shore kept the enemy from boarding and burning her, and the wreck became a coastal landmark.

San Saba, TX

Sion Record Bostick lived the whole sweep of early Texas history. As a teenager he was among the party of young Texans who captured the fleeing General Santa Anna after the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He went on to fight Comanches at Plum Creek, serve in the Mexican War, and enlist with Hood's Brigade during the Civil War before becoming a fixture at veterans' reunions.

Groesbeck, TX

Sion Roberts fought in the Texas War for Independence and stood among the victors at San Jacinto, the April 1836 battle that won Texas its freedom from Mexico. The State of Texas placed this marker at his Limestone County resting place in 1962 to honor his service. He was one of the ordinary settlers-turned-soldiers whose ranks made the young republic possible.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953

Built in 1744 and first used as a Brothers' House, this Bethlehem building soon became home to the Moravian community's unmarried women, who lived and worked here practicing the arts and crafts assigned to the sisterhood. In 1778, during the Revolutionary War, the sisters stitched the banner carried by Casimir Pulaski's cavalry legion—a piece of needlework later immortalized in American memory. The Single Sisters' choir was a distinctive feature of Moravian communal life, giving women a defined economic and spiritual role.

Waxahachie, TX

Erected in 1862 by William Rowen, this Confederate powder mill was part of the South's scramble to manufacture its own munitions after war cut it off from Northern industry. On April 29, 1863, the volatile works blew up, killing Rowen and a man named Joshua G. Phillips. The blast is a stark reminder of the dangers borne by those who supplied the Confederate war effort far from any battlefield.

Anderson, TX

On this spot from 1861 to 1865 stood a Confederate munitions factory, turning out cannon, cannonballs, guns, pistols, swords, sabers, bayonets, and gunpowder for the Southern war effort. Marked by the State of Texas in 1936, it recalls the improvised industrial base the Confederacy raised far from the front lines.

Cambridge, MA

In the opening year of the War for Independence, the town of Cambridge sat at the heart of the Siege of Boston, its colleges, homes, and commons pressed into service as barracks, hospitals, and command posts for the newly gathered American army. Elegant houses whose owners had fled were commandeered as officers' quarters and headquarters, making quiet residential streets the nerve centers of a revolution. A marker like this one fixes the spot where such a headquarters once stood, connecting an ordinary Cambridge address to the improvised military capital of 1775–76.

La Grange, TX

Built around 1828 as a fortified place of defense, this twin blockhouse—known as Moore's Fort—took its name from frontiersman John Henry Moore, a noted Indian fighter who commanded the Texans at the Battle of Gonzales in October 1835. The city of La Grange itself was established on Moore's land in 1831.

Spur, TX

Behind earthen breastworks at this spot, Major Thomas M. Anderson of the Tenth U.S. Infantry maintained a supply camp during the Army's campaigns on the Southern Plains. From here he provisioned the Fourth U.S. Cavalry under General Ranald S. Mackenzie, whose 1874–1875 operations broke the resistance of the region's Native peoples. Those campaigns forced Indigenous nations onto reservations and opened the plains to Anglo settlement.

Bastrop, TX

Chartered in 1852 as Bastrop Academy, this Methodist school was rechartered under the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1853 and reorganized in 1856 as the Bastrop Military Institute. Military-style academies like it were popular across the antebellum South, blending classical study with drill. Its founding reflects the growth of organized education in early statehood Texas.

Fannin, TX

On June 19, 1817, during the long struggle to expel Spain from Texas, a small Republican force of 42 men under Col. Henry Perry and Maj. James H. Gordon — both veterans of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans — clashed here with the Spanish troops of Gov. Antonio Martinez while marching to attack La Bahia. Outnumbered three to one, Perry and Gordon refused an offer of safe surrender, declaring they would die first, and fell with 24 of their men.

Houston, TX

On the afternoon of April 21, 1836, near this spot, Gen. Sam Houston's small Texian army formed up to fall upon the much larger Mexican force of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna. The surprise attack that followed lasted only about eighteen minutes but shattered Santa Anna's army and led to his capture the next day. The victory secured the independence of the Republic of Texas.

Nacogdoches, TX

In November 1835, as Texas fought for independence, Nacogdoches citizens led by Adolphus Sterne helped equip a volunteer company known as the New Orleans Greys. One company marching overland to San Antonio camped for several days at this site near Sterne's home, where townspeople feasted them on bear, raccoon, and other game and toasted their cause. The Greys reached San Antonio before the Siege of Bexar, and most of the volunteers would die in later battles of the revolution.

McKinney, TX

John (Jack) McGarrah and his family came from Tennessee in 1842 and opened a trading post here, becoming among the first settlers of present-day Collin County and defending their family fort against raids. When the county was created in 1846, its seat was laid out here as Buckner, where citizens elected their first officials on the Fourth of July and raised a company for the Mexican War. Found to sit outside the county's legal limits, the seat was moved to nearby McKinney by 1848, and Buckner reverted to farmland.

Wills Point, TX

Neal Martin's long life spanned the making of Texas: born in 1777, he came from Kentucky in 1816, hunted buffalo in Van Zandt County, and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in the war for Texas independence. He later rode as a Texas Ranger, campaigned in Indian conflicts, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. He was buried here at the age of 102, his grave later marked by a great-granddaughter.

Cuero, TX

Chosen in 1846 as DeWitt County's first seat of justice, the town of Cameron honored Captain Ewen Cameron, a prisoner of the ill-fated Mier Expedition who was executed on Santa Anna's order. Though platted on a hundred donated acres, it never grew beyond a log courthouse and clerk's office, and after four elections and four court fights it lost the county seat to Clinton in 1850.

Des Moines, IA

This marker records the site of Camp Burnside, a Civil War rendezvous where Iowa volunteers mustered before joining the Union Army between 1861 and 1865, including men of the 23rd and 39th Infantry regiments. Training camps like this ringed the North, gathering farm boys and townsmen into regiments bound for the front. From this Des Moines ground, Iowa sent its soldiers into the war.

El Paso, TX

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army found its old El Paso post at Magoffinsville unsuitable and in 1868 moved the garrison to the Concordia Ranch, establishing Camp Concordia. Built of adobe barracks and outbuildings, the post was renamed Fort Bliss in 1869 and, despite hard living conditions, guarded the frontier until troops withdrew in 1876—only to return within a year. It was the third of six sites the Army's El Paso post would occupy over the decades.

Throckmorton, TX

Established in January 1856 by Major W. J. Hardee's 2nd U.S. Cavalry, Camp Cooper guarded the Texas frontier against the Comanche and oversaw a nearby Indian reservation. Robert E. Lee commanded here for nineteen months before the Civil War, and the post launched the 1859 Cimarron Expedition. Texas troops seized it in February 1861 as the state left the Union.