Military & Wartime

Spring, TX

The Strack brothers emigrated from Feudingen, Germany, beginning with Herman and Heinrich in 1848 and followed by their kin over the next decade. In 1863 Herman bought land here that already held a burial ground, and the plot came to be known as Strack Cemetery, with veterans' graves reaching back to the Civil War. Today the family's descendants care for the site through an association.

Berwick, PA · est. 2015

During World War II, more than nine thousand workers at Berwick's American Car & Foundry plant built over 15,000 Stuart tanks for American and Allied forces. Light, fast, and nimble, the Stuart was the first U.S. tank produced on a moving assembly line and saw combat on battlefronts around the globe. A.C.F. grew into the nation's largest maker of armor plate, with its own ballistics testing range.

Sturbridge, MA

Six years after Appomattox, the town of Sturbridge joined a wave of New England communities in raising a permanent monument to its Civil War soldiers. Memorials like this one, dedicated in 1871, went up on greens and in cemeteries across the North as the generation that had lived through the war sought to honor its dead and fix their sacrifice in the town's collective memory. That the monument was formally rededicated in 2002 shows how a small community kept faith with that memory across three centuries, tending and renewing the marker long after the last veteran had passed.

Gibsonburg, OH

This memorial in Gibsonburg honors the men and women of the U.S. Navy's "Silent Service" — the submariners whose work unfolds unseen beneath the waves. It takes its name from the USS Toledo (SSN-769), a nuclear-powered Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine named for the nearby Ohio city and commissioned in the mid-1990s. Boats like the Toledo carried on a demanding tradition of undersea patrol that stretches back through both World Wars and the long decades of the Cold War, when American submarines became some of the Navy's most vital and secretive assets.

Midway, KY

After John Hunt Morgan's death in September 1864, Jerome Clarke—notorious under the name 'Sue Mundy'—formed his own guerrilla band and raided Midway that November, killing a resident named Adam Harper. Union forces executed four Confederate prisoners in reprisal. In February 1865, Clarke returned alongside the infamous William Quantrill, burning the depot and stealing fifteen horses, a reminder that Kentucky's guerrilla war raged on to the conflict's very end.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1969

This Federal-era house, built around 1807, later served as the home of Dr. Jacob Suesserott, a well-regarded physician and surgeon. Its place in history was sealed on July 30, 1864, when Confederate cavalry under orders to extract a ransom set fire to Chambersburg; the flames that consumed much of the town were halted at this point. The burning of Chambersburg remains the only major Northern town destroyed by Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Beckville, TX

Settlement here reaches back to Elijah Wyatt, who came to Texas in 1838 and is thought to lie in this ground, though the earliest marked grave belongs to a man who died in 1861. Set aside alongside a meeting house in the 1850s, the plot grew into a community cemetery holding scores of marked and unmarked graves. Its rows include veterans of both the Civil War and World War II, spanning a century of local life.

New York, NY

This preserved window comes from the Sugar House, a five-story sugar-refining warehouse built in 1763 near Duane and Rose Streets in lower Manhattan. During the Revolutionary War, British forces turned New York's sugar houses into overcrowded prisons where captured American patriots suffered terribly. Mounted as a relic, the window survives as a tangible fragment of that grim episode.

Sugar Land, TX

Founded in 1853 and named for the sugar mill and plantation that B. F. Terry and W. J. Kyle bought with fortunes made in the California Gold Rush, Sugar Land grew into the home of Texas's only cane sugar refinery. Its founders raised Terry's Texas Rangers, one of the Confederacy's famed cavalry units, at the start of the Civil War. In later years the surrounding land became known for its prison farms.

Sugarloaf Township, PA · est. 1947

In the autumn of 1780 a party of Native warriors and Loyalist Tories, turned back from an attempt on Fort Augusta, fell upon a detachment of Northumberland County militia near here. The surprise attack on September 11 left the small company overwhelmed, one of many such bloody clashes that made the Pennsylvania frontier a war zone long after the fighting had shifted elsewhere.

Conyngham, PA · est. 1933

In September 1780, as the Revolutionary War flared along the Pennsylvania frontier, a detachment of Northampton County militia paused to rest at a spring near Sugarloaf Mountain. They were ambushed by a party of Native warriors and Loyalists led by the Seneca chief Roland Montour, and more than a dozen men were killed. The marker preserves the names of the fallen, a roster of ordinary frontier soldiers caught in the war's brutal borderland fighting.

Forks Township, PA · est. 1947

In the summer of 1779, Easton became the staging ground for one of the Revolution's largest offensives against the Native and Loyalist alliance harrying the New York and Pennsylvania frontier. Under General John Sullivan, the army spent more than a month gathering men and supplies before beginning its march on June 18, 1779. The campaign that followed would drive deep into Iroquois country to the north.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1929

In the summer of 1779 the Wyoming Valley became the assembly point for General John Sullivan's expedition against the Iroquois. From late June through the end of July, the army gathered, drilled, and stockpiled supplies at its mobilization camp here before marching north up the Susquehanna. This staging at Fort Wyoming set in motion one of the Revolution's largest offensive campaigns.

Wind Gap, PA · est. 1929

On June 18, 1779, Sullivan's troops set out on the first day of their long march toward Iroquois country, covering twelve miles before halting at Heller's Tavern. Wayside taverns like this were the natural waypoints of the era, offering the only fixed shelter along frontier roads. The plaque marks where the campaign's opening day came to a close.

Sheshequin Township, PA · est. 1929

In August 1779 General John Sullivan marched his Continental army up the Susquehanna Valley on a campaign to break the power of the Iroquois Confederacy, which had raided frontier settlements as Britain's allies. On the night of August 10 the army made its seventh and final encampment before reaching Teaoga on these river lowlands at Sheshecunnunck. The march was one leg of a systematic expedition that would destroy dozens of Iroquois towns and cornfields.

Forks Township, PA · est. 1929

This plaque marks the road over which Sullivan's army began its advance on June 18, 1779. Cutting and following such roads was itself a feat, as thousands of men, horses, and wagons of supplies moved through country with few improved routes. The path set the direction of a campaign that would carry deep into the lands of the Six Nations.

Athens, PA · est. 1929

Teaoga was a key Iroquois village at the forks of the rivers, and in August 1779 it became the staging ground for General John Sullivan's army during its campaign against the Six Nations. From roughly August 11 to 26 the Continental force encamped near here before pressing deeper into Iroquois country. This marker fixes the village's site relative to that fateful summer of the Sullivan Expedition.

Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1929

In the summer of 1779, at the height of the American Revolution, General John Sullivan led a punishing campaign up the Susquehanna Valley against the Iroquois nations allied with the British. This plaque marks a waypoint on that march from Wyoming to Teaoga, where on August 3 the army camped on the lowlands between here and the river. The relentless expedition burned Iroquois towns and crops, breaking the military power of the Six Nations in the region.

Meshoppen Township, PA · est. 1929

As General Sullivan's army pushed north against the Iroquois in August 1779, it made its fourth encampment on the fertile bottomland here, remembered locally as Black Walnut Flats. The soldiers rested on the nights of August 4 and 5 before continuing the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The campaign systematically destroyed the towns and food stores of the Six Nations across this valley.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1929

Wyalusing had been the site of Friedenshütten, a Moravian mission town where Christian Delaware Indians lived before being pushed westward in the early 1770s. A few years later, in August 1779, General Sullivan's army made its fifth encampment here on the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The marker stands near the monument to that vanished Moravian Indian community.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1929

In the spring of 1779, General George Washington ordered a punishing campaign into the heart of Iroquois country to end frontier raids allied with the British. Here at Fort Penn, the fortified home of Col. Jacob Stroud served as a rendezvous where companies gathered before joining the main army. From this staging ground in the Pocono foothills, men and supplies funneled westward toward the march that would follow.

Pocono Township, PA · est. 1929

As Sullivan's army pushed into the wilderness in June 1779, it left the settled country behind. This spot, remembered as "the last house on the frontier," marked the end of the second day's march — a sixteen-mile push into thinning settlement. Beyond here lay forest and the long road to Iroquois territory.

Pocono Township, PA · est. 1929

On June 20, 1779, the third day's march ended at a spot the soldiers dubbed Chowder Camp, where General Sullivan is remembered as dining on trout chowder pulled from the mountain streams. The short five-mile advance hints at the rough terrain slowing an army hauling artillery and supplies into the Poconos. Small human details like a general's stream-caught supper survive alongside the grand campaign.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947

In the summer of 1779, at the height of the Revolution, General John Sullivan led a Continental army up the Susquehanna Valley, camping near here on August 5-7 as it pushed north. The expedition, ordered by George Washington, aimed to break the power of the Iroquois nations allied with the British and to end the devastating raids along the frontier. Over the campaign Sullivan's troops burned dozens of Haudenosaunee towns and their harvests.

Standing Stone Township, PA · est. 1947

As General John Sullivan's Continental army marched north against the Six Nations in August 1779, it made its sixth camp on the river lowlands near here on the nights of August 8-9. The stopping places along the Susquehanna traced the slow, deliberate advance of a major Revolutionary War expedition ordered by Washington. From Wyoming to Fort Sullivan, each riverside campsite marked another day's push into Iroquois country.

Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1947

Brinker's Mill served as the storehouse and forward supply post for the Sullivan Expedition, the 1779 Continental Army campaign that marched out of Easton on June 18 to strike the Iroquois nations allied with Britain. Ordered by George Washington in response to frontier raids, the expedition aimed to break Iroquois power in the region. This mill helped provision an army bound for one of the Revolution's harshest campaigns.

Pocono Township, PA · est. 1947

On June 19, 1779, the army of the Sullivan Expedition camped near Learned's Tavern at the close of its second day out of Easton, having covered sixteen miles from Heller's Tavern on the long road toward Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre. The tavern marked a waypoint on the campaign George Washington launched against the British-allied Iroquois. These recorded halts trace the grueling overland route of one of the Revolution's most consequential frontier operations.

Wind Gap, PA · est. 1947

On June 18, 1779, the first day's march of General Sullivan's expedition ended at Heller's Tavern near Wind Gap, where his weary army camped for the night. Stirring at four the next morning, the troops pressed on to cross the Blue Mountains through the natural pass at Wind Gap. Their route traced old paths through the ridges as they moved north toward the Iroquois heartland.

Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1947

In the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan led thousands of Continental soldiers up the Susquehanna Valley in a scorched-earth campaign ordered by George Washington against the Iroquois Confederacy, allies of the British. On August 3, that army made its third camp above Fort Wyoming here by the river as it pushed north toward Tioga. The march devastated Iroquois towns and croplands, breaking the power of the Six Nations on the New York–Pennsylvania frontier.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

During the Revolution's Sullivan Expedition of 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army moved north up the Susquehanna from Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre toward Tioga. On August 1–2 the troops encamped on the lowland across the river here — the second stop on a grueling march through frontier country. The campaign was Washington's answer to raids on the frontier, aimed at the Iroquois Confederacy allied with the British.

Meshoppen Township, PA · est. 1947

On August 4, 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army made its fourth encampment on the lowland here as it marched from Fort Wyoming toward Tioga Point. The column was part of a coordinated Revolutionary War campaign against the Iroquois Confederacy, whose warriors had raided settlements along the frontier. The soldiers' northward advance up the Susquehanna would culminate in the destruction of dozens of Native towns.

Ulster Township, PA · est. 1949

In August 1779, General John Sullivan led a Continental Army expedition up the Susquehanna Valley, camping on the Sheshequin Flats below this point on the ninth and tenth before pressing on to Tioga Point. This was the seventh and final overnight stop of a hard march into Iroquois country. Sullivan's campaign, ordered by George Washington, aimed to break the power of the Six Nations who had allied with the British on the frontier.

Village of Horseheads, NY

In the autumn of 1779, General John Sullivan led a punishing military expedition through the lands of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, part of a scorched-earth campaign ordered by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. As the weary army withdrew through what is now the Chemung Valley, Sullivan's exhausted pack horses—broken down after weeks of hard marching—were put down near this spot. The bleached skulls left behind so struck later travelers and settlers that the place came to be called Horseheads, a name the village still carries today.

Morrisville, PA · est. 1949

Built in 1773 by Thomas Barkley, this fine house near Morrisville briefly sheltered George Washington and his army from December 8 to 14, 1776, in the desperate weeks before the crossing of the Delaware. Its later owners included Robert Morris, financier of the Revolution, and George Clymer, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The house was restored in 1931.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953

Begun in 1758, the Sun Inn quickly earned a reputation as one of the finest hostelries in the colonies, and during the Revolutionary War it welcomed a remarkable roster of patriots and military leaders passing through Bethlehem. Travelers found comfortable lodging and good food at a time when such quality was rare on American roads. The inn's guest list reads like a directory of the Revolutionary generation, making it a crossroads of the era's political and military life.

Chester, PA · est. 2007

Founded by the Pew family in 1916 along the Delaware River, Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company grew during World War II into the largest single shipyard on earth, employing more than 35,000 workers. Sun pioneered the all-welded ship and the T-2 oil tanker that became the standard across American yards, building over 250 wartime tankers—roughly 40 percent of the world's total—and repairing more than 1,500 damaged vessels. The yard operated on this Chester waterfront until 1982.

Sunbury, PA · est. 1947

Laid out in 1772 as the seat of newly formed Northumberland County, Sunbury rose on the site of Shamokin, a major Native town at the forks of the Susquehanna. Surveyors John Lukens and William Maclay platted the town where Fort Augusta had stood since 1756, guarding the frontier, and the community grew into a hub of travel, trade, and industry before its incorporation as a borough in 1797.

Shamokin Dam, PA · est. 1948

Sunbury was laid out in 1772 as the seat of newly formed Northumberland County, planted on the site of Shamokin, an important Native American town at the forks of the Susquehanna. Sixteen years earlier, during the French and Indian War, colonial authorities had built Fort Augusta here to guard the frontier. The spot's command of the river made it a lasting hub of travel, trade, and industry.

Cumby, TX

A.J. Weathers deeded this Hopkins County land for a cemetery and school in 1881, and the first known burial — Mary W. Brasher — followed the next year. Several generations of founding families rest here alongside veterans of American conflicts reaching back to the Civil War, while the nearby Sunny Point School served the community until it consolidated into the Cumby district. A cemetery association still gathers each May in a tradition decades old.

Washington, DC

In the winter of 1864–65, as the Civil War ground toward its end, this three-story brick house on H Street was run as a boarding house by Mary Surratt. Here John Wilkes Booth and a small circle of Confederate sympathizers gathered to scheme first the kidnapping of President Lincoln—hoping to ransom him for Confederate prisoners—before the plot hardened into the April 1865 assassination. The house's connection to the conspiracy made Surratt one of four people hanged that July, the first woman executed by the United States government. The building still stands, its ground floor long since given over to shops.

San Antonio, TX

After Texas seceded in early 1861, the state moved to expel some 2,600 federal troops. Frontier fighter Ben McCulloch led 400 volunteers into San Antonio, and on the night of February 15 slipped men into Alamo Plaza to train guns on the federal garrison while hundreds more entered the city. Under mounting pressure, aging Gen. David E. Twiggs surrendered on February 18, handing over more than $3 million in ordnance, wagons, supplies, and a chain of frontier forts—an act that brought him dismissal for treachery, even as he had repeatedly and vainly begged Washington for orders.

Columbus, NM

This marker honors Susan Parks, the telephone operator on duty in Columbus, New Mexico, during Pancho Villa's raid on March 9, 1916, when several hundred of Villa's men crossed the border and attacked the town. Operators like Parks were vital in sounding the alarm and summoning help during the chaotic pre-dawn assault, which left civilians and soldiers dead and prompted the U.S. Punitive Expedition into Mexico. Her quiet courage placed an ordinary civilian at the center of a defining border-era crisis.

Lockhart, TX

On this Lockhart lot once stood the home of Susanna Dickinson, one of the few survivors of the Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. Sent out from the fallen mission with her infant daughter Angelina, she carried the news of the garrison's destruction to Gen. Sam Houston — a warning that helped steel the Texian army for San Jacinto. Widowed at the Alamo, she later settled here, married cabinetmaker Joseph Hannig, and eventually moved to Austin.

Austin, TX

Susanna Dickinson and her family settled in Gonzales as members of DeWitt's Colony around 1835. She was inside the Alamo with her infant daughter Angelina when it fell in March 1836, witnessing the deaths of her husband Almaron and the other defenders. Spared by Santa Anna, she carried word of the disaster to Sam Houston, then lived out her years in Austin until her death in 1883.

Jonesville, TX

Founded by civil engineer and planter Peter Swanson, Swanson's Landing was a bustling Caddo Lake port from the 1830s to the 1860s, shipping cotton and pelts toward New Orleans and receiving settlers' goods in return. In the 1850s it anchored the first railroad in East Texas, a line built to Marshall and rerouted during the Civil War to move Confederate troops toward Louisiana. The port's story darkened in 1869 when the steamer Mittie Stephens burned nearby with the loss of 69 lives.

Union Township, PA · est. 1947

Swatara Gap is a natural break in the Blue Mountain, and in the 1750s it became a dangerous doorway. During the French and Indian War, war parties allied with the French slipped through the gap to strike the scattered farms of the Pennsylvania frontier, and colonial authorities answered by raising Fort Swatara nearby to guard the pass. The steep, wooded notch that had long served as a travel route became a frontline in a brutal borderland conflict.

Sweeny, TX

This burial ground began in 1833 when John Sweeny, an early landowner and member of Stephen F. Austin's colony, chose the site to bury his young daughter Freedonia. The neighborhood has used it ever since, and it holds the graves of veterans of every American war since the Texas Revolution. It stands as a quiet record of the families who settled this stretch of Brazoria County.

Lake Dallas, TX

The Swisher Cemetery began on land granted to H. H. Swisher for his service in the Texas War for Independence, marking some of the earliest Anglo settlement in this part of north central Texas. His son, Capt. A. P. Swisher, formally donated ground for the burials of the community then called the French Settlement, later renamed Garza and finally Lake Dallas when the dam on the Trinity's Elm Fork created the lake in 1926. Its 1,100-plus graves include veterans from the Civil War through the Persian Gulf, a century and a half of local history.

Tulia, TX

Swisher County honors James Gibson Swisher (1794-1864), who won distinction at the storming of Bexar in 1835 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. The county was created in 1876 and organized in 1890, with Tulia as its seat, from lands once part of the vast Young and Bexar territories. Its name carries a founding figure of the Texas Revolution into the settlement of the Panhandle.

Newton County, TX

An 1845 land grant first drew pioneers to this corner of Newton County, and some of the graves marked only by a rough rock or post likely date to those earliest years of settlement. The oldest legible stone belongs to a thirteen-year-old boy who died in 1885. Among the settlers who shaped the community rest veterans of the Civil War and every major American conflict from World War I through Vietnam, still tended today by an association of descendants.

Emporium, PA · est. 2021

Founded in 1907 in the small mountain town of Emporium, Sylvania Electric grew into a national name in vacuum tubes and electronics. During World War II its workers—largely women—produced vacuum tubes for the proximity fuze, a device that let artillery shells detonate near their targets and dramatically improved accuracy. The reliance on a female workforce led Collier's to dub Emporium "Girls Town USA," and the Poplar Street plant ran until 1990.

Ballinger, TX

Sylvester Adams came to Texas as a young man and threw himself behind the Confederate cause, serving at Galveston during the Civil War. Afterward he helped organize Runnels County and became its first county judge, serving in the 1880s. When drought struck in 1886–1887 he worked to arrange relief, even as many proud residents refused what they saw as charity.

Tivoli, TX

Thomas O'Connor came to Texas as an orphaned boy from Wexford, Ireland, with his uncle the empresario James Power. He signed the Goliad Declaration of Independence at seventeen and fought at San Jacinto, later remembered as the youngest Texian in that decisive battle. On this land grant he built a log cabin in 1842; the present ranch house followed in 1874, its bricks fired from clay dug along the San Antonio River, and the T-C ranching operation has passed through five generations of his family.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 1986

Born in Harrisburg in 1834, T. Morris Chester lived a life that ranged across three continents. He taught in Liberia, recruited Black soldiers for the Union, and reported from the front as one of the only African American war correspondents of the Civil War. Afterward he raised aid for the freedpeople in Europe, was admitted to the English bar, and held prominent offices in Reconstruction-era Louisiana before returning home to die in 1892.

Tacoma, WA

When the citizens of Tacoma built their great domed arena in the 1980s, they set aside an adjoining plaza as a living memorial to the region's veterans. The dedication honors those who served in the armed forces across the generations and the successors who carry on that tradition. It joins the many community war memorials that anchor civic spaces across America.

Burkeville, TX

Thomas and Charlotte Tanner arrived in Mexican Texas in the late 1820s and raised twelve children on land they bought along McGraw Creek. When Thomas—a veteran of the Republic of Texas army—was buried on the hill overlooking his property in 1862, he began a cemetery that soon served the wider community. Generations of Tanners followed, including sons who wore Confederate gray and later kin who served in both world wars, their more than fifty family names now scattered across the headstones.

Kingsville, TX

In March 1846, as Zachary Taylor's army marched from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, its four regiments camped in succession at this spot on Santa Gertrudis Creek. Within weeks the Mexican-American War erupted at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma near present Brownsville. The war fixed the Texas boundary at the Rio Grande and, through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, brought vast new territory into the United States — and the officers who camped here, among them future presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant, went on to command great armies in the Civil War.

Abilene, TX

Created in 1858, Taylor County honors brothers Edward, James, and George Taylor—Tennesseans aged 18, 20, and 22 who came to Texas in 1833 and died together at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. Organized in 1878 with its first seat at Buffalo Gap, the county saw the Fort Concho–Fort Belknap stagecoach and Kansas-bound longhorn herds pass through before the county seat moved to Abilene in 1883. The marker also surveys how Texas named its 254 counties, most for the heroes of independence, statehood, and the Confederacy.

Cuero, TX

Also called Taylor-Bennett Cemetery, this DeWitt County burial ground began with Josiah Taylor, whose grave from 1830 is its oldest. Taylor first entered Texas in 1812 with the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition, fighting at La Bahía and in the battles of Rosillo and Alazán Creek, then settled with his family as part of the DeWitt Colony in 1829. His descendants included Texas Rangers, veterans of the Texas Revolution, and participants in the Runaway Scrape, and among those buried here are men killed in the notorious Sutton-Taylor Feud.

Clayton, MO

This memorial honors the former students of the Taylor School who served in World War II between 1941 and 1945, framing their service as a fight 'for the cause of freedom.' Schools across America sent their young men and women into the war, and communities later dedicated honor rolls like this to the boys who left classrooms for the front. It links a neighborhood school directly to the nation's largest wartime mobilization.