Military & Wartime

Lawrence, KS

Presented to the city of Lawrence by the local Navy League in 1964, this Polaris missile display honors the fleet ballistic missile submarines that formed a pillar of American nuclear deterrence at the height of the Cold War. Launched from submerged submarines, Polaris missiles gave the United States a hidden, mobile retaliatory force, and communities across the country accepted such displays as tangible emblems of national defense.

New Bern, NC

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico was based at New Bern for four decades, from 1907 until 1947, patrolling the sounds and rivers of eastern North Carolina. In an age before highways and modern navigation aids, such cutters enforced maritime law, aided vessels in distress, and served through two world wars. Her long posting made her a fixture of the working waterfront on the Neuse and Trent rivers.

Erie, PA · est. 2023

On December 5, 1843, the U.S. Navy launched its first iron-hulled vessel near this Erie shoreline—an experiment in a new material at a moment when wooden ships still ruled the seas. Her iron components were forged in Pittsburgh and hauled overland to the lakeshore, then assembled into a 163-foot steam-powered paddle frigate. Renamed Wolverine in 1905, she patrolled and trained sailors on the Great Lakes into the twentieth century, earning the nickname "Guardian of the Great Lakes."

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1983

The frigate U.S.S. United States was the first vessel completed for the newly created United States Navy, launched near this spot on the Philadelphia waterfront in 1797 from the design of shipbuilder Joshua Humphreys. She first sailed as the flagship of Captain John Barry, a founding hero of the Navy. In the War of 1812, under Stephen Decatur, she won lasting fame by capturing the British frigate H.M.S. Macedonian before finally being scrapped at Norfolk in 1866.

Martinsburg, WV

This memorial in Martinsburg honors those from the community who died in service to their country. Its inscription speaks in the universal language of sacrifice, dedicating the site to all who paid the ultimate price — a form of remembrance common in towns across America that lost sons and daughters to the nation's wars.

Columbus, OH

During the Civil War, Columbus and its Capitol Square were a hub of the Union war effort, ringed by army camps where Ohio regiments were mustered and paid. Ohio sent nearly 320,000 men to the Union army and lost more than 35,000, but its most decisive contribution may have been leadership: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and McPherson, along with cabinet officers Stanton and Chase, were all Ohioans. Their generalship and statecraft helped steer the Union to victory.

Chicago, IL

This boulder commemorates a tree planted by Ulysses S. Grant on December 6, 1879, shortly after the Civil War hero and former president returned from his celebrated two-year tour around the world. Grant, who led the Union armies to victory and served two terms in the White House, was greeted by adoring crowds on his homecoming. The simple planting captured the public's enduring affection for one of the era's most famous Americans.

Canyon, TX

Umbarger began in 1895 as a humble wagon yard where a Civil War veteran turned farmer offered rest to travelers on the Texas plains, and it took his name when the Pecos Valley Railroad christened a switch after him in 1898. German-Catholic families gathered by Pius Friemel built St. Mary's Church in 1908, planting Old World faith in the Panhandle. Its most remarkable chapter came during World War II, when Italian prisoners of war held nearby at Hereford adorned the parish church with carved figures and painted interiors that survive to this day.

Hempstead, TX

During the Civil War, the rail junction near Hempstead anchored several Confederate facilities, including Camp Groce, a prisoner-of-war stockade on Leonard Waller Groce's plantation. Union prisoners who died in captivity — many during a devastating 1864 yellow fever epidemic — were buried on the neighboring McDade Plantation. Union prisoner Aaron T. Sutton recorded more than 100 fresh graves here before his escape and long journey on foot to Beaumont; by the 1940s, land-clearing erased all surface trace of the cemetery.

Somerville, MA

During the Civil War, towns across the North set up recruiting stands to enlist local men into the Union Army, and Somerville was no exception. This spot in front of the building marked one such recruiting station, where volunteers signed up to serve in the great struggle to preserve the Union. Massachusetts was an early and enthusiastic supplier of troops, and neighborhood recruiting sites like this one turned ordinary street corners into gateways to the front lines.

Bellefonte, PA · est. 1992

Chartered in 1856 on ground already used for burials since 1808, this Bellefonte cemetery became the resting place of an unusual concentration of political power. Three Pennsylvania governors and their wives lie here, spanning the Civil War through the Gilded Age. Chief among them is Andrew Gregg Curtin, the wartime governor who mobilized the commonwealth for the Union.

Lott, TX

Early settlers Joseph Marcus Jackson and his wife Eleanor donated four acres for Union Cemetery, so named because it served all the communities around Durango. The earliest recorded burial dates to 1836, and among its more than 800 graves lie many of the area's pioneer families along with veterans of the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Korean War. A local association has maintained the grounds since 1977.

Cooper, TX

Old Union Cemetery served the farm and ranch communities of Gough, Yowell, and Antioch, with its earliest recorded burial dating to W.H. Henderson in 1859. Among its more than ninety marked graves, arranged in family plots, lie many of the area's first settlers and at least three Civil War veterans — T.J. Hollon, Hiram G. Wynn, and T.J. Craig. The last burial came in 1946, and a cemetery association formed the next year to tend the grounds.

Riverside, CA

On July 1, 1929, Auxiliary No. 4 to the Sons of Union Veterans planted these trees in memory of the Union soldiers of the Civil War. Six decades after Appomattox, the descendants and heirs of the Grand Army of the Republic sought a living tribute to the men who had fought to preserve the Union. The grove is an act of remembrance rooted in the culture of Civil War commemoration that shaped early-20th-century America.

Plymouth, NC

The main line of Union defenses during the Battle of Plymouth ran across the road at this point from April 17 to 20, 1864. Dug earthworks like these, bristling with artillery, were meant to hold the river town against any land approach. They were ultimately overrun when Confederate forces pressed the assault on all sides.

Wills Point, TX

The Union Grove community grew from the 1844 arrival of settlers who built the county's first corn mill and, in time, a Baptist church and school. A local landowner donated this hilltop of oak and cedar for a burial ground in 1880. Generations later it holds the graves of veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam, tended since the 1940s by a community association.

Troup, TX

In 1887, residents of this corner of rural Smith County gathered in the Old Stone Schoolhouse to found Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church, and by 1905 donated land gave the congregation a permanent home and burial ground. The graves here trace the arc of a farming community across generations—among them a Confederate veteran and men who served in both World Wars and the Korean Conflict. A cemetery association formed in 1972 still tends the grounds and hosts a Memorial Day homecoming, keeping the old rhythm of remembrance alive.

Gladewater, TX

This East Texas burial ground began on land Haden Harrison Edwards bought from the Republic of Mexico in 1835 and later sold to James Riley Phillips, whose family homesteaded it from 1857. The graveyard opened with the burial of young Florence Phillips and grew alongside the Union Grove community, taking that name to serve neighbors beyond the founding family. Edwards himself was a soldier, legislator, and delegate to the 1861 Secession Convention, and veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam rest here.

Jacksonville, TX

This East Texas burial ground began in 1868 with the grave of Mary Ann Patton, first wife of John F. Patton—a Jacksonville postmaster and Confederate officer of the recent Civil War. In 1871 Patton deeded the surrounding land to a combined Union School and Church, and the cemetery has remained in continuous use ever since, sustained by community gifts. It endures as a record of the pioneer families who settled Cherokee County in the Reconstruction years.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

Founded in 1862 amid the Civil War, the Union League of Philadelphia began as a patriotic society rallying support behind President Lincoln and the cause of preserving the Union. Its members recruited and financed regiments for the war effort, including some of the first Black troops raised in the North. In the decades after the war its prominent membership turned to political reform and a wide range of civic and philanthropic work.

Hastings, MI

Echoing Lincoln's words at Gettysburg, this monument in Hastings honors the Union soldiers of 1861–1865 and names three of the war's decisive turning points — Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge. Michigan sent tens of thousands of men to the front, and after the war communities across the state erected such memorials, often through Grand Army of the Republic veterans, to bind local sacrifice to the cause of preserving the nation.

Albemarle County, VA

In the closing months of the Civil War, Union cavalry under General Philip Sheridan swept through central Virginia, and in early March 1865 his troopers entered Charlottesville. Local officials reportedly surrendered the town to spare it from destruction, and Union forces occupied the area for several days while wrecking railroads and supply lines that had sustained the Confederacy. The University of Virginia and the town itself were largely spared the burning that befell other Virginia communities. Within weeks, Lee's surrender at Appomattox would end the war.

Lincoln Center, KS

This monument honors the Union soldiers and sailors who served between 1861 and 1865, the years of the Civil War. Kansas entered the Union as a free state on the eve of the conflict and sent a high share of its men into federal service. Memorials like this one rose across the Midwest as veterans aged and communities sought to fix their sacrifice in stone.

Yorktown, TX

Adolph Strieber, born in Zellerfeld, Germany, came to Texas as a boy through the port of Old Indianola in 1846. Like many Texas Germans who believed the Union should be preserved, he crossed Confederate lines on foot, by stagecoach, and by steamboat to enlist as a private in Springfield, Illinois, serving in Company G of the 16th Illinois Cavalry from 1863 to 1865. After the war he returned to Texas as a merchant and prominent citizen of Yorktown.

Pershing County, NV

Silver drew settlers into Buena Vista Canyon in 1861, and Southern sympathizers first named their camp Dixie. The following year, as the Civil War divided the nation, the town's neutral and Northern factions won out and rechristened it Unionville. It became the seat of Humboldt County until losing that honor to Winnemucca in 1873, and though the ores thinned by the late 1870s, Unionville kept a reputation as a calmer, more comfortable place than most raucous mining camps.

Meadville, PA

In the 1830s the young town of Meadville, one of northwestern Pennsylvania's earliest settlements, raised this temple-fronted meeting house in the Greek Revival style then sweeping the nation—its columns and clean lines meant to echo the democratic ideals of ancient Athens. The roughly $3,500 cost was underwritten largely by two of the region's leading families, the Shippens and the Huidekopers, whose fortunes were tied to the settlement and land business of the frontier era. Its design is credited to George W. Cullum, a West Point–trained Army engineer who worked on the nation's coastal fortifications—among them Fort Sumter—before rising to Union general during the Civil War.

San Saba, TX

The United Confederate Veterans formed in 1889 and swelled after Jefferson Davis's death, as camps across the South held reunions to honor the Civil War dead. San Saba County veterans organized the William P. Rogers Camp No. 322 in 1893, named for a hero of the Battle of Corinth whose daughter and son-in-law had settled in San Saba. Alongside a Daughters of the Confederacy chapter, the camp ran school programs and backed Confederate monuments until dwindling numbers ended it in the early 1930s.

Veterans Administration, CA

This memorial honors the volunteers of the Spanish-American War era, dating its service to 1898–1902—years that span both the brief war with Spain and the longer fighting in the Philippines that followed. The conflict marked the United States' emergence as an overseas power, taking control of former Spanish territories. The inscription's language of extending "liberty to alien peoples" reflects how that generation framed a war whose legacy of empire remains debated.

Exeter, NH

Across New England, towns like Exeter have long marked their commons and public squares with tributes to the men and women who wore the nation's uniform. Rather than commemorating a single battle, this memorial gathers all of that service under one dedication — a civic act of remembrance repeated in countless American communities, especially in the wake of the twentieth century's great conflicts. Exeter, an old Revolutionary-era seat of New Hampshire government, is a fitting place for such a gesture, where local memory of duty and sacrifice runs deep. The plain, formal language reflects a shared vocabulary of honor meant to speak for generations of veterans at once.

Sabine Pass, TX

In September 1863, Union forces tried to force their way into Texas through Sabine Pass, where the small earthen Fort Griffin guarded the channel. A Confederate battery held its fire until the federal gunboats came within close range, then disabled the U.S.S. Clifton and U.S.S. Sachem and forced the fleet to retreat. Captured Union troops were marched inland to prison camps at Camp Groce and Camp Ford, sharing the grim conditions endured by prisoners on both sides.

New London, CT

During World War II, New London became home to the largest United States Maritime Service Officers School, where roughly 15,000 officers were trained to command the merchant ships that carried troops, fuel, and supplies across dangerous seas. The U.S. Maritime Service prepared the officers of the merchant marine, whose convoys were vital — and perilous — lifelines to Allied forces overseas. This monument marks the site of that wartime training effort.

Orange, TX

As World War II ended, the United States found itself with the largest navy in human history—and a hard question of what to do with the surplus. Rather than scrap the ships, planners chose to preserve a "mothball fleet" that could be reactivated fast, and in 1945 the fresh water of the Sabine River made Orange, Texas, an ideal berth. The first vessel, USS Matagorda, arrived that November, and when the Korean War erupted in 1950 the facility roused more than thirty ships back to service. It operated until 1975, its last hulls towed away, sold abroad, or scrapped by 1980.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by act of Congress, this monument on the Gettysburg battlefield honors the Regular Army — the professional cavalry, artillery, infantry, and engineers who fought beside the volunteers of the Army of the Potomac in the Gettysburg Campaign of June and July 1863. Amid a field crowded with monuments to state volunteer regiments, it singles out the career soldiers of the United States. Their steadiness helped hold the line in the war's pivotal battle.

San Antonio, TX

Established in 1858, the U.S. Arsenal at San Antonio was still under construction when the Civil War began, and its magazine, office, and armorer's shop passed to Confederate hands after Gen. David E. Twiggs surrendered federal property to state forces in 1861. Serving as a supply depot for both sides in turn, it was reoccupied by federal troops in 1865 and expanded steadily thereafter, becoming a central supply point for the Southwest. By 1920 it had grown to forty-four buildings, and the Army deactivated the complex in 1947.

Coupland, TX

Morgan C. Hamilton acquired a large land grant in this area in 1837 and went on to a remarkable public career, serving the Republic of Texas as Secretary of War and Marine and later representing the state as a United States Senator from 1870 to 1877. During Reconstruction he even recovered Texas bonds that had been shipped to Europe during the Civil War. His nephew later founded the town of Coupland on land that had once been the senator's.

Humboldt County, CA

Erected in 1991 by the pioneers of Shelter Cove, this plaque offers plain gratitude to all who served in the nation's armed forces. Set on California's remote "Lost Coast," it reflects a small community's wish to honor its veterans across the generations. It names no single war, standing instead for collective service and sacrifice.

Marietta, GA

Marietta's Confederate Cemetery holds thousands of Southern soldiers who died during the 1864 campaigns for Atlanta and in the region's crowded military hospitals. Many fell far from home and could never be identified, and this memorial marks the resting place of those unknown dead. Cemeteries like this one were commonly organized and tended by local memorial associations in the years after the war.

Cobb County, GA

This memorial marks the resting place or remembrance of an unknown United States soldier. Markers to unknown soldiers stand for those who fell in service but could not be identified, a practice that grew as American communities sought to honor every casualty of war. In this part of Georgia, such graves and memorials are often tied to the region's role as a major theater of the Civil War.

Gilmer, TX

This grave, the first in Morris Cemetery, holds a Confederate soldier whose name was never known. Making his way home at the war's end and gravely ill, he stopped at the nearby William Morris home, where he died before he could tell anyone who he was. He was buried here, an anonymous casualty of a conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands.

Elko County, NV

During World War I, troop trains rolled regularly through Montello, and the Southern Pacific stationed a doctor to check every train for the influenza then sweeping the world. Ten soldiers who fell gravely ill in the 1918 epidemic died and were buried here namelessly, their identities lost when fires destroyed the government records. Long unmarked, the graves were finally given markers in 1975 through the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. Kimber of Montello and the veterans' 40 & 8 society of Las Vegas.

Dublin vicinity, TX

Settlers from Georgia and Alabama reached the Greens Creek area in 1873, clearing farms and quickly organizing schools and churches. In 1880 John W. Moore deeded land to the Baptist church, part of it already holding several graves, and it became the Upper Greens Creek Cemetery. Still tended by an association today, it holds pioneer families and their descendants along with veterans of American wars from the Mexican War through the Korean War.

Gilmer, TX

During the Civil War, Upshur County became a busy Confederate supply and training center, its factories in Gilmer and Ore City turning out hats, shoes, saddles, cloth, iron, and pottery for the army while a quartermaster depot coordinated the effort. With the men away at the front, women, children, and the elderly kept the farms producing grain, meat, and cotton. The marker also honors Emma Sansom, the teenaged "sunbonnet heroine" who guided Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry to a hidden ford in Alabama and later settled in Texas.

Rankin, TX

Carved from Tom Green County and created in 1887, Upton County was not fully organized until 1910. It honors John Cunningham Upton, a distinguished Confederate officer killed at the Second Battle of Manassas in 1862. A land of cattle and sheep ranches, the county later saw oil wells rise across its range, and its seat moved from Upland to Rankin in 1921.

Spotsylvania County, VA

On May 10, 1864, during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, a young Union colonel named Emory Upton led twelve hand-picked regiments in a bold experiment: a massed assault on a narrow front, charging without pausing to fire until they reached the Confederate earthworks. The tactic briefly shattered the rebel line and proved so promising that it inspired the larger assault on the "Mule Shoe" salient two days later. This monument honors the New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin regiments — including the Vermont Brigade — that made the daring rush.

Refugio, TX

In March 1836, as the Texas Revolution raged, Mexican General José Urrea used this strategically placed site as a staging area during his campaign up the coast. Nearby, Texian volunteers under Captain Amon B. King and Lieutenant Colonel William Ward sheltered Refugio's townspeople in the old mission before venturing out to fight. In the resulting Battle of Refugio, Urrea defeated both commands, capturing King's men on March 15 and Ward's on March 22—grim prelude to the Goliad massacre.

Galveston, TX

Before Confederate forces recaptured Galveston on January 1, 1863, the Ursuline nuns refused to evacuate their convent. During and after the battle the building's east wing became a hospital treating wounded from both sides, and a mortally wounded Confederate lieutenant died in the arms of Mother St. Pierre Harrington. The Confederate medical director credited the sisters' "noble conduct" with saving lives.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 149th Pennsylvania Infantry, one of the regiments known as the Bucktail Brigade, who fought in the First Corps on the fields west and northwest of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Facing Confederate assaults near the Chambersburg Pike and the unfinished railroad cut, the brigade paid a fearful price to buy time for the rest of the Union army to reach the high ground south of town. The 'Bucktail' name came from the deer tails the men wore on their caps, a badge of their marksmanship heritage.

Gettysburg, PA

This monument marks the position of Company D of the 149th Pennsylvania Infantry, part of the Bucktail Brigade of the First Corps, during the opening day of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. On the fields northwest of town the brigade met the advancing Confederate divisions head-on, holding as long as flesh and ammunition allowed before the Union line was forced back to Cemetery Hill. The precise placement of such markers let veterans and later visitors stand exactly where the fighting swept through.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by survivors in 1888, this monument honors the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry — a regiment of the Bucktail Brigade — for its stand in the First Corps on July 2 and 3, 1863, holding its position under heavy fire until the close of the battle. Among its officers, Henry Huidekoper was wounded and Colonel Langhorne Wister took command amid the desperate first-day fighting. That the veterans themselves raised the stone a quarter-century later speaks to what the ground meant to the men who survived it.

Straban Township, PA

This tablet marks the ground held on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, by the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the mounted fighting east of Gettysburg. As the battle reached its final day, Union cavalry guarded the army's flanks against Confederate horsemen probing for an opening.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the fields south of Gettysburg in early July 1863, this brigade of New York infantry was fed into the fighting that decided the battle's second and third days. Its first commander, Colonel George Willard, was killed on July 2; command then passed to Colonel Eliakim Sherrill of the 126th New York, who fell the following day as Union lines held against Pickett's Charge. Their division commander, General Alexander Hays, summed up the unit's cost in a single grim line about a history 'written in blood.'

Cumberland Township, PA

A short distance from here, on June 26, 1863 — days before the great battle opened — Private George M. Sandoe of Captain Robert Bell's independent Adams County cavalry company was shot and killed as Confederate forces advanced on Gettysburg. His unit was later folded into Company B of the 21st Pennsylvania Cavalry, and Sandoe is remembered as the first Union soldier killed at Gettysburg.

Cumberland Township, PA

The 28th Pennsylvania Infantry took this position around 8 a.m. on July 2, 1863, spreading out as skirmishers and trading fire with the enemy through the day before rejoining its brigade that evening. Skirmishers fought ahead of the main line, probing the enemy and screening the army's movements — dangerous, often overlooked work. The regiment's day here formed part of the wider struggle on this side of the Gettysburg field.

Cumberland Township, PA

This battlefield marker at Gettysburg remembers a young officer of a New York infantry regiment who was killed on July 2, 1863, the ferocious second day of the fight. That afternoon the Union line was battered across the Wheatfield and the rocky ground nearby, where regiments were fed piecemeal into some of the most confused and costly combat of the three-day battle. Small stones like this one are scattered wherever a soldier or unit fell, turning the whole field into a landscape of memory.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker records where Captain Jedediah Chapman of Company H, 27th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, fell during the Battle of Gettysburg. The small 27th Connecticut was heavily engaged in the Wheatfield on July 2, 1863, suffering severe losses in the back-and-forth fighting there. Chapman was among the officers killed as the regiment held its ground on the second day.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where Colonel Charles Frederick Taylor, commander of the 'Bucktails' — the First Rifle Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps — fell on July 2, 1863, at the age of twenty-three. Erected by his comrades in 1905, it honors an officer killed leading his celebrated regiment during the Union counterattack near the Wheatfield. The Bucktails were known for the deer tails worn on their caps and their reputation as skilled riflemen.

Cumberland Township, PA

This memorial marks the spot where Colonel George H. Ward, commanding the 15th Massachusetts Volunteers, was mortally wounded on July 2, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg. His comrades and fellow citizens of Worcester raised the stone in tribute to his valor. Ward had already lost a leg to an earlier wound yet returned to lead his regiment into the second day's fighting.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors Francis Channing Barlow (1834–1896), who commanded the First Division of the Eleventh Corps on the first day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, in the fighting north of town where his line was overwhelmed. A Harvard-educated lawyer who enlisted as a private in 1861, Barlow rose rapidly to major-general and became one of the Union's hard-driving young division commanders. The knoll where his division fought that first afternoon still bears his name.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors Brevet Major General James S. Wadsworth, who commanded the First Division of the First Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, his troops — including the famous Iron Brigade — were among the first Union infantry to meet the Confederate advance west of town, buying precious hours with heavy losses before falling back through Gettysburg to the high ground beyond. A wealthy New Yorker who served without pay, Wadsworth was mortally wounded in Virginia the following year.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors Brevet Major General John C. Robinson, who commanded the Second Division of the First Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, his division held the Union right north and west of town against mounting Confederate pressure, staging a stubborn defense — and a costly fighting withdrawal — that helped keep the army intact for the days ahead. A career soldier, Robinson later lost a leg in Virginia and received the Medal of Honor.