Military & Wartime

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by the State of Connecticut on the Gettysburg battlefield, this monument honors Major General John Sedgwick, the Connecticut-born commander of the Union Army's VI Corps. Sedgwick force-marched his corps some thirty miles to reach Gettysburg in time for the battle's later days in July 1863. Beloved by his men as 'Uncle John,' he was killed the following year at Spotsylvania.

Cumberland Township, PA

Samuel Wylie Crawford was a Union general whose path to the Civil War was unusual: an Army surgeon, he was present at Fort Sumter when the war's opening shots were fired in 1861. By July 1863 he commanded the Pennsylvania Reserves at Gettysburg, and on the battle's second day he led their charge across the Wheatfield and up the slopes near Little Round Top, helping blunt the Confederate assault on the Union left. This monument stands on that ground in the fields south of Gettysburg where his division fought.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Second Division, First Corps, Army of the Potomac, under Brigadier General John C. Robinson, and lists the brigade commanders — including Gabriel Paul and Henry Baxter — who led its regiments at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, this division anchored the Union defense north and west of town, and several of the officers named here were wounded in the desperate fighting. The rapid succession of names on the stone hints at how heavily the leadership was thinned that day.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Eleventh Corps' First Division at Gettysburg, led by Brigadier General Francis C. Barlow until he was severely wounded, after which Brigadier General Adelbert Ames took command. On July 1, 1863, the division held the far right of the Union line on the rising ground north of town — a spot still known as Barlow's Knoll — where its brigades under Leopold von Gilsa, Ames, and Andrew L. Harris were overrun by a Confederate flanking attack. The survivors fell back through Gettysburg to Cemetery Hill.

Gettysburg, PA

This headquarters marker locates the First Brigade of the Second Division, Eleventh Corps, Army of the Potomac, commanded by Colonel Charles R. Coster at Gettysburg. Its regiments — the 134th and 154th New York and the 27th and 73rd Pennsylvania — were thrown into action on July 1, 1863, to cover the Union retreat through the town. Markers like this map the command structure of the vast army that fought here.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the Second Brigade of the Eleventh Corps' Third Division, commanded by Colonel Wladimir Krzyzanowski, a Polish-born officer whose brigade drew together New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin regiments rich in German and immigrant volunteers. On July 1, 1863, the brigade was posted on the plain north of Gettysburg, where it met the Confederate advance before falling back through the town. The listed regiments — the 58th and 119th New York, 82nd Ohio, 75th Pennsylvania, and 26th Wisconsin — reflect the diverse, foreign-born character of the Eleventh Corps.

Gettysburg, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Eleventh Corps' Third Division, led by Major General Carl Schurz, on the fields north of Gettysburg where the battle's first day unfolded on July 1, 1863. Schurz's division — with brigades under Alexander Schimmelfennig and Wladimir Krzyzanowski — was thrown into line to hold the open ground north of town against advancing Confederate forces. Heavily German-American in makeup, these troops fought hard before being driven back through Gettysburg to the safety of Cemetery Hill.

Gettysburg, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the entire Eleventh Corps, commanded at Gettysburg by Major General Oliver O. Howard, whose divisions under Barlow, Ames, von Steinwehr, and Schurz held the northern approaches to town on July 1, 1863. When the Union First Corps commander fell, Howard took overall command of the field and made the fateful decision to fortify Cemetery Hill. Though his corps was overwhelmed and pushed back that afternoon, the ground he chose became the anchor of the Union defense.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Union Eleventh Corps under Major General Oliver O. Howard, which held the ground north of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Overwhelmed by Confederate attacks that opening day, Howard's divisions — led by officers including Carl Schurz, Francis C. Barlow, Adelbert Ames, and Adolph von Steinwehr — fell back through the town to the high ground of Cemetery Hill, where they helped anchor the Union defense. Many of the corps' soldiers were German-born immigrants.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the position of the 1st Volunteer Brigade of the Army of the Potomac's Artillery Reserve at Gettysburg. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Freeman McGilvery, these reserve batteries were fed into the fighting on July 2, 1863, and helped plug a dangerous gap in the Union line near the Plum Run valley. The Artillery Reserve gave Union commanders a pool of guns to rush wherever the battle grew hottest.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker denotes the headquarters position of the 1st Regular Brigade of the Artillery Reserve at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Artillery Reserve was a pool of batteries the Army of the Potomac's commanders could rush to any threatened point on the field, and its regular-army brigade was among the best-drilled gun crews in the force. From posts like this, officers fed fresh cannon into the fighting during the three-day battle of July 1863.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters position of the Second Brigade of the Second Division, Second Corps, Army of the Potomac, led at Gettysburg by Brigadier General Alexander S. Webb. Webb's brigade of Pennsylvania regiments held the low stone wall at 'the Angle' on Cemetery Ridge, the very point where Pickett's Charge struck and broke on July 3, 1863. The fighting here reached the fence line and became the closest thing to a Confederate breakthrough in the whole battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the headquarters of the Second Brigade, First Division, Third Corps at Gettysburg, commanded by Brigadier General J. H. Hobart Ward with Colonel Hiram Berdan of the famed U.S. Sharpshooters. Its regiments — drawn from Indiana, Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania — fought in the punishing action across the Wheatfield and Devil's Den on July 2, 1863. The sharpshooters listed here were among the war's most specialized marksmen.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker records the headquarters position of the Third Brigade of the First Division, Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Led first by Colonel Strong Vincent and then by Colonel James C. Rice, the brigade included the 20th Maine, 16th Michigan, 44th New York, and 83rd Pennsylvania — regiments thrown onto Little Round Top to secure the Union left. It is one of the many positional tablets that map the battle's order of battle across the field.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the headquarters of the Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, under Major General George Sykes during the Battle of Gettysburg. It lists his division commanders — Barnes, Ayres, and Crawford — and the corps artillery under Captain Martin. The Fifth Corps was rushed to the Union left on July 2, 1863, where its regiments helped hold Little Round Top and the ground around it.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the field position of the Reserve Brigade of the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Corps, First Division, commanded by Brigadier General Wesley Merritt, on the southern flank at Gettysburg. Made up of regular U.S. Cavalry regiments together with the 6th Pennsylvania, the brigade pressed the Confederate right on July 3, 1863.

Cumberland Township, PA

This War Department tablet traces the First Brigade of the Union Third Cavalry Division on July 3, 1863, as it moved to strike the Confederate right and rear at the southern end of the Gettysburg field. Arriving around 1 P.M. and later supported by the Reserve Cavalry Brigade, its regiments — among them the 18th Pennsylvania, 1st Vermont, and 1st West Virginia — pressed the fighting into the late afternoon. The marker preserves the precise choreography of the day's cavalry combat.

Cumberland Township, PA

This War Department tablet records the movements of the Union Third Cavalry Division under Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick on July 3, 1863. Ordered against the Confederate right and rear, its brigades became engaged on both flanks of the Gettysburg field, with Farnsworth's men entering the fight on the far left early that afternoon. The dry, official language preserves the day's maneuvers in the army's own words.

Hardin County, TN

This marker fixes the spot in Hardin County, Tennessee where General Ulysses S. Grant made his headquarters on the rain-soaked night of April 6, 1862, during the Battle of Shiloh. After a brutal first day that nearly broke his army, Grant famously sheltered under a tree and resolved to attack at dawn — and the next day drove the Confederates from the field. The quotation from his memoirs preserves the general's own memory of that grim night.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012

For three weeks in June 1864, Logan Square filled with exhibits, goods, and crowds as the U.S. Sanitary Commission's Great Central Fair raised more than a million dollars for Union soldiers and their families. The Commission had grown out of the vast, largely female volunteer effort to feed, nurse, and comfort the men at the front. On June 16, President Abraham Lincoln—making his only official public appearance in Philadelphia—stepped before the crowd to praise the work being done there.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the rocky slopes near Little Round Top, this marker remembers two Union officers cut down within moments of each other on July 2, 1863, during the second day at Gettysburg — Brigadier General Stephen H. Weed and Lieutenant Charles E. Hazlett, whose artillery and infantry helped hold the army's imperiled left flank. Weed fell mortally wounded, and Hazlett was killed as he bent over him. Their deaths came at the hinge of one of the war's most desperate defensive stands.

Pensacola, FL

This berth once held the USCGC Sebago, a 255-foot Owasco-class patrol gunboat commissioned in September 1945 and reputed to be among the most heavily armed vessels of her size in U.S. service. Cutters like the Sebago patrolled the seas in the decades after World War II, serving in wartime and peacetime roles from ocean-station duty to combat gunfire support. Her berth in Pensacola recalls that long service.

Winona, MN

This anchor belonged to the Coast Guard cutter Winona, commissioned in 1946 and home-ported for much of its career at Port Angeles, Washington. Over its decades of service the Winona patrolled the frigid Bering Sea and, during the Vietnam War, joined the U.S. coastal patrol off Southeast Asia — a reminder that Coast Guard cutters served in that conflict alongside the Navy.

Town of Babylon, NY

Built in 1872, the Oak Beach station was one of a chain of U.S. Life-Saving Service posts strung along the treacherous Atlantic coast, where crews stood ready to row out through the surf to rescue shipwrecked crews and passengers. In 1915 the Life-Saving Service merged into the new U.S. Coast Guard, and the station carried on through the Prohibition years — when Coast Guardsmen chased rum-runners — and both World Wars.

Hyde County, NC

During the War of 1812, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Mercury patrolled the waters around Ocracoke Inlet, a vital gateway into North Carolina's sounds and the port of New Bern. In 1813, as a British squadron menaced the coast, the small cutter slipped past the enemy offshore to carry warning inland.

City of Rensselaer, NY

This memorial in Rensselaer, across the Hudson from the city of Albany, honors the sailors who served aboard the succession of U.S. Navy warships to carry the name USS Albany. The dates trace a long naval lineage: a mid-19th-century sailing sloop-of-war from the age of the Mexican-American War, followed by later steam and ironclad-era vessels, and on through the cruisers of the World War II and Cold War Navy. Each ship passed its name to the next, so the honor roll of "Albany" shipmates spans nearly a century and a half of American sea power.

Annapolis, MD

The USS Maryland (BB-46) was a Colorado-class battleship whose battle honors trace the arc of America's Pacific war. Moored inboard at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, she escaped the worst of the attack and returned to service, then carried her guns through the island-hopping campaigns — Tarawa, the Marshalls, Palau, and the Philippines. At Surigao Strait she took part in one of the last battleship-against-battleship duels in naval history before the fighting reached Okinawa. Her ship's bell now rests in Annapolis, in the state whose name she bore.

Waipahu, HI

On the morning of September 2, 1945, officials of Imperial Japan came aboard the battleship USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, and signed the formal instrument of surrender to the Allied Powers. With those signatures the Second World War came to its final close, six years after it began and just weeks after the atomic bombings. The marker fixes the exact spot and coordinates where the ceremony unfolded on the great ship's deck.

Camden, NJ

This massive bronze screw once helped drive the USS New Jersey (BB-62), an Iowa-class battleship and one of the most decorated warships in U.S. Navy history. Commissioned during World War II, she went on to serve in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and again in the 1980s before becoming a museum ship at Camden, across the river from where much of her steel took shape. The propeller is displayed as a tangible piece of that half-century of service.

New Hanover County, NC

Launched on June 13, 1940, the battleship USS North Carolina (BB-55) became one of the most decorated American warships of World War II, serving throughout the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Decommissioned in 1947, she was saved from scrapping by a statewide campaign and berthed here as a memorial in 1961. Today she honors the state's World War II veterans.

Arlington, VA

On a January night in 1945, the cargo ship USS Serpens exploded while loading depth charges off Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, killing the vast majority of those aboard in the single largest disaster suffered by the U.S. Coast Guard in World War II. Most of the dead were Coast Guardsmen, and their remains were brought home and buried together at Arlington National Cemetery. This monument rises over their common grave, marking the resting place of those lost in the catastrophe.

Uvalde, TX

Commissioned in 1944, the USS Uvalde was a C-2 type Navy cargo ship built in Oakland and named to honor former Vice President John Nance Garner and his home county. She served in the Pacific during World War II, carried troops and cargo to occupation outposts, and later supported United Nations forces in the Korean War before being reactivated during the Cold War tensions of the Berlin and Cuban Missile crises. Decommissioned in 1968, she left her anchor and bell to the city of Uvalde, displayed here in memory of the ship and her crew.

Utopia, TX

Organized before July 1886, the Utopia Missionary Baptist Church began with nine charter families who shared the local Methodists' building until they could raise their own in 1912. The congregation grew quickly, held brush-arbor revivals, supported a nearby mission, and helped establish the Alto Frio Baptist Encampment. Its members answered the nation's call in both world wars — Leslie Bownds was wounded and died returning home from World War I, and Roy D. Tampke gave his life in World War II.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1967

In September 1914, veterans gathered at the Schenley Hotel in Pittsburgh's Oakland district to help forge the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Among the founders were men who had served overseas in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and China during the Spanish-American War and its aftermath—soldiers who wanted an organization to advocate for those who had fought on foreign soil. From these roots grew one of America's largest veterans' service organizations.

Des Moines, IA

This Veterans of Foreign Wars monument in Des Moines honors those who served so that others might live in freedom. VFW memorials commemorate Americans who fought in overseas conflicts from the Spanish-American War onward, giving communities a place to gather and remember military service.

Davilla, TX

In 1875 eight members of the Davilla Baptist Church broke off to organize a congregation nearer their homes, with J. S. Mullins as first pastor. Charter member James Putnam Whittington, a Civil War veteran who had fought at the Battle of Val Verde in H. H. Sibley's New Mexico campaign, suggested naming the new church Val Verde, and later donated land for its sanctuary and cemetery. A surplus army chapel moved from Brownwood in 1949 became its later home.

Fairfield, TX

Six brass field guns captured by Lt. Joseph D. Sayers' company at the 1862 Battle of Val Verde in New Mexico were hauled back to Texas at great difficulty to arm a hand-picked Confederate battery. The Val Verde guns saw action in the recapture of Galveston in 1863 and the Battle of Mansfield in 1864, where the men seized longer-range pieces. Rather than surrender them at war's end, the crew buried four, and last commander T. D. Nettles brought this one home to Freestone County.

Del Rio, TX

Carved from Crockett, Kinney, and Pecos counties and organized in 1885, Val Verde County took its name from a Civil War battle fought in 1862 near Fort Craig, New Mexico. That fight was part of the Confederacy's ambitious campaign to seize the Southwest, and its memory carried west with the veterans who settled the region. Del Rio, on the Rio Grande, became the county seat.

Del Rio, TX

Organized in 1885 from parts of three surrounding counties, Val Verde County took its name from a New Mexico Civil War battle involving Texas Confederate forces, and it chose the booming railroad town of Del Rio as its seat. A limestone jail went up first on the public square, followed in 1887 by the limestone courthouse designed by Austin architects A. O. Watson and Jacob Larmour, with classical detailing and octagonal corner turrets. The complex was repeatedly enlarged as the region grew, gaining a separate sheriff's facility in 1956.

Chester, TX

This marker honors Valentine Burch, a Kentucky-born settler who stood among the men of the fledgling Texas army on April 21, 1836 — the day of the Battle of San Jacinto, where Sam Houston's forces won Texas its independence from Mexico. Detailed to guard the camp near Harrisburg rather than charge the field, Burch was part of the supporting cast whose vigilance made the decisive victory possible. He lived on into the 1890s, and the State of Texas set this stone during the 1936 Centennial to remember him.

Galveston, TX

This marker honors Valentine T. Dalton, a soldier who fought at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815 — the celebrated American victory that came just after the War of 1812 had officially ended. Born in 1782, Dalton lived to the age of 103, dying in 1885, and the State of Texas raised this stone over his grave. His long life spanned the young republic's early wars and its expansion to the Gulf frontier.

Valera, TX

Valera sprang up early in the twentieth century around a Santa Fe railway depot, its main street lined with the ordinary machinery of a shipping town — depot, bank, gin, mill, and an opera house. When the community needed a place to bury its dead, a local landowner deeded the acreage in 1922, and the grounds filled with the town's doctors, lawmen, and veterans of four American wars.

Schuylkill Township, PA · est. 2012

Opened in 1943 as America mobilized for total war, Valley Forge General Hospital grew into one of the nation's largest military hospitals, sprawling across more than 100 buildings and treating over 3,000 patients at a time. Its surgeons became pioneers in the era's most harrowing wounds — reconstructing shattered eyes, rebuilding burned faces, and advancing the young field of rehabilitation. Its wards received the broken bodies of three wars — World War II, Korea, and Vietnam — before the hospital closed in 1974.

Fort Worth, TX

Built in the 1860s on the stage road to Weatherford, this cottage was the country home of Khleber Miller Van Zandt, remembered as "Mr. Fort Worth." A Confederate veteran, he became a merchant, banker, lawyer, railroad builder, and state legislator who helped open frontier lands to settlement and shape a growing city. The state restored the house during the 1936 Texas Centennial.

Barksdale, TX

Henry Wells reached the Nueces Canyon in 1866 and founded the town of Bullhead in 1873, later renamed Vance. The cemetery grew from a single 1875 grave — that of a guest who died in the Wells home — into the resting place of many pioneers, expanded by land gifts from Wells and rancher Z.H. Pannell. Six Civil War veterans lie here, along with veterans of both World Wars and many lost to diphtheria and influenza epidemics.

Statesville, NC

Now a historical museum, this house served as the temporary home of North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance in April 1865, after General William T. Sherman's forces captured Raleigh in the closing days of the Civil War. With the Confederate government collapsing, the wartime governor took refuge here in Statesville. The house stands about 350 yards southwest.

Breckenridge vicinity, TX

Named for the Veale brothers who came from Palo Pinto County in the late 1850s to round up unclaimed Texas cattle, this creek and its cemetery mark an early pioneer settlement in Stephens County. Beginning with a two-acre gift in 1891 and marked graves dating to 1879, the burial ground served the community alongside the nearby Veales Creek School until 1947. Among those laid to rest here are veterans of the Civil War through Vietnam, and a descendants' association has cared for the grounds since 1979.

Surfside, TX

On this ground in June 1832, roughly 112 Texans hauling a cannon downriver ran into the guns of Lt. Col. Domingo de Ugartechea, who refused them passage at the mouth of the Brazos. After nine hours of fire the Mexican garrison surrendered — the first armed clash between Texas colonists and the Mexican military, ignited by a customs quarrel and fought, ironically, after the underlying dispute had already been settled. Four years later Velasco briefly served as capital of the Republic, where the Treaty of Velasco was signed in 1836.

Irwin Township, PA · est. 1987

Long before wagon roads, an Indian path threaded the wooded ridges of western Pennsylvania, linking the Forks of the Ohio at present Pittsburgh to the native town of Venango near Franklin. It was along this route that a young George Washington rode north in 1753, carrying a British ultimatum to the French at Fort Le Boeuf on the eve of a continental war. Decades later the trail was broadened for troops and then for commerce, and the crossroads at Mayes Forks grew a busy hotel and stagecoach stop where travelers changed horses and collected the mail.

Ventura, CA

Placed by Ventura's American Legion post, this memorial honors those who served in the Vietnam War between 1964 and 1973. Those years marked the height of American involvement in Southeast Asia, a conflict that divided the nation and reshaped a generation. Local Legion posts across California raised such markers so their community's veterans would be remembered.

Portland, OR

This memorial in Portland honors the men and women of the United States armed forces across every American conflict, echoing a tradition of civic remembrance that took root after the great wars of the twentieth century. Rather than marking a single battle, it gathers the sacrifice of generations into one place of gratitude — a common ritual in towns and cities where communities gathered to give thanks to those who served and grieve those who did not return.

Frankfort, KY

Built before 1820, this Frankfort house sheltered two men who took opposite sides in the nation's greatest crisis. It was the childhood home of orator George Graham Vest, later a three-term U.S. senator from Missouri and a member of the Confederate Congress, and also home to Daniel W. Lindsey, a Union brigade commander who became Kentucky's adjutant general.

Paola, KS

This wall bears the names of veterans from Miami County, Kansas, honoring residents who served in the armed forces. Honor-roll walls like this gather a community's servicemembers into a single permanent record, cutting across generations and conflicts. It functions as a local shrine to service rather than a monument to one particular war.

East Deer Township, PA

This monument gathers the names of local men and women who served across a century of American conflicts — from World War I and World War II through Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Desert Storm, and the Iraq War. Rather than commemorating a single battle, it reads as a community's running honor roll, each new war adding another line. It reflects the way small towns keep faith with everyone who wore the uniform.

Andrews, TX

This memorial in Andrews, on the West Texas plains, honors the community's military veterans, drawing its words from Isaiah 40:31 — a promise of renewed strength that has long consoled those who mourn and those who serve. Without naming a single war, it stands for all who answered the call across the generations.

Surfside Beach, SC

Along the Grand Strand of South Carolina's coast, the town of Surfside Beach set aside this tribute to the men and women who wore the nation's uniform. Its inscription reaches for a familiar and enduring image—liberty as a bell whose ringing depends on those willing to defend it—rather than marking a single battle or war. Memorials like this one gather the service of many generations into a single place of remembrance, a spot where a seaside community pauses to honor sacrifice.

Fitchburg, WI

A memorial honoring all who served in the United States armed forces, and especially the residents of the Town of Fitchburg who gave their lives in that service. It gathers the community's veterans and war dead under a single tribute without naming a particular war.

Monticello, MN

This memorial honors the men and women of the military who served their country, dedicated by the community of Monticello, Minnesota. Like many small-town monuments, it recognizes service broadly rather than commemorating a single war, welcoming veterans of every era. It anchors local acts of remembrance in a shared civic space.

Dent County, MO

This memorial records the names of those buried in the surrounding cemetery who served in the armed forces, spanning both Union and Confederate service. Such rosters were common in rural Missouri, a border region deeply divided during the Civil War, where families and communities sent men to both sides. The inscription honors the fallen without regard to which flag they followed.

Middleville, MI

This Middleville memorial keeps faith with prisoners of war and those still missing in action — service members who never came home and whose fates went unresolved. The POW/MIA cause became a sustained national movement in the later twentieth century, its black-and-white flag a fixture at courthouses and town greens. Here a small Barry County community makes that pledge of remembrance its own.