War of 1812

Huntsville, TX

Jesse Parker, already a veteran of the War of 1812, moved to Mexican Texas in 1822 among the earliest Anglo colonists. He represented the Sabine District at the 1832 Convention at San Felipe de Austin—one of the gatherings that pushed Texas toward independence—and later farmed his land grant in what became Walker County while serving as a deputy land commissioner. Buried on his own property in 1849, he was reinterred here more than a century later.

Georgetown, TX

John Berry, a Kentucky-born veteran of the War of 1812, brought his family to Mexican Texas in 1827 and became a fixture of frontier life, with land in the new towns of Liberty and Bastrop. His sons served in the Republic of Texas Army and rode as Texas Rangers, fighting at Plum Creek and suffering in the ill-fated Mier Expedition and Perote Prison. Settling near Georgetown in 1846, Berry ran a blacksmith and gun shop and a grist mill, and among his many descendants was Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II.

Orange, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1790 and a veteran of the War of 1812, John Harmon moved his family west in search of new land, settling along the Sabine River by 1826. In an extraordinary feat of frontier determination, he lashed together a massive raft of cypress logs to ferry his house, wagon, oxen, livestock, tools, and family to the site of present-day Orange on New Year's Day 1828. His arrival marked the beginning of permanent settlement there, and he went on to work as a saddler and civic leader.

Crockett, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1792, John Long served in the War of 1812 before bringing his family to Texas between 1836 and 1842, where he and his sons took up land certificates in Houston County. He became the county's second chief justice and ran the Long Hotel and a general store on the Crockett courthouse square, helping shape the young county's political and commercial life. Twice married, he raised children by both wives before his death in 1859.

West Columbia, TX

One of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, Josiah Hughes Bell was a South Carolina-born hatter who befriended Moses and Stephen Austin in Missouri and served in the militia during the War of 1812. Granted permission to settle Austin's colony in 1821, he served as alcalde, constable, and judge, at times handling Austin's duties during the empresario's travels to Mexico. Bell laid out two towns, developed a sugar plantation, built the area's first hotel, and completed a family home that Stephen F. Austin often used as an office until his death in 1838.

Snowbird Community, NC

This mountain grave holds Junaluska, a Cherokee leader who fought alongside Andrew Jackson's forces at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, where — as the inscription recounts — he and his warriors helped turn the fight and were credited with saving Jackson's life. Decades later North Carolina formally recognized him as a citizen, and he was buried here in the Snowbird community with his wife, Nicie. His story runs through one of the most fraught chapters of the early republic, when Cherokee people fought for the United States even as the nation moved toward removing them from their homelands.

Waco, TX

Virginia-born Edward Kellum served in the Tennessee Militia during the War of 1812 before marrying Karen Tabor and moving west through Alabama and Mississippi, finally settling along the Brazos River in McLennan County in 1854. He established a farm and, before his death in 1863, chose this ground as the family graveyard, becoming its first burial. Twenty-five graves, most now marked only by illegible sandstone, hold several generations of Kellums; Mary Elizabeth Jurney Kellum, the last buried here in 1895, left provisions in her will to maintain the plot.

Galveston, TX

Levi Charles Myers Harby, born in South Carolina in 1793, served in the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812 and spent two years as a prisoner of war in England after his prize ship was recaptured. By 1836 he had "gone to Texas," and he later settled in Galveston, where his wife Leonora founded the first Jewish Sunday school in Texas and the city's Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society. When the Civil War came, Harby served the Confederacy as an artillery captain aboard the CSS Neptune in the Battle of Galveston and ended the war commanding the harbor.

Hopkinsville, KY

As the Lewis and Clark Expedition made its way west and back, its leaders repeatedly passed through Kentucky's river country. William Clark—by 1807 a militia brigadier general and chief Indian agent for the Louisiana Territory—stopped with his family at Allsbury's Tavern in Hopkinsville in 1809. The tavern's keeper, Thomas Allsbury, was himself an early Hopkinsville figure who raised a company and served as a captain in the First Regiment of Kentucky Mounted Militia during the War of 1812.

Phillips County, AR

This stone marks the base point established on November 10, 1815, from which U.S. surveyors laid out the vast lands of the Louisiana Purchase using the Fifth Principal Meridian. One of the first surveys from this point served to satisfy the land-bounty claims of soldiers who had fought in the War of 1812. From this humble marker in the Arkansas wilderness, the grid that organized much of the American interior was reckoned.

City of Plattsburgh, NY

On September 11, 1814, the War of 1812 reached a decisive climax on the waters of Lake Champlain at Plattsburgh. A young American naval commander, Thomas Macdonough, anchored his outnumbered squadron in Plattsburgh Bay and, through clever positioning that let him wheel his ships to bring fresh guns to bear, shattered the British fleet as a large invading army watched from shore. The naval defeat forced the British land force to abandon its push south toward New York and retreat into Canada.

New Orleans, LA

Known as 'Madame John's Legacy,' this French colonial home was built in 1788 for the Spanish army captain Don Manuel Lanzos, on a site occupied since about 1725. It was the birthplace of Renato Beluche (1781–1860), a Baratarian associate of Jean Lafitte who fought in the Battle of New Orleans and later became an admiral in the Venezuelan navy. The earlier house here belonged to Jean Pascal, a sailor killed in the 1729 Natchez uprising, and the property took its literary nickname from a George W. Cable story before passing to the Louisiana State Museum.

Madisonville, LA

First called "Cokie" for the shells heaped along its shores, this Tchefuncte-River town was renamed about 1811 to honor President James Madison. It hosted a U.S. Navy yard in the early 1800s, and tradition holds that Andrew Jackson paused here in November 1814 on his way to defend New Orleans. The settlement grew as a shipbuilding and maritime community on Lake Pontchartrain's north shore.

Edna, TX

James Kerr carried a full American life into early Texas: born in Kentucky, a veteran of the War of 1812, and a sheriff, legislator, and senator in Missouri before he came south as surveyor-general of DeWitt's Colony. He laid out the town of Gonzales in 1825 and settled in Jackson County, where he helped draft the framework for a proposed state of Texas and, in July 1835, chaired an early public protest against Mexican rule. He later served in the Republic of Texas Congress—and practiced medicine besides.

Erie, PA · est. 2015

In the summer of 1813, with British warships massing on Lake Erie, seven Erie women stayed behind while others fled south and stitched the battle flag Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry would fly at the Battle of Lake Erie. Led by Margaret Forster Steuart and her sister Dorcas, the seamstresses emblazoned it with the dying words of Perry's friend James Lawrence: "Don't Give Up the Ship." The banner survives at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, and its motto endures across the Navy.

Omaha, NE

Near this site the fur trader and Indian commissioner Manuel Lisa built Fort Lisa in 1807 as a trading post on the Missouri River. Through his personal influence, the Omaha, Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe, and Sioux tribes were kept loyal to the United States during the War of 1812.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2016

Established in 1804, the McClurg Iron Foundry was Pittsburgh's first air foundry, casting metal in a young industrial city perched at the gateway to the West. During the War of 1812 it forged cannons and ammunition, much of it destined for the American fleet that would contest control of Lake Erie. In 1835 the site achieved another milestone, producing the first locomotive steam engine built west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Edmonton, KY

When Kentucky carved out a new county in 1860, it honored Thomas Metcalfe, a stonemason nicknamed "Old Stone Hammer" who rose from laying the foundation of the Governor's Mansion to living in it. A captain of Kentucky volunteers in the War of 1812, Metcalfe went on to serve in Congress, the governor's chair, and both houses of the state legislature before finishing Crittenden's term in the U.S. Senate. The county drawn from five neighbors bears his name.

Garwood, TX

This family burial ground served pioneer planters James S. Montgomery, a veteran of the War of 1812, and George W. Thatcher, whose households fled the advancing Mexican army in the panicked 1836 flight known as the "Runaway Scrape." Returning after the Texas Revolution, both men prospered as planters, and Montgomery went on to represent the county in the Congress of the Republic of Texas. The earliest grave here is likely that of Montgomery's young son, who died in 1836.

Rockdale, TX

This family burial ground dates to the 1850s, on land formally set aside in 1902 "to be used exclusively as a burying ground." It is named for Matthew Moss—a Virginia-born War of 1812 veteran and Red River steamboat man who brought his family to Milam County around 1845—and his son-in-law James Ragsdale, a veteran of the Texas Revolution and the first person buried here. Several Confederate veterans and members of the extended Moss family lie nearby, close to the vanished townsite of San Andres.

Newport, KY

Newport was a mustering point in the War of 1812, where Kentucky volunteers crossed the Ohio in August 1812 to march to the relief of General Hull at Detroit. Their campaign turned tragic at Frenchtown on the River Raisin, where all but thirty were killed or captured days after taking the town. A second wave gathered here in 1813 and, led by Governor Isaac Shelby, helped defeat the British and their Native allies at the Battle of the Thames, ending the fighting in the Old Northwest.

Midlothian, TX

This family plot holds the Newtons, Peters Colony pioneers who reached the Ovilla area in the 1840s. Patriarch Larkin Newton, born in South Carolina in 1794, was a War of 1812 veteran who fought at the Battle of New Orleans and served as a county commissioner in three states before settling in Ellis County, where he built a schoolhouse for his family. The oldest grave is his own, from 1858, joined over time by his wife, children, and grandchildren.

Seattle, WA

These cannon come from the spar-deck battery of the USS Constitution, the legendary frigate nicknamed "Old Ironsides" whose oak hull shrugged off British shot during the War of 1812. Preserved here as a monument to patriotism and loyalty, the guns carry the memory of one of the young navy's proudest ships. Constitution's victories at sea gave a fragile new nation a surge of confidence and a lasting naval icon.

DuBois, PA · est. 1955

Opened to the Allegheny River in 1804, the Old State Road was the first route to Pennsylvania's northwestern frontier, and in this section it traced the course of the older Chinklacamoose Path used by Native travelers. During the War of 1812 it carried troops under Major McClellan toward the fighting at Erie. Where the modern highway crosses here, it meets the line of that pioneering road.

Forksville, PA · est. 1951

A short distance southeast along Loyalsock Creek, Samuel Rogers, Jr. established a factory in 1810 that put the region's water power to work. During the War of 1812 it wove kersey — a coarse, sturdy woolen cloth — to clothe American soldiers, tying this remote valley to the national war effort. A flood in 1816 halted the works, cutting short one of the area's earliest industrial ventures.

Burnsville, NC

Otway Burns (1775–1850) of coastal North Carolina made his name as a privateer captain in the War of 1812, harrying British merchant shipping along the Atlantic seaboard, and later served in the state legislature. Generations after his death, this mountain town of Burnsville was named in his honor, carrying a seafaring hero's name from the coast into the Appalachian highlands.

Huntington, TX

Nehemiah Page fought in the War of 1812 and survived the Fort Mims attack near Mobile before marrying Elizabeth Crane and raising seven children across the Deep South. The family reached Texas in the 1850s, settling on 320 acres and building a log house near this family burial ground, where Elizabeth was first laid to rest in 1862. The cemetery grew to hold dozens of Page descendants, including veterans of the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War II.

Guilford Township, PA · est. 2004

This Franklin County ground was the boyhood home of Patrick Gass, who left the Pennsylvania backcountry to become one of the most valued members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. A skilled carpenter and soldier promoted to sergeant in 1804, he helped build the winter forts that carried the Corps of Discovery across the continent and later published his own journals of the journey. He went on to serve in the War of 1812, fighting at the fierce Battle of Lundy's Lane, and lived to the remarkable age of 99.

Bloomfield, PA · est. 1982

Perry County was set off from Cumberland County in 1820 and named in honor of Oliver Hazard Perry, the naval hero whose victory on Lake Erie became one of the proudest moments of the War of 1812. This rural county along the Juniata proved a fertile ground for public men, sending sons on to serve as governors of Pennsylvania and of three other states. Its seat, Bloomfield, was incorporated in 1831.

Erie, PA · est. 1946

In the spring of 1813, with the War of 1812 raging on the Great Lakes, American shipwrights raced to build a fleet at the foot of this street in Erie. The vessels launched here — among them the Lawrence, the Niagara, and the Ariel — carried Oliver Hazard Perry to his famous victory at the Battle of Lake Erie that September. Warehouses, a blockhouse, and a lookout once clustered along this shore to guard and supply the yard.

Sherman, TX

Peter Wagener Grayson, born in 1788 into a prominent Kentucky family, served in the War of 1812 and practiced law in Louisville before coming to Texas in the early 1830s, where he became a friend and advisor to Stephen F. Austin. He helped secure Austin's release from a Mexican prison, outlined plans for an independent government, and after San Jacinto served as Attorney General, signing the Treaties of Velasco. A gifted but troubled man, he took his own life in 1838 while a candidate for the Texas presidency, and the legislature later named Grayson County in his honor.

Piketon, OH

Piketon, the seat of Pike County in south-central Ohio, carries the name of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, the army officer and explorer best remembered for the 1806 expedition that gave Pike's Peak its name. By the War of 1812 Pike had risen to brigadier general, and on April 27, 1813, he was leading American troops in the assault on York (present-day Toronto) in Upper Canada when a retreating British garrison detonated its powder magazine. The blast mortally wounded Pike, and he died soon after — reportedly with a captured enemy flag beneath his head. Ohioans laying out this county and town in the war's aftermath honored the fallen general by attaching his name to the land.

Richmond, TX

Born in Spanish West Florida in 1790, Randolph Foster served in the War of 1812 and hunted across the southwestern frontier before joining Stephen F. Austin's first colony as one of the fabled "Old Three Hundred" in 1821. Granted 4,400 acres and serving as an Indian scout, he became a prominent Fort Bend planter. During the 1836 revolution he helped supply the Texian army and, with a handful of comrades, delayed Santa Anna's crossing of the Brazos long enough to keep the fleeing Texian government out of enemy hands.

Georgetown, KY

In August 1812, Georgetown served as the rendezvous for Kentucky volunteers ordered north to relieve General Hull at Detroit. Their advance ended in catastrophe on the River Raisin in January 1813, where after taking Frenchtown the enemy attacked and killed, massacred, wounded, or captured all but thirty—fewer than half of the 1,050 men ever reached home. The rallying cry 'Remember the Raisin!' endured, and nine Kentucky counties bear the names of officers lost in the campaign.

Independence, TX

R.E.B. Baylor, a Kentucky native who served in the War of 1812 and the Creek War, rose in law and politics before moving to Texas in 1839. He became a judge of the Republic of Texas Supreme Court and, after a religious conversion, helped found the Texas Baptist Education Society and worked with W.M. Tryon and J.G. Thomas to charter Baylor University in 1845. The university opened at Independence, where Baylor taught law without pay and served as a trustee before his death in 1873.

New Summerfield, TX

Born in North Carolina, Robert Graves Stadler had already served in the War of 1812 and fought for Texas independence before buying land here in 1845 near the community of Griffin. By 1853 he had drawn relatives from North Carolina to settle around him, laying the groundwork for the farming community that became Blackjack. He died just as the Civil War began.

Austin, TX

Born in Virginia in 1753, Robert Rankin served as an officer in the Continental Army's Virginia troops from 1776, in the same company as his kinsman John Marshall, the future Chief Justice. He fought at Brandywine, Germantown, and Stony Point and endured the Siege of Charleston. His sons carried the family's service into the War of 1812, one of them killed in the 1813 massacre at Fort Mims in Alabama, before several of them died in Texas.

Baltimore, MD

This cannon marks Rodgers Bastion, a key point in the chain of earthworks that ringed Baltimore against British attack in September 1814. Manned in part by sailors under Commodore John Rodgers, the fortifications formed part of a defensive line of some 12,000 men and 100 guns commanded by General Samuel Smith. The marker was placed in 1914 to mark the centennial of the city's defense.

Huntsville, TX

Born in Virginia in 1793 and raised in Tennessee, Sam Houston fought under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and rose to serve in Congress and as Tennessee's governor before heading west. Settling in Nacogdoches, he led the Army of the Republic to victory at San Jacinto in 1836, served twice as president of the Republic of Texas and later as U.S. senator and governor, and in 1861 refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy, dying at Huntsville in 1863.

Matagorda County, TX

Seth Ingram, born in Vermont in 1790, served as a sergeant in the 11th U.S. Infantry during the War of 1812 before heading to Mexican Texas. As one of Stephen F. Austin's surveyors, he helped lay out San Felipe de Austin, the capital of Austin's colony and the administrative heart of Anglo settlement. He died in 1857, his grave marked in Matagorda County.

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.

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.

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.

Texas City, TX

Around 1821 the privateer and War of 1812 veteran James Campbell — a lieutenant and close friend of the buccaneer Jean Lafitte at Galveston — put the sea behind him to settle here as a rancher. He had earlier taken a bride, Mary Sabinal, in Karankawa ceremony, and the couple raised their community on this coastal ground. The settlement endured until a hurricane destroyed it a second time in 1915, and the Campbells lie with other early Texans in the nearby cemetery.

New Orleans, LA

This corner holds layers of New Orleans's legal and civic past. A Spanish colonial boys' public school stood here from 1792, and after the Louisiana Purchase the building became the first United States District Court for the Louisiana Territory. In 1815, in a famous clash between military and civil authority, General Andrew Jackson was fined $1,000 for contempt after refusing to lift martial law until news of peace was confirmed following the Battle of New Orleans.

Forreston, TX

War of 1812 veteran and Republic of Texas frontier commander Edward H. Tarrant built his home on this Ellis County land in 1845 and raised the county's first mill nearby. A statesman and campaigner against Native peoples, he lived here until his death in August 1858. The State of Texas marked the plantation site in 1936.

New York, NY

From the earliest days of the Republic, the vessels of the U.S. Coast Guard and its ancestor services—the Revenue Cutter Service among them—sailed from New York to defend the young nation and protect its commerce. During the War of 1812, cutters such as the Vigilant took part in the maritime fight against British power. This panel honors that long tradition of service launched from the harbor.

Jasper, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1760, Stephen Williams enlisted repeatedly in the Continental Army and fought in Revolutionary War battles at Briar Creek, Camden, and Eutaw Springs. He volunteered again in the War of 1812 as a fifty-two-year-old sentry, then in 1835 — at seventy-five — shouldered his rifle at the Siege of Bexar alongside a son and four grandsons in the Texas fight for independence. Buried on his Jasper County homesite around 1839, he was reinterred in the State Cemetery during the 1936 Texas Centennial, when this monument was placed at his original grave.

Winchester, TX

A veteran of the War of 1812, Stephen Williams left North Carolina and followed the great southern migration through Georgia and Alabama before reaching Texas in 1832. In 1843 he took a land grant in Washington County, where he became a prominent landowner and devoted Baptist. He is best remembered as a founding member of the Texas Baptist Education Society, and his farmstead stayed in the family for over 115 years.

Brady Township, PA · est. 1950

Where two great Indian paths met — the Great Shamokin running toward Kittanning and the trail to Venango, now Franklin — travelers found a reliable spring and a natural camping ground. Generations used this junction as a resting place in the deep forests of central Pennsylvania. During the War of 1812, Major McClelland's militia force also camped at this spot, following the same well-worn crossroads that Native peoples had long relied upon.

Eastman, GA

This stretch of highway follows the old Blackshear Road, planned and cut through the wilderness in 1815 by Major Elijah Blackshear and a company of Georgia Volunteer Militia. It gained its fame as the alternate route General David Blackshear used while defending Georgia's threatened southern frontier during the War of 1812. The road later served as a route of settlement and travel.

Kendalia, TX

Born in South Carolina in 1787, Samuel Boyd Patton served in the War of 1812 and held office in the Alabama legislature before moving to Texas in 1837. There he sat on the Board of Land Commissioners and in the Congress of the Republic of Texas, helped organize Blanco County, and became its first chief justice. He later served as Kendall County's second chief justice and was buried on his homestead in 1869.

Kendalia, TX

Samuel Boyd Patton's life traced the American frontier as it moved west: born in South Carolina in 1787, he came of age in Tennessee, fought in the War of 1812, and held office in Alabama before reaching Texas in 1837. There he served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas and on its Board of Land Commissioners, then helped organize Blanco County and became its first county judge. He later served as chief justice of Kendall County and was buried near this spot in 1869.

Brenham, TX

Born near Baltimore in 1776 to a prosperous planter and ironmaster family, Thomas Deye Owings built a fortune in Kentucky's Bourbon Iron Works, founded Owingsville, and even laid an "Iron Road" to ship his goods. Commissioned a colonel in the War of 1812, he led the 28th U.S. Infantry and supplied ammunition for the Battle of New Orleans. Later he backed the Texas Revolution, financing companies of soldiers—roughly eighty of whom, including his son Robert, died at Goliad—and settling near Brenham, where he died in 1853.

Waco, TX

Born in Virginia in 1796, Thomas Hudson Barron fought at the Battle of New Orleans with the Kentucky Militia before joining the stream of settlers into Mexican Texas, appearing in Stephen F. Austin's 1831 registry of families. As a Ranger captain he oversaw the building of Fort Fisher on the Brazos in 1837 and became one of the earliest settlers of what would grow into Waco, later serving as the county's first court clerk. A street, a school, and a creek in the city still carry his name.

Corsicana, TX

Born in Virginia in 1800, Thomas Ingles Smith soldiered in the War of 1812 under his father before coming to Texas in 1836 to join the Republic's army. He was wounded at the Battle of the Salado in 1842 and figured in the "Archive War" when Austin residents blocked his Rangers from removing the Republic's records. A frontier Ranger, Indian scout, and treaty commissioner, he lent his name to Fort Smith and helped found Corsicana before his death in 1848.

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.

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.

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.

Paris Township, OH

As war with Britain flared in 1812, the settlers scattered across the Ohio frontier of Union County raised a blockhouse here for refuge, wary of raids amid a conflict that drew Native nations, including the Shawnee, into the fighting along the frontier. Sturdy log strongpoints like this one dotted the young state's edge of settlement, offering shelter when alarm spread. The Daughters of the American Revolution later marked the site to preserve its memory.