Westward Expansion

Town of West Point, WI

This memorial park in the Wisconsin countryside honors James and Emma Richmond and the other early settlers who homesteaded the land beginning in 1849, not long after the region was surveyed in 1831. Gilbert and Ruth Richmond donated the ground so future generations could learn from and enjoy the striking rock formations known as the Rocks of Gibraltar. Dedicated in 1929 with the Friends of Our Native Landscape, it joins pioneer memory to the conservation of a natural landmark.

Columbus, TX

Riesing Cemetery was established in 1872, during the post–Civil War settlement of Colorado County, and was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2005. Though the marker records little beyond its founding date, the burial ground has served the surrounding community for more than 150 years.

Hubbard, TX

This Hubbard home, raised in 1896 by builder Lee Onstott, is a fine local example of the Victorian style then sweeping small-town Texas. Ornamental gables, tile hearths, and ornate glasswork show the decorative ambitions of a prospering Central Texas community at the close of the 19th century. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Pittsburg, TX

The oldest marked grave in this Camp County cemetery dates to 1859, and the surrounding land was acquired by John Riley, Sr., in 1875, giving the burial ground its name. Among those laid to rest here are the Riley family, a Confederate captain who had served in the Georgia legislature, and the family whose name marks the county's highest point. Descendants of these pioneers still live nearby and tend the historic graveyard.

Colleyville, TX

Around 1856 Jonathan Riley brought his family from Kentucky to this part of Tarrant County, receiving a land grant in 1863. Legend holds that the burial ground began when a thief killed nearby was laid to rest here with Riley's permission, after which family and neighbors also used the site; in 1883 Thomas Riley and William Autry formally set aside an acre for a graveyard. Most burials ended before 1897, though Riley's daughter Martha Susan Autry was interred here as late as 1937, among graves now marked only by sandstones or left unmarked.

Gregory, TX

In the 1850s Youngs Coleman and his son Thomas built a sprawling south Texas cattle operation centered on this spot, chosen for its freshwater depression. In 1871 the Colemans partnered with George W. Fulton and the Mathis brothers to create the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, whose Rincon headquarters grew into a small settlement with a main house, worker housing, a school, and a commissary. The ranch was prominent enough that President William Howard Taft visited in 1909 before the company dissolved in the 1920s.

Bogata, TX

When the Ringo family arrived from Missouri in 1840 with nine children, they set up a ferry across the Sulphur River that quickly became a lifeline for travel, trade, and news between the Red River country and central Texas. Their son expanded the family's holdings on both banks, and the crossing carried travelers until a bridge replaced it in 1900. Long after the ferry was gone, locals still called the spot Ringo's Crossing, and a small family cemetery marked the family's roots nearby.

Rio Vista, TX

Rio Vista rose on the railroad in 1885 in one of Johnson County's earliest-settled areas, taking its Spanish name — "river view" — from its outlook over the Nolan River and Mustang Creek. Within a decade it boasted stores, a lumber yard, gins, a school, and three passenger trains a day, until a devastating 1914 fire leveled 24 buildings and slowed its growth. Cotton and later dairy farming carried the town, and a 1950s state highway brought a fresh boost.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Ambrose Ripley brought his family to what was then Red River County in 1837, settling along the Cherokee Trace near the creek that now bears his name. On April 10, 1841, while he was away, a band of Indians attacked the farmstead, killing his eldest son and most of the family; two daughters escaped to a neighboring farm. The attack became a rallying point for President Mirabeau B. Lamar's aggressive frontier policies and spurred the militia campaigns of Edward H. Tarrant to drive Native people from the region.

Rising Star, TX

In January 1876 a handful of families rolled in by wagon train from Gregg County to a place marked by Indian raids, vigilante justice, and gunfights. A log building that served as both school and church anchored the community, and when the settlers' first choice of post-office name was rejected, they argued through the night and settled on "Rising Star" after glimpsing the morning star on their way home. The town incorporated in 1891 and grew into a center of ranching, peanuts, pecans, and oil, and even a poet laureate.

Center Point, TX

Chartered in 1875, this Hill Country Masonic lodge lost its first home, along with all its records, to a fire in 1900. For decades afterward its members met in the local bank building before moving to the present site in 1964. Its founding charter carried the names of fifteen early settlers of the Center Point area, including Joshua D. Brown, an early figure in the settlement of Kerr County.

Alpine, TX

Built in 1886 of frame and adobe, the Ritchey Hotel rose beside the cattle-loading pens of the Southern Pacific Railway in the vast, remote Big Bend country. Here cowhands and ranchers who had driven stock in from scattered ranches could find a bed, a drink, and company while waiting to ship their cattle east by rail. It captures the moment when the railroad transformed West Texas ranching from an isolated frontier trade into part of a national market.

Seabrook, TX

Virginia-born Ritson Morris reached Texas around 1827, married into the Edwards family, and settled near his father-in-law's grant in Stephen F. Austin's colony. On a 3,000-acre Mexican land grant he built the Elmwood plantation, raising crops and livestock and joining the 1832 and 1835 skirmishes at Anahuac that helped ignite the Texas Revolution. His family sheltered in New Orleans during the war, then returned to farm the land for generations.

Wichita Falls, TX

Riverside Cemetery dates to the earliest days of Wichita Falls, chartered as a cemetery association in 1885 soon after the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad reached the young town. Named for its site near the Wichita River, it passed to city ownership in 1892, and Black residents organized the "Riverside Colored Burial Association," purchasing a half-acre where hundreds were laid to rest. Among those interred are Texas governor James V. Allred, "Father of Wichita Falls" Joseph H. Barwise, and the city's first female realtor, Minnie Mae Kemp Adickes.

Iredell, TX

According to local tradition, the land for this cemetery and its neighboring church was given by the family of Ward Keeler, a New York native who reached Bosque County around 1870 and founded the town of Iredell. The oldest documented grave is that of James W.P. Ware, who died in November 1870. For generations the primary burial ground for Iredell, Riverside holds more than a thousand marked and unmarked graves whose varied headstones recall the community's pioneer heritage.

Seguin, TX

Riverside Cemetery began as the family graveyard of Ezekiel and Susanna Smith, Virginia migrants who reached Texas in the 1830s; Ezekiel received a Guadalupe County land grant in 1837. Their son French Smith, an early shareholder in Seguin, donated land for a park, school, and church and in 1880 deeded the family plot to the city, which combined it with adjoining grounds into a 15-acre public cemetery. Its more than 2,000 burials include pioneers, officials, business leaders, clergy, and former slaves, and volunteers restored the neglected site in the 1990s.

Riviera, TX

Founded in 1910, just three years after the town of Riviera itself, this congregation began with 31 charter members meeting in a one-room schoolhouse before building its sanctuary in 1912. The church anchored a sprawling South Texas district of vegetable and citrus farms. Through hurricanes and drought that shrank the town, it has held on in that same 1912 building.

Roanoke, TX

When the Texas & Pacific Railroad pushed through North Texas in 1881, a surveyor homesick for Roanoke, Virginia gave this new depot town its name — though settlers had been working the land here since the 1840s. Sitting halfway between Fort Worth and Denton, Roanoke thrived as a shipping point where ranchers loaded cattle for northern markets and farmers sent out wheat and cotton. By 1890 it had four churches, a school, and a cotton gin; by the early 1900s a newspaper, bank, and grain elevator. Notably, the property of John and Almedia Jones served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Roanoke, TX

In 1897 members of the local Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge bought this five-and-a-half-acre tract as a public burial ground, open to all rather than reserved for their own families. Its stones tell the story of a young North Texas community — pioneer families, a railroad crew's section from the 1920s, and even an alleged horse thief hanged from a tree here in 1906. James DeWitt Pressley, who died in 1897, was the first laid to rest.

Midway, TX

Where the San Antonio and La Bahia roads met the Trinity River, travelers once forded a spot called Paso Tomas. About 1821 Joel Leakey established a ferry here, and it took its lasting name from Nathaniel Robbins, who ran it for years. The Clapp family acquired the crossing around 1852 and operated it until a bridge finally replaced the ferry in 1930.

Terrell, TX

Robert Adams Terrell wandered from Tennessee through Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana before reaching the Republic of Texas around 1840. As a surveyor he located headright land grants across North Texas—paid in vast tracts of land—served in Republic expeditions, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. The town of Terrell rose on land he had surveyed and took his name.

Terrell, TX

This octagon-shaped house was built in 1864 for Robert A. Terrell (1820–1881), a pioneer settler whose 1845 log cabin once stood here and for whom the town of Terrell was named. Octagon houses were a briefly fashionable American experiment, believed to offer better light and air, and few survive in Texas today. The home passed through a succession of owners after 1897.

Helena, MT

Robert E. Fisk arrived in Montana with the 1866 wagon expedition led by his brother James, a famed trail guide who steered settlers across the northern plains. That same November the brothers and partners founded the Helena Herald, giving the raw gold-rush capital one of its earliest newspapers. A printer by trade before the Civil War, Robert helped shape public life in territorial Montana through the press.

San Antonio, TX

Robert B. Evans left Tennessee in 1847 and joined the 1849 rush to California, where he panned enough gold to buy this Texas land in 1865. Built in 1882 of stone quarried from Buda, the house sheltered Evans, his wife Rebecca, and the nine children they raised here; an 1865 smokehouse still stands on the east side. It earned recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1969.

Wortham, TX

Robert B. Longbotham (1797–1883) was born in Sunderland, England, and crossed the Atlantic as a carpenter's apprentice aboard ship. After marrying in Alabama, he came to Texas in 1832, secured a land grant from Mexico, and fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution and in Indian conflicts of 1839. He settled at this place in 1848, and the town bore his name until its post office was renamed Wortham in 1874.

Orange, TX

Robert B. Russell's life traces the arc of nineteenth-century Texas itself. A Connecticut-born young man, he came to San Augustine in 1835 and fought at San Jacinto, the 1836 battle that won Texas its independence, before turning to newspaper publishing on the frontier. He later settled in the raw lumber country around Orange, served as its postmaster during the Confederacy, and built a steam-powered shingle mill—only to die in a mill accident in 1880.

Chico, TX

Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.

Winters, TX

Robert Cooke, a Texas-born son of pioneers, earned his medical degree in Kentucky in 1886 and came to the Winters area in 1889, becoming the fledgling town's first physician. He doubled as a man of the church — a Baptist deacon and later preacher — beloved as both healer of bodies and shepherd of souls.

Austin, TX

This headstone marks the grave of Robert Crudup (1804–1870), remembered on its reverse as a member of the Twelfth Legislature. That body convened in 1870 during Reconstruction, as Texas rebuilt its government after the Civil War. The spare inscription preserves the memory of a man who helped shape the state at a turbulent political moment.

Seguin, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1806, Robert D. McAnelly came to Texas in 1835 and joined the army marching on San Antonio. He was among the storming party that entered Bexar on December 5, 1835, one of the opening blows of the Texas Revolution against Mexican rule. He lived out his days in Guadalupe County, dying there in 1888, and the State of Texas raised this marker to him in 1962.

Leming, TX

Robert E. Neill came to Texas as a small boy in the 1830s and, though a childhood accident crippled his left arm, went on to soldier through three of the era's conflicts. He served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War of 1847, rode with the Texas Rangers on frontier duty, and closed his military life fighting for the Confederacy. Afterward he returned to ranching in Atascosa County, where he raised five children and died in 1878.

Austin, TX

South Carolina–born Robert Eanes brought his family to Travis County in 1872, following a brother who had settled the area decades earlier. Buying a ranch from that brother, he built the first school in the neighborhood, and both the community and the school came to bear the Eanes name. He was laid to rest here in 1895 beside his wife, Eliza.

San Marcos, TX

This one-story frame house was built in 1906 by local contractor H. C. Leffingwell for Robert Early McKie, a San Marcos native, attorney, and descendant of area pioneers. Costing $2,000, it blends Italianate tall windows with Colonial Revival porch columns, topped by a pyramidal roof and wraparound porch. It has been a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1989.

Belton, TX

Robert Emmet Bledsoe Baylor served in the legislatures of Kentucky and Alabama and in the U.S. Congress before coming to Texas in 1839, where he became an associate justice of the Republic's Supreme Court and a long-serving district judge. A lay Baptist preacher, he carried his Bible alongside his law books, holding court one day and preaching the next after riding as far as fifty miles between towns. He helped organize the Texas Baptist Convention and lent his name to Baylor University and Mary Hardin-Baylor College, and he sat on the bench as Texas pioneered homestead and community-property protections.

Alto, TX

An Ohio native, Robert F. Mitchell arrived in the Republic of Texas in 1837 and, after a stint in the mercantile trade at Nacogdoches, settled in Cherokee County in 1849. His land on the high ground between the Neches and Angelina rivers became the townsite of Alto — Latin for "high." A storekeeper, ginner, and hotelkeeper, Mitchell was a driving force in the young town's growth over the following decades.

Llano, TX

Llano County leader Robert Flack "Bob" Rowntree built this majestic two-story house between 1875 and 1888, its 20-inch sandstone-and-limestone walls designed by Scottish architect John K. Finlay, a pioneer of the Texas granite industry. Each of its eight rooms had a fireplace, and porches on both floors looked out over Prairie and Rough Mountains from his 8,500-acre ranch. Rowntree died suddenly in 1893, a death some tied to his role in the region's Hoodoo War, and the house later passed to the Marschall family.

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.

Negley, TX

Robert Hamilton, born in Scotland in 1783, cast his lot with the Texas independence movement and on March 2, 1836, was among the delegates who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He settled in Red River County, where he died in 1843, during the years of the young Republic of Texas.

Flatonia, TX

This grave marker, set with the Star and Wreath of the Texas Revolution, honors a man who fought through the pivotal campaigns of Texas independence. Robert Hancock Hunter stood at Gonzales — where the "Come and Take It" defiance sparked the revolt — through the Siege of Bexar, and finally at San Jacinto in April 1836, the eighteen-minute battle that won the Republic of Texas. The State of Texas placed this memorial in 1962.

Bryan, TX

Born in Ireland in 1801, Robert Henry came to America in 1820 and to Robertson's Colony in Texas in 1832. In the 1836 war for independence he served with the 2nd Regiment of Texas Volunteer Infantry and was among the victors at San Jacinto. A staunch Presbyterian who prized his faith and a prominent figure in public life, he held a justice-of-the-peace court in the shade of trees and raised thirteen children whose descendants became noted Texans.

Glenview, IL

Robert Kennicott (1835–1866) was a pioneering naturalist who grew up at The Grove in Glenview and became a driving force in early American science, helping found the Chicago Academy of Sciences and collecting specimens for the Smithsonian. He led expeditions into the far Northwest and Russian Alaska as part of the Western Union Telegraph survey, where he died in the field at just thirty, work that helped inform the United States' purchase of Alaska soon after.

Pearland, TX

Robert Lee Hunter descended from Dr. Johnson Calhoun Hunter, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, and grew up on the family's Fort Bend County plantation. Around 1903 he sold his holdings and moved to Pearland, then known as Mark Belt, to raise cattle with his brother-in-law, and in 1905 he married Nebraska-born Julia Iva Martin, whose family had settled the area in 1894. Respected community members remembered for offering advice and hospitality to former slaves, the couple later had a Pearland park named in their honor.

Bastrop, TX

Robert Love Reding, born in Tennessee in 1810, joined the Army of Texas and took part in the capture of Goliad on October 9, 1835, one of the opening actions of the Texas Revolution. He was also a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence, an early call for Texas separation from Mexico. He died in 1849, and this marker in Bastrop County honors his part in the fight for Texas independence.

Coleman, TX

Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in 1832 and threw himself into the revolution, commanding volunteers at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. As a delegate he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and then served as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later took up arms as a Texas Ranger on the frontier before his death in 1837.

Anahuac, TX

Robert McAlpin Williamson, nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie" for the pegleg he wore after a boyhood illness, settled in Texas in 1827 to practice law. At Fort Anahuac in 1832 he made a bold stand against the Mexican commandant Juan Davis Bradburn, who had jailed his friends Patrick Jack and William Barret Travis — an early flashpoint on the road to revolution. Williamson went on to fight at San Jacinto and serve as a district judge and justice of the Republic's first supreme court.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

Robert Patterson chaired mathematics and served as vice-provost at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1800s, a respected man of science in the young republic. In 1803 he tutored Meriwether Lewis in the celestial navigation and surveying skills the explorer would need to chart the unknown West. From this home Patterson helped equip the Lewis and Clark Expedition with the mathematical tools of discovery.

Austin, TX

Robert Potter arrived in Texas after a turbulent political career in North Carolina, where he had served in both the state legislature and the U.S. Congress. In 1836 he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and became the first Secretary of the Navy of the Republic of Texas. He died violently in 1842 at the place now known as Potter's Point.

Houston County, TX

Robert S. Patton reached Texas in December 1834, received a land grant, and became one of Houston County's earliest Anglo settlers, raising thirteen children with his wife Louisa. This family graveyard holds six of those children, a relative whose 1860 grave is the oldest marked here, and the grave of a person the family enslaved. The last burial took place in 1898.

Victoria, TX

Robert S. Weisiger became a Victoria County deputy sheriff at nineteen and went on to serve multiple terms as county sheriff between 1906 and 1936. In the early days he rode horseback to carry out his duties, bringing suspects in the area's major crimes to trial. In 1917 he helped quell a riot involving soldiers from Camp Logan.

Sterling City, TX

Kentucky-born Robert West Foster arrived in the Sterling County country in 1881 with his brother, part of the wave of ranchers who settled West Texas as the open range gave way to permanent communities. Before rail lines reached the area, Foster drove his cattle the long distance to market in Fort Worth. He put down roots as a founder of the local Methodist church and a bank director, and gave over part of his own ranch land for community use.

San Augustine, TX

Founded in 1872 by the Rev. John Patton in a brush arbor, this congregation first built on land donated by Elisha Roberts before moving to its present site in 1918. Its story is one of remarkable continuity: the Rev. Jim Canton and his son Hubert together held the Roberts pulpit for 58 years, and many member families have stayed faithful across generations.

Jacksboro, TX

As settlers pushed into North Texas in the early 1870s, a small ranching and sharecropping community took root along Roberts Branch, a Trinity River tributary named for a visiting Texas jurist who would soon be governor. The oldest graves here cluster around an unknown cowboy who died on a cattle drive, marked at first only by rough sandstone; the earliest dated stone belongs to an infant from 1881. Tended each spring since the 1890s, the ground also holds more than twenty veterans spanning the Civil War through Vietnam.

Hockley, TX

Abraham Roberts, a member of Stephen F. Austin's Colony, came to Texas in the late 1820s and named his settlement New Kentucky; by the 1840s it had become the German-settled Spring Creek community. His own burial around 1850 is thought to be the first here, and the ground grew into a community cemetery holding the Roberts, Schultz, and Montgomery families. A nearby separate burial ground is believed to have been set aside for enslaved people of the Montgomery plantation, and the graveyard remains in use today.

Miami, TX

Carved from earlier Young and Bexar territories, Roberts County was created in 1876 and organized in 1889 on the sparsely settled Texas Panhandle. It carries a double namesake: John S. Roberts, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and Oran Milo Roberts, who served as governor from 1878 to 1882. Its county seat bounced between Miami and Parnell before Miami secured it permanently in 1898.

Austin, TX

In the 1860s the Roberts and Teague families settled the rugged Bee Cave country west of Austin, making their living as farmers, ranchers, cedar choppers, and coal-kiln burners. This cemetery is said to have begun in 1898 when Joseph Roberts offered a plot to a grieving family for an infant's burial. Among the veterans buried here is Alfred R. "Buck" Simpson, remembered as one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I.

Franklin, TX

Robertson County grew from an 1822 colonization contract held by Sterling Clack Robertson, who recruited settlers from Tennessee and later signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Created in 1837 and organized in 1838, the county shuffled its seat among a half-dozen towns before settling on Franklin in 1879. During the Civil War it sent five companies into Confederate service and turned its mills toward making cloth, flour, and supplies for soldiers' families.

Franklin, TX

This white limestone courthouse, raised in 1882 for $30,000, was the fourth to serve Robertson County — and it stood in a town that owed both its location and its name to the railroad. When the county seat moved to the International & Great Northern line in 1879, the new town of Morgan had to be renamed Franklin to avoid duplicating an existing Texas post office. Architect F. E. Ruffini drew the plans that same era.

Austin, TX

Built in 1876 within the original 1839 town plan Edwin Waller drew for Austin, this two-and-a-half-story farmhouse blends the Second Empire style—its signature mansard roof and dormers—with Italianate detailing. The Robinson family who raised it were closely tied to the prominent Bremonds nearby, and both John Robinson and later owner Joe Macken served the young capital as volunteer fire chief and city alderman. Moved fifty feet in the early 1900s and held by the Macken family until 1983, it later became offices for a Presbyterian children's agency.

Roby, TX

Roby took shape on land once granted to Texas independence veteran Thomas H. Cosby, first platted in 1885 by D. C. and M. L. Roby of Mississippi. Determined to make their town the seat of Fisher County, the Robys' attorneys donated land for churches, schools, a park, and a cemetery, and offered lots to anyone who would build within ninety days. Roby won the county-seat election in April 1886, holding its first court in a shed and later raising a succession of courthouses.

Roby, TX

When Fisher County was still raw frontier in the 1880s, the brothers D. C. and M. L. Roby bought thousands of acres, platted a townsite, and set aside land—already holding an 1884 grave—as a free public cemetery. For generations it served as the county's principal burial ground, gathering pioneer families, Civil War veterans, and "Aunt" Abbie Alborn, a formerly enslaved woman who reached Texas from Tennessee in 1886. The graveyard grew from seven acres to twenty-one as the community it served took root.