Westward Expansion

Brownfield, TX

A. M. Brownfield arrived in newly settled Terry County as a rancher in 1900 and helped anchor the community that took his family's name, organizing the Brownfield State Bank in 1905. In 1928 he built this Spanish Colonial–style residence of concrete and clay, deliberately fireproofed after an earlier family home burned in 1915. The house was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1985.

Jefferson, TX

This early-twentieth-century cottage was built for Angus Mezappa Urquhart, grandson of Allen Urquhart, one of the founders of the river town of Jefferson. Its Eastlake styling shows in the wraparound porch with turned balustrade and spindle frieze and the jig-cut bargeboards, hallmarks of the ornamental Victorian woodwork popular in the period. The house was later designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Leander, TX

About 1866, in the years just after the Civil War, farmer and veteran Alpheus S. Mason raised this double-galleried home along Bagdad Road, a military and commercial artery threading through central Texas. Mason threw himself into the life of the region—church, business, Masonic lodge, and politics—helping the town of Bagdad grow before it faded into a ghost town and nearby Leander rose in its place. The Victorian-trimmed porch still speaks of a prosperous frontier farmer putting down roots on a well-traveled road.

Houston County, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1814, Aaron Lowery lived in Tennessee and Louisiana before entering Texas in 1835, where he promptly joined the Texian Army — enlisting in Capt. George English's company at the same time as Sam Houston. He saw action in the Battle of Bexar during the Texas Revolution. He later married Louisa English, moved to Trinity County around 1851, and raised ten children.

Sherman, TX

Aaron Mangum came to Texas from South Carolina with a Georgia battalion in 1835 and served under Colonel James Fannin at Goliad during the Texas Revolution. Falling ill on an expeditionary mission, he was away from the garrison and so survived the massacre of Fannin's men in 1836. He later married Leonora Snively and settled in Grayson County; the town of Mangum, Oklahoma, carries his name.

Abbott, TX

In 1881 the Missouri, Kansas & Texas (Katy) Railroad laid a line through a new Hill County town named for Joseph Abbott, a local lawyer and U.S. congressman. Merchant Winston Treadwell soon opened a general store, and within a decade Abbott boasted a school, a post office, several businesses, and three churches. Devastating fires near the turn of the century failed to break the town, whose residents simply rebuilt.

Corrigan, TX

This pioneer graveyard served the vanished community of Asia, which grew up along Paces Creek after Samuel Crissman received a land headright in 1835. Settlers like the Meadows, Snell, and Standley families made it home, and James Standley's blacksmith and cabinet shops formed its nucleus. When the Trinity and Sabine Railway and a Houston sawmill arrived in the mid-1880s, loggers and mill workers poured in — until the timber was cut out before 1910 and the town faded away. Descendants restored the overgrown burial ground in the 1990s.

Abbott, TX

The first Methodist service in Abbott was held in 1883 by the Rev. G.W. Swofford, and a congregation quickly formed as a stop on the Hillsboro circuit. By 1886 it counted more than 600 members, and the current sanctuary was completed in 1899, succeeding the first frame chapel of 1884. Though the town and congregation both thinned after the 1940s, the church still carries deep ties to Abbott's early heritage.

Hillsboro, TX

Along Hackberry Creek in early Hillsboro grew a shady stand of pecan, hackberry, and elm that townspeople claimed for picnics, concerts, ball games, and reunions. They named it for Joseph "Jo" Abbott (1840–1908) — a nearby resident and a distinguished lawyer, judge, Texas legislator, and U.S. Congressman who often spoke there at anti-prohibition rallies. After his death, banker George Carmichael bought the Abbott home and helped turn the grove into a municipal park, a role it still fills today.

Victoria, TX

Abel Seymour Cunningham belonged to the generation of settlers who turned Texas from a Mexican province into an independent republic. He took up arms in the 1836 Texas War for Independence, then served the young Republic of Texas as a ranger guarding its raw frontier and as a congressman helping build its government. The State of Texas honored his service with this marker in 1962.

Aberdeen, OH

The village of Aberdeen was founded in 1816 on the north bank of the Ohio River at the terminus of Zane's Trace, the first continuous road cut through Ohio. Blazed under Ebenezer Zane in the late 1790s, the Trace linked Wheeling to the Ohio River crossing at Maysville, opening the interior to settlers, mail, and trade. Aberdeen grew up as a river crossing and gateway at the road's western end.

Abilene, TX

Abilene Municipal Cemetery grew from five separate burial grounds, the oldest documented grave being that of Florence Phillips, laid to rest in the Masonic section in 1881 as the town was taking shape. Among those interred are Mary Houston Morrow, an Abilene postmistress and daughter of Sam Houston; C.W. Merchant, who donated land and helped found the town; Dr. W.H. Butler, an African American physician; and suffragist Jewel Scarborough. The city gradually took charge of the Masonic, Odd Fellows, and Cedar Hill grounds, which together hold more than 26,000 people.

Terrell, TX

Settled in 1853 by James and Eliza Ables on a Republic-era land grant, this cluster of natural springs in northeast Kaufman County grew into a quiet Methodist farming community. In 1878 the Ables family deeded nearly nine acres for a church, a camp-meeting tabernacle, a public school, and this cemetery, whose oldest marked grave dates to 1880. Church of Christ and Baptist fellowships and a Woodmen of the World lodge followed, but Ables Springs never became a commercial hub—it endured as a rural settlement whose school served the area until consolidation.

North Bend, OH

The Ohio Valley into which Abraham Brower was born in 1822 was still a raw frontier, a patchwork of new river towns and cleared farmland spreading out from the Ohio River just a generation after the first American settlers pushed west of the Appalachians. North Bend, his corner of Hamilton County, sat on the river below Cincinnati and had already given the young nation a president in William Henry Harrison. A man who lived here from 1822 to 1911, as this memorial records, would have watched the valley transform from wilderness clearings into a settled landscape of farms, steamboats, and growing towns over the course of a long American century.

Dallas, TX

This half-acre family burial ground holds twenty-one graves and six generations of the Carver family. The patriarch, Abraham Carver (1806–1883), came to Texas in 1844 with his brothers Solomon and Daniel, and the cemetery sits on part of his original 320-acre land grant. Burials continued into the 20th century, the last in 1946.

Damon, TX

Abraham Darst came to Mexican Texas from Missouri in 1827 as one of Stephen F. Austin's colonists, part of the first wave of Anglo-American settlement on the Brazos. He took up arms in the 1832 Battle of Velasco, an early clash with Mexican authority, and though he died in 1833, five of his sons served in the Army of Texas during the revolution of 1836.

Hampshire County, WV

The Kackley family were among the settler households that put down roots in Hampshire County, one of the oldest counties in present-day West Virginia, carved out of the Virginia backcountry along the South Branch of the Potomac in the mid-1700s. A house carrying the family name marks the kind of modest, durable frontier homestead that anchored these Appalachian valleys as farming families cleared land and built for the generations to follow. Homes like this one outlasted their builders to become quiet landmarks of a region settled well before West Virginia existed as a state.

Pittsboro, NC

Abraham Rencher of Chatham County built a wide-ranging public career as a congressman, U.S. Minister to Portugal, and Governor of the Territory of New Mexico from 1857 to 1861. He was also known as a poet and essayist. He is buried two blocks west of this marker.

Tomball, TX

Abraham Roberts (1773–1850), a Georgia native, settled on Spring Creek about 1829 at a crossroads in the thinly settled community of New Kentucky. On April 16, 1836, Sam Houston's retreating army paused here, uncertain whether their general would keep withdrawing east. When soldiers asked Roberts—standing at his gate—the way to Harrisburg, he pointed southeast, a great shout went up, and Houston took that road, leading to the decisive victory at San Jacinto five days later.

Orangefield, TX

A Louisiana native, Abraham Winfree brought his family to the Texas frontier in the early 1830s, settling on Cow Bayou near the old Opelousas Trail while Texas was still winning its independence. He made his living as rancher, cattle drover, shingle maker, and logger, and in 1836 his home hosted the election of a delegate to the Congress of the young Republic of Texas. The community that grew up around him still bears his name, though he asked to be buried without a stone in an unmarked grave.

Columbus, TX

Abram Alley came from Missouri in the 1820s to join his brothers among the first colonists of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, settling near the Colorado River. During the Texas war for independence he helped settlers flee the advancing army in the panicked Runaway Scrape, and his own home was burned. He returned late in 1836 to build this oak-log cabin, where he and his wife raised five children and welcomed travelers.

Groesbeck, TX

Born in 1817, Abram Anglin served as an early Ranger during the Texas War for Independence, riding with Captain Seale's company in 1835–36 under authority of the provisional Council of Texas. He lived on into the frontier era of the Republic and statehood, dying in 1875. His grave marker, crowned with the star and wreath, commemorates the volunteer soldiers who fought to sever Texas from Mexico.

Bastrop, TX

Abram Wiley Hill served as a soldier in the Texas War for Independence in 1836 and stood among the victors at San Jacinto, where Sam Houston's army routed Santa Anna and secured the Republic. The State of Texas placed this 'Star and Wreath' marker in 1962 to commemorate his service.

Southlake, TX

When Absalom H. Chivers left Mississippi for the Texas frontier around 1852, he brought the plantation economy with him, working a farm along Dove Creek with five enslaved people until his death in 1856. His grave is believed to be the first in this family burial ground, formally set aside as a cemetery in 1889 by his widow Eleanor. The native sandstone cairns marking the graves preserve the improvised burial customs of pioneer North Texas.

Borger, TX

Asa P. "Ace" Borger, a Missouri-born townsite promoter, platted this Panhandle boomtown in 1926 and worked to tame a rowdy oil camp into a lasting community. In 1928–29 he and his wife Elizabeth built this two-story house—the first brick residence in Borger. It stayed in the family for three generations. Ace earned a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark designation in 1976.

Stephenville vicinity, TX

According to oral tradition, a traveler named John Wright died here around 1857-58 on his way west, and landowner Clayborn Oxford donated ground for his burial. The earliest marked grave is that of Oxford's infant grandson William, buried in 1859, and the family deeded the graveyard to Erath County in 1888 for the growing community, which lent it the name Acrea. Descendants of the pioneer families still tend it today.

Acton, TX

In 1855, a preacher known as "Fighting Joe" Robinson gathered about twenty charter members to organize a Baptist congregation on the North Texas frontier at Acton. He was succeeded by the Rev. James Halford, a son-in-law of frontiersman David Crockett, whose family had settled nearby. For years the Baptists shared a communal building called the Long House before raising their own sanctuary in 1894, a structure still in use today.

Acton, TX

Acton Cemetery holds the grave of Elizabeth Patton Crockett (1788–1860), widow of Alamo hero David Crockett, along with two of his children; a monument and statue were raised in her memory in 1911. The surrounding grounds form the smallest state park in Texas. The community — first called Comanche Peak — was renamed Acton in 1855 by merchant C. P. Hollis, and pioneers set aside this plot as a burial ground after building a shared church and school.

Los Angeles County, CA

This marker traces the roots of the Acton Community Presbyterian Church to April 28, 1888, when settlers in this high-desert corner of Los Angeles County first gathered as the Union Moral and Religious Association of Acton. A retired pastor, John Robbins, was called back to lead them, and within two years the congregation had taken shape. Acton was then a small mining and railroad settlement along the route through the Soledad Canyon.

Acton, TX

The settlement once called Comanche Peak Post Office took shape in the early 1850s, and its Methodists first worshipped in a shared union church and the local Masonic hall before establishing themselves on their own. In 1874 the trustees bought land here for church, school, and burials, raised their first sanctuary in 1899, and grew steadily—especially after the nearby de Cordova Bend Reservoir revived the area in the 1960s. From a handful of frontier worshippers the congregation swelled into the hundreds by the 1990s.

Acton, TX

The oldest community in present-day Hood County, Acton was settled in the 1850s and first called "Comanche Peak" when its post office opened in 1856. Renamed Acton by 1868, the town centered on this public square, donated by pioneer merchant Clarence P. Hollis, which once buzzed with commerce before fires and decline set in. The square was resurveyed and restored in 1974 as the heart of the rural community.

Spring Branch, TX

German native Adam Becker came to Texas in 1845 to join Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and the Adelsverein colonization effort, helping build Fredericksburg before establishing his own homestead here by 1852. He raised cattle and built a house of locally quarried stone and hand-hewn cypress cut from the nearby Guadalupe River. Becker became a U.S. citizen in 1860 and, at his death in 1901, was buried in the cemetery on his own land.

Somerset, PA · est. 1954

In 1795, as settlement pushed into the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Adam Schneider laid out the northern half of the newly renamed town of Somerset. With his brother Jacob he opened the settlement's first store on this site, giving the young frontier community an early anchor of commerce and everyday life.

Moscow, TX

This burial ground, now named for a former county commissioner, began as a family graveyard for the Lotts, who moved from Mississippi to the Republic of Texas in 1843. Their son Calvin farmed the land and served as a Confederate soldier and in the Texas State Troops during the Civil War; his 1884 grave is the oldest marked burial, though earlier unmarked graves are believed to lie here. Known over the years by several names, the cemetery preserves the memory of Polk County's pioneer families.

Logan, TX

After the Civil War, Lorenzo H. Adams (1849–1912) came from Arkansas to this corner of Panola County, serving over the years as constable, justice of the peace, and deputy sheriff. When his young daughter Georgia Anne died in 1884, Adams donated an acre around her grave as a public cemetery. Its stones—Baker, Goodwin, Kilburn, McNeese and others—record pioneer families and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.

Brownwood, TX

Around 1876, rancher and former Texas Ranger George H. Adams—who had his cattle brand carved into the front step—built this sandstone house from local Willis Creek stone, laid up by English-born mason William Frederick Morton. The Shaw family bought it in 1908, and their descendants restored and enlarged it after 1945.

Adamsville, TX

Settlement of this Lampasas County community began just before the county organized in 1856, and it grew around Oliver Hazzard Perry Townsen's flour mill on the Lampasas River. By the 1880s the crossroads had steam mills, churches, a school, and a general store whose partners, John T. Adams and Rev. McCall Smith, gave rise to the platted town of Adamsville in 1908. Over the following century it evolved from a frontier milling settlement into a close-knit rural community of fiddling jams and community barbecues.

Graham, TX

Born in Indiana in 1843, Agnes Mary "Addie" Kinter married Edwin Smith Graham, who with his brother founded this North Texas town in 1872. After her husband's death, Addie returned to Graham and poured her fortune into it — endowing schools, building a home for the aged poor, and in 1910 funding the water-filtering plant that stood on this spot for 75 years. Her giving shaped the town's civic life for decades after her death in 1929.

Lexington, TX

After serving in the Civil War, Alabama native R.L. Cain settled in this part of Lee County and in 1867 deeded five acres for a community cemetery, then known as Cain School Community. The settlement was renamed Adina when its post office opened, and the graveyard took the name with it; among its oldest burials is Martha Cane Slaughter, who died in 1871. In 2001 several graves — including that of William B. Craddock, a victim of the lawless violence that plagued the area in the 1870s and 1880s — were reinterred here beside relatives.

Baird vicinity, TX

Organized in 1881 with nine charter members, this congregation first gathered pioneer settlers of the Admiral community in a log cabin, under brush arbors, and in local schoolhouses before building a sanctuary near the turn of the century. Known first as Shiloh Baptist, it took the community's name in 1905. The church disbanded in 1968, and its historic building was destroyed by arson in 1993, leaving the cemetery to mark a settlement that once had stores, doctors, a gin, a school, and a post office.

Boerne, TX

Born in Boerne in 1869 to Prussian immigrants, Adolph "Ad" Toepperwein learned to shoot from his gunsmith father and could outshoot seasoned marksmen by age ten. After stints as a cartoonist, vaudeville performer, and circus act, he signed with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1901 as an exhibition shooter. With his wife Elizabeth—whom he taught to shoot—he toured for over forty years as "The Wonderful Toepperweins," setting records that landed him in Ripley's, the Guinness Book, and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Edom, TX

Adren Anglin came to Texas from Kentucky in 1833 and helped build Fort Parker in present Limestone County, a frontier stronghold against attack. He became a Texas Ranger in 1835 and furnished food and supplies to the revolutionary army during Texas' fight for independence, earning a headright grant in Henderson County. He married Phebe Parker, tying him to one of the era's most storied frontier families.

Blanco, TX

Built before 1873 with walls a full sixteen inches thick, this Blanco home was equipped for self-sufficiency with a hand-dug well, a rock-walled cellar, and an underground cistern. Its sturdy stone construction reflects the practical building of the Hill Country's early settlers. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Victoria, TX

Agapito De Leon was the fourth son of empresario Don Martín De León, the founder of Victoria and its Mexican colony, and grew up active in the colony's affairs and its cattle and livestock trade. A Texas patriot during the 1836 War for Independence and a noted frontier fighter, he was cut down soon after the war by Mabry 'Mustang' Gray, whose gang preyed systematically on Texans of Mexican descent. He died in 1836 at just twenty-eight.

Roanoke, VA

On a quiet knoll near Roanoke lie Col. Elijah McClanahan and his wife, Agatha Strother Lewis, members of one of frontier Virginia's most prominent families. Agatha descended from the storied Lewis line: her grandfather, Gen. Andrew Lewis, commanded colonial militia at the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore's War and rose to brigadier general in the Revolution. The marker preserves the memory of an early settler family whose roots stretched across the mountains as Virginia pushed westward in the late eighteenth century.

Hebbronville, TX

On land granted by the Spanish crown along the twin lakes of southeastern Jim Hogg County, the Ramírez family worked the range for generations from their base in Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas. As raiding threats eased in the late 1800s, the vaqueros and their families began staying permanently, and heirs of the Agua Nueva de Arriba and de Abajo land grants settled here. The cemetery's earliest graves — cowboys and children marked with mesquite crosses, and stone bóvedas dated to 1900–1904 — hold six generations of border families.

Dallas, TX

Ahab Bowen came to Dallas in 1861 from Tennessee and made his living as a farmer and feed dealer, buying this land in 1867 when it still lay beyond the young city's limits. Around 1874 he built this modest wood-frame farmhouse for his family, a plain vernacular home of a kind once common across rural Dallas County. As the city swelled around it, the house survived as one of the few reminders of the county's 19th-century agricultural roots.

Walker County, TX

This hill marked a landmark on the old Colony Road running between Huntsville and Ryan's Ferry on the Trinity River. It takes its name from Thomas Akin, a Mississippi native who came to Texas in 1853 with his wife Ruth and built a cabin at its base in the rural community of McGuire. During the Civil War Akin rode as a courier for Confederate General John B. Hood while his wife moved their family of seven children to safety farther east.

Desdemona vicinity, TX

This burial ground began when pioneer William Mansker set aside part of his land for a school and community cemetery in the mid-19th century, serving Anglo settlers drawn together by the hardships of frontier Texas. Family clusters like the four Bell children who died in 1877, graves marked only by fieldstones, and the interment of veterans of several wars all testify to the precarious lives of those who built the Alameda community.

Pecos, TX

This courthouse statue in Pecos honors the famous 'Alamo letter,' William Barret Travis's 1836 appeal from the besieged mission at San Antonio de Béxar, signed 'Victory or Death.' Written during the Texas Revolution as a small garrison faced the Mexican army, the letter became one of the most stirring documents in Texas history. Its placement before a West Texas courthouse reflects how deeply the Alamo's defiance entered the state's civic identity.

Maysville, KY

Long before any road was surveyed, great herds of bison wore this path into the Ohio Valley wilderness as they moved toward the region's salt licks. Native peoples—including the mound-building cultures of earlier ages—followed the same trace, and it later carried Indian war and hunting parties, earning the name Warrior's Path. When pioneers arrived, they too walked in the buffalo's footsteps, turning an animal track into a highway of settlement.

Alanreed, TX

Spread over ten acres on a rise above town, Alanreed Cemetery grew alongside the community's rise as a supply point on the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad. The town itself took shape in 1902 when the post office moved and was renamed for a Philadelphia railroad trustee, Alan H. Reed. The oldest marked grave dates to 1899, and family plot fences, Woodmen of the World markers, and the graves of veterans and local leaders record the area's heritage.

Monroe Township, PA · est. 1947

On July 6, 1754, at the great intercolonial council in Albany, the Six Nations of the Iroquois deeded a vast tract of land to Pennsylvania's Proprietors — a transaction that opened enormous new territory to European settlement. The northeast corner of that purchase lay a mile north of Penns Creek, its boundary running vaguely 'north of the west as far as your Province extends.' Such sweeping and loosely defined cessions would soon fuel bitter conflict on the frontier.

Dallas, TX

Illinois native Albert Carver (1827–1911) bought land here in 1856, settled with his family, and became a farmer and noted breeder of Durham cattle. He set aside this plot as a family graveyard, where he, his wife Mary, four sons, and their families are buried; the oldest marked grave, from 1885, belongs to an infant grandson. The cemetery remains a quiet reminder of a pioneer family and the settlement of the area.

Wharton, TX

Albert Clinton Horton came to Texas in 1834, raised volunteers in Alabama for the revolution, and served as a cavalry colonel before helping launch the Republic of Texas — chairing the commission that chose Austin as its capital in 1839. When Texas joined the Union in 1845 he became its first lieutenant governor and served as acting governor while Governor Henderson fought in the Mexican War. A planter and a founder of Baylor University, he lived at "Sycamore Grove" near this site.

Matagorda, TX

Georgia-born Albert Clinton Horton came to Texas from Alabama in 1834, established a plantation on Caney Creek, and returned east to recruit volunteers for the Texas army, serving as a cavalry colonel in the Revolution. Elected to the Republic's congress, he chaired the commission that helped select a permanent capital, and at statehood in 1845 he became Texas's first lieutenant governor — acting as governor for over a year while Governor Henderson led troops in the Mexican War. A charter Baylor trustee, he also gave land for the first Episcopal church in Texas.

Point Marion, PA · est. 2014

Albert Gallatin was one of the young republic's most consequential statesmen, serving as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1801 to 1814—still the longest tenure in the office's history. He funded the Lewis and Clark Expedition, worked steadily to reduce the national debt, and helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. In the 1790s his moderating influence helped defuse western Pennsylvania's Whiskey Rebellion, and his home, Friendship Hill, stands nearby.

Houston County, TX

In 1857 Albert Holley left Alabama for Houston County, bringing the family's supplies overland by wagon along with 137 enslaved people while his relatives traveled by boat. He began homesteading this land with his wife Julia, served in the Civil War and endured captivity as a prisoner of war, then returned to farm and build a family home here in 1867. The property stayed in Holley hands until 1976.

Mexia, TX

Albert R. Mace pinned on a badge at twenty-one as a Texas Ranger and spent forty-five years in law enforcement, rising to county sheriff, president of the state sheriffs' association, and chief of police in some of the roughest oil-boom towns of the 1920s. He commanded a Ranger company during the martial-law days of the East Texas oil fields and, true to a lifetime in harness, died still in service.

Bonney, TX

Albert Sidney Johnston, a West Point graduate born in Kentucky in 1803, made Texas his home during the Republic era, rising to command its army and serving as secretary of war under President Mirabeau B. Lamar. He and his second wife settled at China Grove, his plantation on this site, in the 1840s, and he later fought in the Mexican War and patrolled the Texas frontier as a U.S. Army officer. When the Civil War came he resigned to become a Confederate general, and he was killed leading his troops at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.