Westward Expansion

D'Hanis, TX

In 1847 empresario Henri Castro planted D'Hanis, his fourth colony, and named it for a company official. Alsatian immigrants endured great hardship to raise a community that lasted more than thirty years—until the railroad bypassed the town in 1881 and the settlement simply picked up and moved to the tracks. The new D'Hanis prospered by shipping cattle, cotton, and brick, and from 1900 a strong Mexican-American community added to its life.

Holliday, TX

When oil was struck in Archer County in 1923, a wildcat boomtown erupted at this crossroads almost overnight, complete with a hotel, cafe, school, ice house, and roughly two dozen businesses. It took its homespun name from a food-stand operator known simply as "Dad." As the county's largest oil field drew workers half a mile to the southeast, cowboys traded their saddles for drilling rigs, and residents long remembered a rowdy stretch of lawlessness patrolled by the Texas Rangers. When the wells and the boom played out, Dad's Corner emptied into a ghost town.

Houston, TX

The community began on an 1861 land grant, developed after 1889 when a railroad right-of-way crossed the property and surveyors named the townsite Dairy in 1894. Its first settlers, Dr. John Magee and his wife Alief Ozelda Magee, arrived that year, and when a post office opened in 1895 it took her name—Alief. Surviving floods on the strength of farms, rice fields, and a determined citizenry, the town formed Harris County's first flood control district in 1909 before Houston annexed much of it in the 1970s.

Matagorda, TX

Built around 1830 on the Gulf Coast at Matagorda, this weathered home has stood through countless hurricanes and served as a cultural and political center for early Texas. Its residents read like a roster of the young republic and state: A.C. Horton, Texas's first lieutenant governor; Caleb Ives, first rector of the state's first Episcopal church; and later pioneers in rice, oil, and land development.

Dalhart, TX

Dallam County was carved from older territories in 1876 and organized in 1891, taking its name from James W. Dallam, who in 1845 compiled a digest of the Republic of Texas Supreme Court's decisions. The county seat shifted from Texline to Dalhart, on land that had once belonged to the vast XIT Ranch — the three-million-acre spread the state traded for its capitol building.

Dalhart, TX

Dallam County, created in 1876 and named for Republic of Texas attorney James W. Dallam, first seated its government at the railroad town of Texline. When the Rock Island line crossed the Fort Worth and Denver City tracks in 1901, the new town of Dalhart sprang up at the junction and captured the county seat by 1903. This Classical Revival courthouse, designed by Amarillo's Smith & Townes and completed in 1923, still crowns the townsite with its Ionic columns and curved parapets.

Dallas, TX

The Republic of Texas designated a post office at the unincorporated town of Dallas in 1843, and three years later the first Texas Legislature created Dallas County from parts of Robertson and Nacogdoches counties. Both city and county honor George Mifflin Dallas, the Pennsylvania statesman elected eleventh vice president of the United States on a platform that favored annexing Texas. His name thus binds this North Texas crossroads directly to the national politics that brought Texas into the Union.

Wills Point, TX

This route began as a trail blazed by Caddoan peoples and later followed by French traders. By the mid-1830s it had become a principal road bringing emigrants and cargo into North Texas from the river port of Shreveport, and Van Zandt County's first courthouse rose along it in 1848. Used heavily for Civil War troop movements, the road carried ox teams and settlers into the 1900s.

Georgetown, TX

William Cornelius Dalrymple left North Carolina for Texas and served in its revolutionary forces and as a Texas Ranger in the turbulent 1830s. Settling on the San Gabriel River, he helped select the Williamson County seat and rose through public life as tax assessor, state representative, and senator. In 1860 Governor Sam Houston named him aide-de-camp and commander of the Texas Militia.

Longview, TX

On May 23, 1894, outlaw Bill Dalton led his gang into Longview and presented a note demanding money at the First National Bank, triggering a furious gunfight as Sheriff Jack Howard, City Marshal Mat Muckleroy, and armed citizens fought back. Three local men and one outlaw were killed, and the gang fled into Oklahoma with two bank officers briefly held hostage. Forged $20 notes later led lawmen to the surviving raiders.

Houston County, TX

The Daily family and their neighbors founded the Dalys Community in the 1850s, and when Ethalinda Meriwether died in 1876 the Dailey and Hill families donated ground for a burial place. The cemetery served both this settlement and nearby Reynard, gathering generations of East Texas farm families into one hillside. Among its graves lie veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars, and in 1981 the name was formally fixed as Dailey Community Cemetery.

Corrigan, TX

Organized in 1863 amid the upheaval of the Civil War, Damascus Missionary Baptist Church began in a humble log building with split-log benches resting on peg legs. A frame structure replaced it in 1892, and the present church rose in 1950. A charter member of the Angelina Missionary Baptist Association, the congregation has served its rural East Texas community for well over a century.

Damon, TX

One of Brazoria County's oldest burial grounds, Damon Cemetery began on December 13, 1837, with the interment of Sylvester Winn Damon on land Abraham Darst had received in an 1829 Mexican grant. That first grave was dug within a year of the county's founding. In 1908 a 2.5-acre tract was formally dedicated and deeded to the public.

Georgetown, OH

In the frontier Ohio town of Georgetown, this 1826 house was home to Daniel Ammen, the boyhood friend of Ulysses S. Grant. As the marker tells it, young Dan pulled a drowning twelve-year-old Grant from White Oak Creek — a rescue the future president never forgot, later teasing his old friend from the White House for having made his 'life of misery' possible. It captures Grant not as a marble general but as a boy who grew up along an Ohio creek.

Seminole, TX

A Tennessee native, Dan Cobb was the builder who gave early Gaines County much of its shape, constructing both the first county courthouse in 1906 and its 1922 successor, along with a Baptist sanctuary, a schoolhouse, and other landmark buildings. He and his wife Aurelia raised six children in the home they built here in 1906, and he held civic roles and even a federal mail contract spanning three counties. His work and leadership were central to the young county's growth.

New Boston, TX

Dan LaFayette McDuffie came from a line of lawmen and pinned on his first badge at eighteen, learning the trade from an uncle who was Texarkana's police chief. Over three decades he served as county officer, railroad special agent, and Texas Ranger, winning fame in a 1923 amnesty that brought in 82 liquor stills. In 1931 he was cut down by gunfire in a kidnapping case — the last Ranger killed on duty during East Texas's lawless oil-boom years.

Jefferson, TX

This house was built by Dan N. Alley, one of the founders of Jefferson, and given as a wedding gift to his son during the era when the town was a bustling riverport and gateway into Texas. It has stayed in the family's line, later home to a descendant.

Lebanon, NH

Built in 1765, the Dana House is remembered as the oldest dwelling in Lebanon, New Hampshire, a township chartered only a few years earlier on the frontier of the upper Connecticut River valley. Its heavy timbers date to the eve of the Revolution, when English-speaking settlers were pushing north into interior New England to clear farms and raise the first permanent homes.

Danevang, TX

Founded in 1894 on land secured by the Danish Folk Society, Danevang became the first successful Danish community in Texas. Most of its settlers had first lived among fellow Danes in the northern states before moving south to preserve their language, faith, and culture, raising a Lutheran church in 1895. Despite disease, insects, and poorly drained land, their hard work and cooperation turned the prairie into productive farms.

Portland, OR

This marker recalls the "Old Balch Place" in Portland's Willamette Heights, home of pioneer Danford Balch. In 1859 Balch was convicted and hanged for shooting his son-in-law—the first legal execution in Portland. His story is a vivid piece of frontier Oregon's early, often violent, path toward law and order.

Rockdale, TX

Daniel and Precilla Gilleland were among Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, the first Anglo-American families legally colonizing Texas, arriving from Arkansas Territory with their infant daughter in December 1821. Over the next decades they farmed their way across a half-dozen counties, Daniel helping plant Methodist congregations as they went, before settling in present Milam County. Parents of thirteen children — six sons of whom served in the Confederate army — the couple both died in 1873 after more than fifty years as Texas pioneers.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

Daniel Boone was born here in the Oley Valley on November 2, 1734, to a Quaker family, and spent his first sixteen years in the Pennsylvania backcountry before the family moved south. The hunting, tracking, and woodcraft he learned on this ground carried him into legend as the pathfinder of Kentucky's Wilderness Road. The homestead a few miles north is preserved as a historic site.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1957

Daniel Boone, born here in the Oley Valley in 1734, spent his first sixteen years on the family homestead before the Boones pushed south and west into the Carolina and Kentucky backcountry. Long before he became the legendary blazer of the Wilderness Road and a symbol of American frontier daring, he was a Pennsylvania farm boy hunting the woods of Berks County. The homestead a few miles north is preserved today as a state historic site.

Amity Township, PA · est. 1957

This plaque honors Daniel Boone (1734-1820), the famed pioneer and scout who was born just a few miles away in the Oley Valley and spent his earliest years there. The area's rolling Berks County farmland was Boone's first world before the family migrated south, launching the life of wandering and trailblazing that made him a household name. The nearby birthplace survives as a state historic shrine.

Frankfort, KY

Daniel Boone was already a legend in his own lifetime, and this monument in Frankfort marks the final resting place a grateful Kentucky claimed for him and his wife Rebecca. Born in Pennsylvania in 1734, Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail, founded Fort Boonesborough in 1775, and helped open the trans-Appalachian frontier to settlement even as he served as surveyor, legislator, and sheriff. Though he lost his vast Kentucky land claims and moved on to Missouri, the Commonwealth brought his remains home in 1845 and raised this tribute in 1860.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1948

On the rolling farmland of Berks County stood the log dwelling where Daniel Boone was born in 1734 to a Quaker family of English and Welsh descent. Boone spent his first sixteen years here, learning to hunt and range the Pennsylvania woods before the family pushed south and west, skills that would carry him into legend on the trans-Appalachian frontier. The homestead endured long after the Boones departed and is preserved today by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Frankfort, KY

Daniel Boone (1734–1820) was the frontier's most famous pathfinder: he entered eastern Kentucky in 1767, explored the Bluegrass, and in 1775 blazed the Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap and raised Fort Boonesborough, which he helped defend against attack in 1778. Late in life he moved on to Missouri, still chasing the edge of the wilderness. In 1845 he and his wife Rebecca were reinterred here at Frankfort Cemetery, overlooking the river country he opened.

Rockcastle County, KY

This marker traces the path Daniel Boone helped open through the mountains from North Carolina into Kentucky. In the 1770s Boone blazed a route through the Cumberland Gap that became the Wilderness Road, the great overland gateway that carried tens of thousands of settlers into the trans-Appalachian frontier. Rockcastle County lay along that hard, rugged corridor into the Kentucky wilderness.

East Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1947

Around 1738, Daniel Brodhead pushed into the upper Delaware frontier and planted the settlement first known as Dansbury, the seed of today's East Stroudsburg. He lived here through the uneasy years before the French and Indian War drove many settlers out. His son of the same name would go on to serve as a Revolutionary War commander and later as Pennsylvania's Surveyor General.

Collinsville, IL

Daniel Dove Collins built this house in 1845, a cousin of the family whose name the young village of Collinsville would carry. As the settlement's first Board of Trustees president, Collins ran early town business from his own home, its parlor serving as an informal town hall. The house survives from the formative years when Illinois prairie crossroads were organizing themselves into governed communities.

University Park, TX

When Frances Sims Daniel brought her family to the young farmlands of Dallas County in 1849, she could not have known that the orchard beside her home would become one of the county's earliest burying grounds. The cemetery began in 1850 with the grave of a man the family called "Old Frank," enslaved by the household for decades, and grew to hold Daniel kin, the people they enslaved, and descendants who served in four American wars. An 1851 headstone for young Isabella Harwood is thought to be among the oldest surviving in the county.

Jarrell, TX

Daniel Harrison came to Texas from Tennessee in 1835 and served with Texan forces during the Revolution, later fighting in the 1839 Battle of the Neches as a militia volunteer for the young Republic. Settling in what became the Corn Hill community, he worked as a blacksmith on the stage route from Austin to Fort Gates—vital labor for a military road—while also farming and raising livestock. He later served in Central Texas' 27th Brigade during the Civil War, and he and his wife Nancy were eventually reinterred at Corn Hill Cemetery.

Granbury, TX

William B. Daniel came to Granbury as a boy of ten in 1867 and grew into one of the city's leading grocers, building this ornate Victorian home in the early 1890s. Trimmed with intricate Eastlake detailing, it was a hub of social life and even hosted early funeral services for family and friends. The house stayed in the Daniel family after his death in 1940.

Midway, TX

A Pennsylvania-born fur trapper who had served under Zachary Taylor in the War of 1812, Daniel Larrison became one of the earliest Anglo settlers of what is now Madison County, receiving a Mexican land grant in 1833. He and his wife Sarah settled around 1828 near the junction of the La Bahia Trail and El Camino Real—a natural waystation for travelers—and raised twelve children while hunting, trapping, and farming corn and cotton. Larrison Creek still carries the family name.

Bartlett vicinity, TX

Born in Maine in 1814, Daniel McKay came to Texas in 1834 with Sterling C. Robertson's colony and settled near Nashville, on the edge of a dangerous frontier. In 1836 he fought at the Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas its independence, and in 1845 he married Jane Bryant, daughter of a government Indian agent and fellow San Jacinto veteran. The family lived at fortified "Bryant's Station" until moving to a Bell County land grant in 1853, and McKay later served the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Weches, TX

Daniel McLean and his brother-in-law John Sheridan were among the earliest Anglo settlers of this part of East Texas. McLean first came in 1813 with the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition seeking to free Mexico from Spain, then returned to claim land when Stephen F. Austin opened Texas to colonists in the 1820s. Both men were killed by Indians in 1837 while chasing stolen horses, and Mrs. Sheridan recovered their bodies with a boy's help so each could be buried on his own land.

Arcola, TX

Born in Mississippi in 1791, Daniel Perry brought his family to Texas in 1832 and settled on land along the Brazos as Anglo colonization spread through Stephen F. Austin's grants. He served as a captain and recruiter in the Texas Army, fought at San Jacinto in 1836, and then joined the Republic of Texas Navy before signing the 1837 petition that created Fort Bend County. A rancher and farmer who ran cattle under the "7P" brand, he died in 1869 and was buried at Duke Cemetery.

Stephenville vicinity, TX

Daniel Roberts Thornton, from Mississippi, married Mary Anna Garland—daughter of a frontier fighter—and the couple settled in Erath County in 1857 to raise cattle on a still-dangerous frontier. Mary Anna served as midwife and doctor to her neighbors while the family reared eight children; Thornton later fought for the Confederacy, served as county commissioner, and donated land for a school and the Hannibal Cemetery. Their lives trace the arc from open range to settled community.

Austin, TX

Daniel Shipman took part in the earliest sparks of the Texas Revolution, joining the 1832 disturbance at Anahuac and the storming and capture of Bexar in December 1835. Born in North Carolina, he was among the settlers who turned frontier grievances into open rebellion against Mexican rule. His grave records a life bound up with the birth of the Texas Republic.

Irving, TX

Mississippi-born Daniel Webster Gilbert came to Texas in 1874 and, after earning his medical degree in Missouri, practiced in the small communities around Dallas County. He farmed 1,500 acres at Sowers—planting a peach orchard and running a dairy—before settling in Irving in 1903 as one of its first physicians and a civic leader. He is buried here among his family.

Kilgore, TX

Settled around 1847 and named for Danville, Kentucky, this crossroads community drew families from across the Southeast to a spot near old Bighead Village, a Nadaco Indian site. With a Presbyterian church, a Masonic lodge, stores, and a cotton gin, Danville thrived through the Civil War era—until the International-Great Northern Railroad bypassed it in the 1870s and its people drifted to the new town of Kilgore along the tracks. It remains one of the oldest settlements in what became Gregg County.

Danville, KY

Founded in 1784 by the Reverend David Rice, this was one of the earliest Presbyterian congregations west of the Alleghenies, planted as Kentucky's frontier filled with settlers. Its pews held figures who shaped national politics: abolitionist James G. Birney, whose 1844 presidential run helped cost Henry Clay the election; John C. Breckinridge, whose 1860 candidacy split the Democrats and aided Lincoln; and Samuel D. Burchard, whose 1884 'Rum, Romanism and Rebellion' remark helped sink James G. Blaine.

Indianapolis, IN

Placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, this obelisk honors the pioneers who traveled the old roads into the Indiana country and built a new state out of the wilderness. Indiana entered the Union in 1816, and in the following decades settlers streamed westward along trails and early roadways to clear farms and found towns. The marker fixes one of those historic routes in public memory.

Las Vegas, NM

In 1910 the Daughters of the American Revolution, working with the Territory of New Mexico, placed a series of stone markers along the historic Santa Fe Trail. The great commercial road linked Missouri to Santa Fe from 1821 until the railroad reached the city, carrying wagons, traders, and soldiers across the plains.

Houston, TX

Kentucky-born Darius Gregg reached Texas in 1827 and received a land grant in Stephen F. Austin's second colony. He took up arms in the 1835 Siege of Bexar, including the famous Grass Fight, during the Texas struggle for independence. Later a surveyor in and around Houston—working for the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad—he held land across several counties and gave to Methodist causes, with Gregg Chapel named in his honor.

Grapeland, TX

Illinois-born Darius H. Edens came to Texas in 1831 and served in Thomas J. Rusk's infantry during the 1836 revolution that won Texas its independence. A surveyor, he helped plat the town of Palestine and became Anderson County's first Chief Justice before chasing the 1849 California gold rush. Returning home, he and his wife Nancy Rice ran the stagecoach station and inn at Augusta on the road between Rusk and Crockett.

Darrouzett, TX

Darrouzett began in 1917 as a station on the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway, first called Lourwood and then renamed by the railroad for a Galveston legislator. By its 1920 incorporation more than four hundred people lived there, supporting stores, a school, two churches, and a post office. When the community finally opened its own cemetery in 1939, families reinterred loved ones from older graveyards, and its ground now holds many veterans, including two men killed in Vietnam.

Selma, TX

William Davenport, Virginia-born and Kentucky-raised, settled south of Cibolo Creek in 1851, and when his first wife died the next year he buried her near their home, founding this community graveyard. A rancher, militia captain, and Mason, he helped establish Selma's first school in 1859 and a combined schoolhouse-church-Masonic hall in 1872; his second wife's father was a War of 1812 veteran also buried here, and burials continued until 1934.

Gonzales, TX

David Burkett came to Texas with his family in 1830 as a member of Green DeWitt's colony and took up the cause of Texas independence as a citizen soldier. In 1836 he served as a guard for the women and children fleeing Gonzales ahead of Santa Anna's advancing army — the desperate flight remembered as the Runaway Scrape. He is buried on his 4,428-acre land grant that once stretched south from this site.

Lumberton, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1811, David Choate Jr. joined a company of Beaumont volunteers and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, earning land bounties that he settled along Pine Island Bayou. There in 1856 he founded Concord, a steamboat shipping point whose busy ferry linked Beaumont to points north and drew farm goods and lumber from three counties. At its peak Concord held 300 residents—but when railroads reached the region, the steamboats fell silent and the town was abandoned by 1880.

Webberville, TX

David Crawford Edmiston came to Texas as a boy in 1835 and spent his life on its contested frontier—riding with the Texas Rangers in frontier defense, again during the Mexican War, and serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He and his wife Rhoda raised eleven children on their Webberville farm, whose surviving buildings still mark the land the family worked.

Hawaiʻi County, HI

This memorial marks the place where Dr. David Douglas, the Scottish botanist, met his death in 1834 after falling into a wild-bullock pit on the slopes of Hawaii Island. Douglas had traveled the Pacific coast cataloging plants, and the towering Douglas-fir carries his name. His strange and untimely end closed a short but influential career of exploration.

Clarksville, TX

Born in New Jersey in 1788, David Gouverneur Burnet became a leading figure in Texas's fight for nationhood. He served as a convention delegate and judge before becoming interim president of the Republic of Texas from March to October 1836, in the tumultuous months surrounding independence. He later served as vice president and secretary of state of the young republic.

Jacksonville, TX

David Greene Templeton, a North Carolina native, reached newly organized Cherokee County soon after 1846 and settled in the Gum Creek community that became Old Jacksonville. He grew into a prominent landowner and civic leader, was named in 1850 one of the original trustees of the Presbyterian college at Larissa, and served in the Confederate home guard during the Civil War. His descendants went on to play a prominent role in the early growth of Jacksonville.

Fairfield, TX

David Hall Love (1816–1866), a Tennessee native, fought in the Texas War for Independence and, at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, helped capture a large body of enemy soldiers before carrying word of the Texan victory on foot to Harrisburg. For his service he received a bounty land grant, and from that land he later donated the townsite of Fairfield. He went on to serve his church and community as a precinct justice.

Granbury, TX

David Lee Nutt came to Texas from Missouri in 1857 and, in 1879, built this two-story plantation-style house of cypress lumber hauled by ox cart from East Texas. It soon became Hood County's first hotel — wryly dubbed "The Nutt House" — putting up the traveling salesmen, or "drummers," who called on Nutt's mercantile store, before reverting to a family home in 1900. Nutt also gave 40 acres for the original Granbury townsite.

Farmers Branch, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1797 to a Virginia family that had pushed west a generation before, David Myers became an ordained Baptist preacher in Illinois before the lure of free land carried him and three generations of his family across the Red River on Christmas Eve, 1845. Settling on a Peters Colony grant northwest of Dallas, he organized Union Baptist Church in May 1846 — the oldest continuing Baptist congregation in Dallas County — and helped plant several more before pneumonia took him after a cold ride home from preaching.

Houston, TX

David Porter Richardson served as private secretary to Sam Houston, the towering figure who led Texas to independence and became president of the new republic. Richardson died in Houston in August 1837, in the earliest days of the Republic of Texas. His close service placed him at the very center of the young nation's founding government.

Mount Pleasant Township, PA · est. 1950

In the 1780s the rolling country of Washington County was disputed ground, and David Reed led a band of Covenanter squatters who had settled on land the tract belonged to none other than George Washington. On September 20, 1784, thirteen of these Scotch-Irish pioneers gathered at Reed's log home to face Washington himself and refuse his demand that they leave. Their defiance captures the raw friction between eastern land titles and the settlers who had already cleared and worked the ground.

Corsicana, TX

David Reed Mitchell, a North Carolina–born surveyor, arrived in Texas in 1845 having already mapped the upper Trinity and Brazos country. As surveyor of the Robertson County Land District, he laid out portions of the Mercer and Peters colonies and the original plans of Navarro County and Corsicana. With partners Thomas I. Smith and James C. Neill, he donated the hundred acres on which Corsicana was founded, ran an early inn there, and remained until his death in 1853 — the only one of the three founding donors buried in the town.