Westward Expansion

Pharr, TX

Methodist missionary Rev. Alexander H. Sutherland founded this fellowship in 1874 on Juan Manuel de La Vina's El Capote Ranch in the Rio Grande Valley. By 1883 the congregation was meeting on the Jackson Ranch, where owner Martin Jackson donated land and built a small chapel. Though most members moved to the new city of McAllen in 1910, the church endured as one of Hidalgo County's earliest Protestant congregations.

Jacksonville, TX

A Kentucky blacksmith, Jackson Smith came to Texas in the 1830s and fought in its War for Independence before scouting for the Republic of Texas. Settling near Gum Creek in the 1840s, he platted the townsite he named Jacksonville; he later served as a Confederate officer, and in 1872 the town was relocated to meet the new railroad.

New Orleans, LA

Laid out in 1721 by engineer Adrien de Pauger as the French colonial Place d'Armes, this square became the Spanish Plaza de Armas and, in 1803, the stage for the flag ceremonies transferring Louisiana from Spain to France and then to the United States. After the Pontalba buildings rose in 1851, the Baroness Pontalba had it redesigned and renamed for Andrew Jackson, whose equestrian statue was unveiled in 1856.

Albany, TX

Fort Griffin businessman T. E. Jackson built this warehouse in the late 1870s to stock a general merchandise store, and for over a century it anchored Albany's commercial life as everything from photo studio to cafe. Sanger Brothers, the famed Texas department store chain, owned it from 1887 to 1906. The building recalls Albany's role as a key supply depot for the West Texas cattle industry.

Adairville, KY

On May 30, 1806, future president Andrew Jackson met Charles Dickinson on the field of honor here near the Kentucky-Tennessee line, in a quarrel that had grown out of horse racing and wounded pride. Jackson took a ball near his heart—a wound he carried for the rest of his life—but held his fire, then killed his opponent. Dickinson died a half mile away at a nearby farm.

Jacksonville, TX

Republic of Texas scout Jackson Smith first explored the Gum Creek area in 1838 and returned in 1847 to build a home and blacksmith shop, becoming the settlement's first postmaster and platting a town soon renamed Jacksonville. When the railroad surveyed a line a mile away in 1871, most residents simply picked up and moved to the new townsite, where the railroad company donated a block as a public square. Over the following century that square gathered the layers of a community's life—tracks laid across it in 1883, a WWI doughboy statue in 1928, and New Deal-era improvements—before becoming today's Hazel Tilton Park.

Waco, TX

Jacob De Cordova, born into a Jewish family in Jamaica, immigrated to Philadelphia around 1830 and became one of the great land promoters of frontier Texas. Hired to survey and sell tracts along the Brazos, he brought surveyor George B. Erath here in 1848 to lay out the town of Waco, donating lots for its square, schools, and churches. He died dreaming of industrializing the Brazos Valley and was eventually reinterred in the State Cemetery at Austin.

Chappell Hill, TX

Built in 1853 by Chappell Hill's first postmaster, the Jacob Haller House reflects the craftsmanship of early Texas building, framed with hand-hewn local cedar and clad in cypress clapboard beneath Victorian detailing. It later became the home of a beloved country doctor, W. R. Campbell. The house survives as a window onto a small antebellum town's founding generation.

Fredericksburg, TX

Jacob Neffendorf sailed from Nassau in the German states aboard the barque Neptune in 1845, part of the wave of immigrants who settled the Texas Hill Country under the Adelsverein colonization scheme. He helped survey the Fredericksburg townsite and move families up from New Braunfels in 1846, receiving the standard town lot and ten-acre outlot and building a log cabin on Creek Street. Clearing land near Cross Mountain, he steadily assembled more than 200 acres, raised eight children with his wife Katherina, and served a term as Gillespie County treasurer.

Trinity, TX

Mississippi natives Jacob Pope Barnes and Elizabeth Ann Rankin married in 1860, came to Texas after the Civil War, and settled at Trinity in 1872, where Jacob opened a mercantile store and served as county treasurer until his death in 1877. Widowed at 43 with nine children to raise, Elizabeth kept the family and the business going for another thirty-five years, running the store with her eldest son. Her long stewardship anchored the young town's commercial life.

Dobbin, TX

Jacob Montgomery Shannon came to Texas as a teenager in the 1820s, when the land was still under Mexican rule, and by 1831 held a league of land where he built a plantation known as Shannon's Prairie. The cemetery began about 1840 and, in 1863, Shannon deeded two acres for a public burial ground, school, and church. Buried here are members of his family, some of the people he enslaved and their descendants, and several war veterans.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1991

Jacob Stroud (1735-1806) was a militia colonel and Revolutionary patriot who fortified his home on this frontier as Fort Penn during the dangerous years of the war. He served in Pennsylvania's 1776 constitutional convention and later in the state legislature, then in 1799 founded the town that bears his name, laying out its streets with his son Daniel. His life spans the transformation of this Pocono country from exposed frontier to settled community.

Woden, TX

When William Jacobs led his family and neighbors from Tennessee to southern Nacogdoches County, arriving on Christmas Day 1836, they brought with them a family burial ground atop a ridge above Carrizo Creek. In 1870 his daughter Paulina deeded the surrounding acres to the trustees of Jacobs Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church for worship, school, and burials; among those resting here are William and his wife Nancy and their son James, whose family lost seven of twelve children in the 1860s to Civil War wounds and typhoid.

Wimberley, TX

Serving area residents since 1883, Jacobs Well Cemetery grew from a Hill Country settlement named for a natural spring in Cypress Creek, where many pioneers had migrated from South Carolina. Landowner James Spillar donated the burial ground after the death of early settler Moses Bond Egger, and the graves that followed hold Texas Rangers, a county sheriff, ranchers, teachers, and whole families lost to epidemics. Descendants formed an association in 1980 that still tends the vertical stones, wooden markers, and unmarked graves.

Lander County, NV

Founded on the banks of the Reese River in 1859 by George Washington Jacobs, Lander County's first sheriff, Jacobsville served as an Overland Stage and mail station and became a Pony Express stop in 1860. In its early-1860s prime it held some 400 people and claimed the first telegraph relay station, a post office, courthouse, three stores, and two hotels, and was the first seat of a Lander County that then sprawled across northeastern Nevada. The seat soon moved to booming Austin, and today only a few foundation stones remain.

Gonzales, TX

First mapped in 1825 as Market Square, this Gonzales public square had become known as Jail Square by 1836. That year, as Santa Anna's army advanced, Gonzales was burned by order of General Sam Houston to keep its buildings and supplies from falling into enemy hands—part of the desperate retreat known as the Runaway Scrape. Gonzales, already famed as the site of the war's opening 'Come and Take It' clash, thus sacrificed itself in the campaign for independence.

Victoria, TX

On the coastal prairies of Victoria County stands this 1890 Victorian home of Florida pine and cypress, built for James A. McFaddin (1840–1916), a stockman whose life spanned the Republic of Texas, Confederate service, and the great cattle era that followed. Moving from Refugio in 1876, he was among the ranchers who reshaped Texas grazing by bringing in barbed wire and hardy Brahma cattle, and even founded the town that bears his name. His "M6" brand, registered in 1840, remained active long after him.

Falfurrias, TX

Kentucky-born James Abijah Brooks came to Texas in 1876 as a rancher and trail driver before joining the Texas Rangers, whom he served from 1882 to 1906. He chased down South Texas cattle thieves, helped block the notorious 1896 Fitzsimmons-Maher prizefight near El Paso, and later served in the legislature and for decades as county judge of the county that bears his name.

Roanoke, VA

In the years before the Revolution, the Virginia backcountry around present-day Roanoke was still frontier, and land changed hands through royal grants issued in the name of the Crown. In 1771 King George III conveyed a 150-acre tract to James Alexander for fifteen shillings, and a tree on the property served as a living surveyor's marker for the boundary line. Such "witness trees" were a common way to fix the corners and edges of colonial land claims, long before modern surveying and recorded plats.

Kosse, TX

This state marker honors James Alfred Head, who fought for Texas independence and then served in the Congress of the young Republic of Texas in 1841-1842. Erected in 1962, it commemorates a member of the generation that won and then governed the short-lived Republic before annexation to the United States.

Kosse, TX

Georgia-born James A. Head came to Texas in 1835 and enlisted at San Felipe de Austin in Silas Parker's ranging company, earning a land grant and a place among the Texas Rangers who guarded the frontier during the war for independence. With his wife Elizabeth he farmed in what became Brazos County, served as justice of the peace and chief justice, and won election to the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas. By 1852 he worked some 17,800 acres and died at Headsville in 1872, father of thirteen children.

Austin, TX

James Allison York joined the fight for Texas independence, taking part in the capture of San Antonio in 1835 and serving in Captain Moseley Baker's company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Kentucky-born, he was among the volunteers whose victory secured the Republic of Texas. He later settled in Lavaca County, where he died in 1869.

Midway, TX

James and Calpernia Mitchell left Virginia for Texas in 1833 and settled on a Mexican land grant during the years when Texas was passing from Mexican province to independent republic to statehood. James helped locate the seat of Montgomery County in 1837 and became one of Walker County's first commissioners in 1846, while the family's house and inn on the Old San Antonio Road offered rest to travelers and served for a decade as the area post office. The couple lie in a family cemetery near this spot.

New Waverly, TX

James and Rhoda Winters led their large family from Tennessee to this land between the forks of the San Jacinto River in 1834, following the good report of two elder sons who had come ahead. When war with Mexico broke out, the family gave heavily to the cause: sons and sons-in-law fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution, and one son, James W. Winters, lived to help mark the San Jacinto battlefield in 1901, 65 years after fighting there. Family members went on to help settle half a dozen more Texas counties.

Azle, TX

A Tennessee-born physician, James Azle Steward reached this part of North Texas before 1860 and became one of its most respected pioneers. When he donated land for a townsite in 1883, the settlement — which had gone by several names — took his middle name and became Azle. He also gave ground for Ash Creek Cemetery and the Azle Christian Church, weaving himself into the community's civic and spiritual life.

Jacksboro, TX

James B. Dosher came to Texas in 1847 and rode with the Texas Rangers on the unsettled northern frontier before farming in Jack County. His life traced the arc of a hard border era, from Ranger companies to service with Confederate and Texas State forces during the Civil War. In 1870 he was scouting for the U.S. Army as a civilian guide when his gallantry at Bluff Creek earned him the Medal of Honor.

Georgetown, TX

James B. Williams left Kentucky with his bride and extended family, reaching the Berry's Creek area of Central Texas on Christmas Eve of 1848. He rode with his uncle's Texas Ranger company through the 1850s and early 1860s, when such units guarded the exposed frontier, and eventually made his permanent home in Glasscock Valley north of Georgetown. He and his wife Sarah raised thirteen children on the land they helped settle.

Liberty, TX

Kentucky-born James B. Woods arrived in Mexican Texas in 1830 and became a brilliant lawyer and orator in the Liberty District, elected alcalde (mayor) in 1834. As one of five delegates from Liberty, he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March 1836 and served that year in the Texas Army. His life ended in tragedy after he killed a man in an election quarrel in 1851, dying soon after amid remorse.

Liberty, TX

Kentucky-born James B. Woods came to Texas in the era of its fight for independence and put his name to the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, joining the delegates who broke with Mexico and founded a new republic. He lived until 1851, part of the founding generation that shaped early Texas. The State of Texas raised this marker in his honor during the 1936 centennial of independence.

Woodville, TX

Raised of hand-hewn pine in 1842, this is remembered as the oldest home in Tyler County, built by the area's first Indian agent—a man appointed to that post by Sam Houston, the towering figure of the Republic of Texas. In the young Republic, an Indian agent stood at the fraught boundary between Anglo settlers pressing westward and the Native peoples already on the land. The house survives as a rare wooden witness to Texas's earliest days of statehood-in-waiting.

Fairfield, TX

James Bonner Rogers became sheriff of Freestone County in 1872, during a lawless stretch of Reconstruction-era Texas. After a deputy was shot in a chase, he pursued a band of horse thieves alone — only to be gunned down from ambush by two strangers thought to be the vengeful thieves. He died at 35, leaving a widow and three children.

Bailey's Prairie, TX

James Briton "Brit" Bailey came to Texas in 1818 with his wife and six children, settling the tallgrass expanse that still bears his name. He joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1824, served as a militia captain, and fought in the skirmishes that preceded the 1836 revolution. True to a fiercely proud reputation, he asked to be buried upright, facing west with his gun at his side, so that no one could ever look down on him.

Marfa, TX

James Buchanan Gillett came of age on the far western Texas frontier, trading a teenage cowboy's saddle for a Ranger's badge at nineteen during the turbulent late 1870s. His years of service coincided with the last decades of open-range conflict, when Rangers policed a sprawling, thinly settled country. After leaving the force he pinned on an El Paso marshal's star and spent the rest of a long life ranching the dry high country around Marfa, later setting his experiences down in a memoir still read as an Old West classic.

Walnut Springs, TX

James Buckner "Buck" Barry came to Texas from North Carolina in 1845 and spent his life on its edges — as a soldier in the Mexican War, a fighter in Indian campaigns, and, during the Civil War, commander of Confederate cavalry strung along frontier outposts from the Red River to Fort McKavett. His patrols, camped a day's ride apart, guarded scattered settlers against raids and the threat of Federal incursion from Indian Territory. He later served in the Texas Legislature and left behind personal records of those frontier-defense years.

Tyler, TX

Migrating from Alabama in 1840, James Calhoun Hill led the first permanent settlers into the future Smith County and helped run its boundaries and plat the county seat at Tyler in 1846. He prospered as a surveyor and planter in the 1850s, but by the Civil War's end in 1865 he was blind and much reduced in means. Still, in 1874 he donated land to bring a railroad into the county, and he and his wife Rebecca raised eleven children.

Floresville, TX

When Wilson County was organized in 1860 it honored James Charles Wilson, an Englishman who left home in 1836 and remade himself as a Texan lawyer, editor, and legislator. Captured during the ill-fated 1842 Mier Expedition, he escaped a Mexican prison in 1843, then built a career spanning the press, the bench, the Texas Senate, and the delicate work of settling Spanish- and Mexican-era land claims. He closed his life near Gonzales, licensed to preach, and now rests in the State Cemetery in Austin.

Clarksville, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1789, James Clark settled in Northeast Texas and founded the town of Clarksville, which bears his name. He died there in 1838, in the early years of the Republic of Texas.

Corsicana, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1790, James Clinton Neill joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1831 and threw himself into the Texas Revolution as an artillery officer, commanding the guns at the Siege of Bexar. Appointed to lead San Antonio and the Alamo, he left that post in February 1836 to tend to family illness — handing command to William B. Travis and narrowly missing the fall of the Alamo. He was wounded serving Sam Houston's army the day before San Jacinto, and later helped found the seat of Navarro County.

Houston, TX

James Collinsworth (1806–1838), Tennessee-born, packed an extraordinary public career into a few short years of the Texas Republic. A delegate to the 1835 Consultation and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, he "bore himself as a chief" at San Jacinto, then served as Secretary of State, senator, and the first Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. After he drowned at Galveston in 1838, his remains were carried up Buffalo Bayou for the first Masonic funeral held in Texas.

Houston County, TX

A Tennessean who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the 1835 siege of Bexar and served as a militia commissioner during the Texas Revolution. For that service the Republic granted him land in Houston County, where he and his wife Mary Lucinda settled around 1842. Part of that property became this family cemetery.

Webberville, TX

An Arkansas native, James Euwin Edmiston came to Texas with his family in 1835 and settled near present-day Webberville just as the fight for independence began. He served as a Texas Ranger during the revolution, took part in frontier battles, and was caught up in the Woll Expedition and the Archive War of 1842. He later rode with Travis County ranger companies before joining the rush to California in 1849, and earned a Republic of Texas pension for his service.

Cuero, TX

James F. Blair's life traced the arc of frontier Texas through its wars and lawlessness. Born in Tennessee, he fought in the Mexican War and then rose from the Confederate ranks to captain a company of the 36th Texas Cavalry, before turning to keeping the peace as a Texas Ranger and, in 1866, as the governor-appointed sheriff of DeWitt County. That county would soon become notorious for the Sutton-Taylor feud, and Blair belonged to the generation of veterans-turned-lawmen who tried to hold order on a violent frontier.

Bailey, TX

James Fowler Biggers was part of the great postwar migration that reshaped Texas: born in South Carolina and raised in Mississippi, he brought his family west by wagon train in 1869 to settle the black-land prairies of Fannin County. Like many frontier settlers of the Reconstruction era, he wove together the institutions a new community needed — a Primitive Baptist congregation he helped found and served as lay preacher, a school housed in that same church, and a community cemetery. His life traces how faith, education, and settlement advanced hand in hand on the North Texas frontier.

Jones Creek, TX

A Pennsylvania-born merchant who made his fortune in Missouri's frontier trade, James Franklin Perry married Emily Austin and, urged on by her brother Stephen F. Austin, moved his family to Texas in 1831. He built mercantile and farming interests and settled at Peach Point Plantation on the Brazos River. As an active supporter of the Republic of Texas and executor of Stephen F. Austin's estate, his careful stewardship of Austin's maps, land papers, and reports preserved records now central to the Texas archives.

Hemphill, TX

James Frederick Gomer and his wife Ana came to Sabine County from Giles County, Tennessee, in 1836, receiving acreage in 1838 and building up a large farm. By the early 1870s both had died and were buried on the family land alongside a child who died young. Because the farm sat along a well-traveled route, tradition holds that others — including Native people and enslaved individuals — were buried just outside the family plot.

Honey Grove, TX

James G. Gilmer moved from Kentucky in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth and their children, part of the wave of Anglo-American settlers pushing into North Texas; his son James P. is said to have been the first such child born at present-day Honey Grove. Gilmer died only months after settling, and his burial founded the local cemetery, while the town later rose on the land grant he left to his wife.

El Paso, TX

Born in Virginia in 1847, James Harrison White served with the Confederacy before coming to El Paso around 1869, then spent the following decades in an extraordinary run of frontier service — in the Mexican and U.S. armies and as a U.S. Marshal at Las Cruces. As sheriff, tax collector, police chief, and railway official, he helped steer El Paso through its transformation from a rough border settlement into a modern city before his death in 1907. His life traced the closing of one frontier era and the rise of the Southwestern metropolis that followed.

Abilene, TX

James Harrison Parramore came west after the Civil War with a Confederate record behind him and cattle on his mind. From a hundred rented acres near Gonzales he built, with his brother-in-law Hugh Lewis and partner C. W. Merchant, the San Simon Cattle and Canal Company — stocking vast Arizona and New Mexico ranges with Texas longhorns for two decades. Settling his large family in Abilene in 1881, he became a fixture of the cattle business and a benefactor of Simmons College, and the grand French Second Empire home he built survived until 1960.

Combes, TX

Orphaned at six when his father died in the Civil War, James Henry Dishman grew up fast in East Texas and turned himself into a successful cattleman. In 1893 he gambled on remote, undeveloped school land in northern Cameron County, building a working ranch and earning a reputation for hard work and open-handed generosity — even surviving a near-fatal shooting by a rustler. His land gifts for a railroad right-of-way, a church, a cemetery, and a school literally created the town of Combes around him.

Gonzales, TX

James Hodges, Sr. arrived at Gonzales in April 1835 and quickly bought four leagues of land at the forks of the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers, paying three thousand dollars in silver. That autumn the townspeople elected him a delegate to the Consultation of 1835, the convention that created a provisional government and placed Sam Houston over a new Texas army. He supplied the army in 1836, fled with his family during the Runaway Scrape, and later returned to serve on the county's land commission and raise his family on the rivers.

Hillsborough, NC

James Hogg left his native Scotland in 1774 and made a new life as a merchant in the North Carolina backcountry, arriving on the eve of the Revolution. He became a partner in the Transylvania Company, one of the era's bold speculative ventures to claim and settle vast western lands, and later served as a trustee of the new state university. His story braids immigration, frontier ambition, and the founding of public institutions.

Burton, TX

James Holt came to Texas around 1836, in the very first years of the Republic, and in 1838 received a substantial 1,280-acre grant along Mill Creek. Like many frontier settlers he wore several hats, serving as a Texas Ranger and later as postmaster of Vine Grove. When he died his widow Mary stepped into the postmaster's role — a common frontier arrangement that quietly kept mail and community running.

Boerne, TX

This two-story limestone house was built around 1880 by Ives Brown for the Kingsbury family and, in 1925, was bought by Maria James — the pioneer surveyor and community leader who had platted the town of Boerne back in 1852. She named the home "Puccoon" for her ancestral place in Hanover County, Virginia, and it stayed in her family after her death in 1940. Her career surveying and laying out a town was a striking achievement for a woman of her era.

Carson City, NV

On St. Patrick's Day 1897, Carson City hosted Nevada's first world heavyweight championship prizefight, staged in a purpose-built arena after the state legislature legalized the sport. Over fourteen rounds, challenger Robert Fitzsimmons dethroned the reigning champion, 'Gentleman Jim' Corbett, before thousands of fans. Promoter Dan Stuart ran a clean, well-managed show despite fierce criticism from pulpits and newspapers elsewhere.

La Grange, TX

James Jeffres Ross came to Stephen F. Austin's colony as one of the "Old Three Hundred," the first legally settled Anglo-American families in Mexican Texas. A militia captain, convention delegate, and successful trader, he helped win Austin's release from a Mexican prison and left his name on Ross Prairie and Ross Creek. In 1835 he was killed by neighbors enraged that he had sheltered Indians in his home.

Lampasas, TX

Illinois-born James Jackson Beeman came to Texas in 1840 and became one of the first settlers of Dallas and Weatherford. He helped cut the first road through the Trinity bottoms, took part in platting the future city of Dallas in 1842, and guided President Sam Houston to an Indian council in 1843. His restless frontier life carried him to the California Gold Rush and into the 1860 recovery of the long-captive Cynthia Ann Parker before he returned to Dallas.

Conroe, TX

Born in Ireland around 1790, James Jordan came to Texas in 1826 as part of José Vehlein's colony and built this cabin about 1830 on land granted by the Mexican government. Its hand-hewn pine logs were joined with half-dovetail notching and its chimney fashioned of mud and sticks; the Tharp family moved and restored the house in 1976.

Kerrville, TX

James Kerr, a Kentucky-born veteran of the War of 1812 and former Missouri legislator, came to Texas in 1825 as surveyor general of Green DeWitt's colony and a member of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred." He selected the site of Gonzales and named it for the governor of Coahuila, endured the deaths of his first wife and children, and spent decades as a surveyor, Texas Ranger major, and delegate to the conventions that steered Texas toward independence. In 1856 pioneer Joshua Brown gave land here so that Kerr County would bear his old friend's name.

San Marcos, TX

Built in 1891–92 for James and Eliza Malone, parents of sixteen children, this Victorian Queen Anne home anchored the Stringtown settlement east of San Marcos, where the Malones were among the earliest pioneer families. A 1926 remodel gave it a Classical Revival face, and a 1996 renovation restored its exuberant original details — the two-story porch, chamfered columns, jigsawn brackets, and turned balusters.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1947

James Lick was born in the Pennsylvania German community of Fredericksburg in 1796 and left to seek his fortune far to the west, eventually amassing one of the great California fortunes of the Gold Rush era. A piano-maker turned land speculator, he poured his wealth into public gifts, most famously endowing the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton—for a time home to the world's largest refracting telescope. The family monuments in the local cemetery mark the humble Lebanon County roots of a man remembered on the far coast.