Alfred Martin Ray, Buffalo Soldier

Ray's life after the army is the part the record holds. Born in slavery in or near Jonesborough around 1849, he enlisted in 1872 and joined the 10th Cavalry, one of the Black regiments called Buffalo Soldiers. He retired in 1903, bought land near Woodrow Avenue and Depot Street, and built a house there in 1904. He died in 1917 and rests in College Hill Cemetery. The story that he planted the flag on San Juan Hill is local tradition without a cited source, and no photograph of him is known.

What the plaque says

Alfred Martin Ray Buffalo Soldier On July 1, 1898, Lt. Ray planted the United States flag on San Juan Hill, Cuba, amid a hail of enemy bullets during the Spanish-American War. For his heroic courage in action, Ray received a battlefield promotion. He served in the U.S. Army from 1872 to 1903, first in the Indian Wars as a Buffalo Soldier (10th U.S. Cavalry, Colored), later in Cuba and the Philippines. Born a slave on the Ray farm near Jonesboro, he purchased Woodrow Avenue property in 1904. Alfred M. Ray is buried in College Hill Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — 0.5 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 9.9 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 11 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 13 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.

More markers nearby

• First Abolition Publications — steps away
• Christopher Taylor House — steps away
• Chester Inn — steps away
• Alfred Eugene Jackson — 0.3 mi