User's Guide
DISCLAIMER: We do not have any involvement in the management of any of the cemeteries we have listed here. We are historians - recorders of cemeteries. We can't help anyone with cemetery plots or burial arrangements. Usually, each individual cemetery has a committee or association to monitor use of their cemetery; it is those individuals who control burials in their respective cemeteries. We will help you locate where someone is buried, and have had some success in finding them. We will also provide headstone pictures of anyone listed in these cemeteries. We do not ask for and will not accept payment for any service we provide.
Cemetery Transcriptions will be entered here in alphabetical order with the County Name as part of the title, since some cemetery names can be found in more than one county. For example, "Antioch" is one of the most common names for churches and cemeteries, because the Bible tells us, in Acts 11:26, "And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."
When known, cemeteries of predominantly African-American burials will be identified as
such; cemeteries without this distinction should be considered either caucasian or unknown.
Information shown is transcribed exactly as inscribed on the headstones, except sometimes slightly edited (names instead of initials, full dates instead of just years, etc) even information that is obviously incorrect, such as misspelled names. Information that is enclosed in parentheses does not appear on the markers, but has been added by the researchers. Information is italics is usually engraved on headstones (dates of birth or death, for example) but did not appear on this particular marker. Maiden names of women, when known, appear in italics. Often, we do additional research online on select individuals and include that information in the transcription.
In the narrative preceding the list of names we include the date of our visit, location of
and directions to the cemetery, and any historical information concerning the cemetery. If the headstone is a double, that is indicated by the notation (double with) following the first line; the name on the following line is the other half. If a line ends with (See Note__), there is additional information on that individual in a numbered footnote. This procedure is frequently used to explain military abbreviations, especially Navy enlisted rate/rating abbreviations.
This project was started as we searched for burial locations of our ancestors; therefore, you will occasionally see references within the transcriptions that identify a person as a relative. Sometimes the relationship is quite distant, such as a "6th cousin 1x removed", and as close as a first cousin.
Names are arranged in the transcriptions alphabetically by last name, but not by first name. This arrangement preserves the adjacency of family members as they lie in the cemetery.
We take pictures of each individual headstone in every cemetery we visit. These pictures are not posted here (that's just too time consuming a project as we have over 30,000 such pictures), but they are available to anyone who asks, free of charge, by email or postal delivery. We do not request, nor do we accept, any payment for this service. If you request pictures, please provide the name of the cemetery in your request. (It's surprising how many people neglect to include that important piece of information!)
Additional information on San Augustine County, including cemeteries, can be found at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txsanaug/index.htm
My thanks to Suzanne Sowell, who has done a fantastic job with the San Augustine County website; I am happy to provide my pictures for her use.
I will continue to happily honor any and all picture and research requests from anyone, free of charge; I welcome and look forward to all correspondence.
In some instances no date of death is indicated on the headstones. This occurs most often in the case of double headstones where one person is still living. When we find a headstone with no date of death, we research that person and, if we find a date of death, we make a notation that includes the source of our information. If we can't establish a date of death, and the date of birth indicates that the person would be less that 90 years old if still living, we do not include that person's name; we will not knowingly list a living person here except in cases where the individual would be quite elderly if living.
The following abbreviations occur throughout the transcriptions:
(fhm) - Funeral Home Marker (small metal marker)
CRT - Citizen of the Republic of Texas
CSA - Confederate States of America (or; Confederate States Army)
DAR - Daughters of the American Revolution
Obit - Obituary (as a source for date of death)
SAR - Sons of the American Revolution
SRT - Sons of the Republic of Texas
SoRT - Soldier of the Republic of Texas
SSDI - Social Security Death Index (as a source for date of death)
Less frequently recurring abbreviations will be explained in footnotes. (I like footnotes, to the point of being obnoxious)