From late 2004 through 2016, I undertook a comprehensive family history project that traced 13 lines of my family from each person's arrival in the US (1864 - 1884). As part of that effort, I connected with over 1,000 relatives from around the globe and gathered nearly 7,000 photographs and document images. The 13 family albums I created clocked in at more than 3,500 pages! In addition to putting this information on file with state and local historical associations, I sent out 156 flash drives to family members with all the information relevant to them. (Yes, people with an obsessive attention to detail should NOT start projects like this!)

Because the success of that effort depended on the work done by many others, I'm paying it forward here on Find-a-Grave. In particular, I'm working on developing a comprehensive, current inventory for the San Marcos (Texas) City Cemetery (7,976 graves as of this count). In particular, I've been laser focused on identifying all of the veterans buried in the cemetery (917+ identified who served in the Spanish-American War forward) to support the Wreaths Across America program.

As I gather information, I'm posting it here on FG plus sharing with the cemetery caretaker/database manager. I'm using the existing cemetery database, plot maps, obituaries, the 1990 Hays County Historical Society's cemetery directory and exhaustive onsite work to not only get all the graves information gathered, but also to add plot locations to all the FG memorials.

I'm using a standardized naming convention for plot locations, so searches will be a breeze. For example, if you're a Posey descendant, you can search the cemetery by surname, then sorting by plot. That will produce a list of all the Poseys in the cemetery in plot order, making it easy for you to walk around the cemetery to visit all of their graves.

Once we get what we think is a current, correct inventory, the next step will be to get GIS locations for all the graves. It's been a slow process though because record keeping over the years has been woefully neglected. About 1000 of the graves listed here on FG are missing from the cemetery's database. Lots of errors to be corrected too plus 150+ unmarked graves to find.

Thanks to all the Memorial managers who are supplying additional information now. (April 2024)

From late 2004 through 2016, I undertook a comprehensive family history project that traced 13 lines of my family from each person's arrival in the US (1864 - 1884). As part of that effort, I connected with over 1,000 relatives from around the globe and gathered nearly 7,000 photographs and document images. The 13 family albums I created clocked in at more than 3,500 pages! In addition to putting this information on file with state and local historical associations, I sent out 156 flash drives to family members with all the information relevant to them. (Yes, people with an obsessive attention to detail should NOT start projects like this!)

Because the success of that effort depended on the work done by many others, I'm paying it forward here on Find-a-Grave. In particular, I'm working on developing a comprehensive, current inventory for the San Marcos (Texas) City Cemetery (7,976 graves as of this count). In particular, I've been laser focused on identifying all of the veterans buried in the cemetery (917+ identified who served in the Spanish-American War forward) to support the Wreaths Across America program.

As I gather information, I'm posting it here on FG plus sharing with the cemetery caretaker/database manager. I'm using the existing cemetery database, plot maps, obituaries, the 1990 Hays County Historical Society's cemetery directory and exhaustive onsite work to not only get all the graves information gathered, but also to add plot locations to all the FG memorials.

I'm using a standardized naming convention for plot locations, so searches will be a breeze. For example, if you're a Posey descendant, you can search the cemetery by surname, then sorting by plot. That will produce a list of all the Poseys in the cemetery in plot order, making it easy for you to walk around the cemetery to visit all of their graves.

Once we get what we think is a current, correct inventory, the next step will be to get GIS locations for all the graves. It's been a slow process though because record keeping over the years has been woefully neglected. About 1000 of the graves listed here on FG are missing from the cemetery's database. Lots of errors to be corrected too plus 150+ unmarked graves to find.

Thanks to all the Memorial managers who are supplying additional information now. (April 2024)