Hagerman Cemetery Added

Hagerman Cemetery

Hagerman Cemetery

This is one of those “finds” we were fortunate enough to stumble upon. While out exploring Grayon County in search of a very well concealed “Confederate” cemetery, we took a wrong turn and found ourselves cruising through Hagerman, a very rural little municipality.  I feel it safe to say that if we’d been looking for it, we would not have found it…  In fact, if there is actually any “city center”, I have no idea where to even start looking.

Let’s just say we got lucky and found yet another historical Texas cemetery in the process of losing our way.  (insert 4 bars of “Another One Bites the Dust” here…)

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Aurora Cemetery resampled

Aurora Cemetery

Aurora Cemetery

For one reason or another, the Aurora Cemetery, photographed in June of 2008, contained all original (un-processed) images.  This just means they don’t have the “punch” or visual impact of my current work.  Apparently an oversight, this has now been corrected, along with some re-cropping, addition of a few photos that were left out originally – and more importantly, the page is now transcribed.  This painstaking element is a matter of spending a not-insignificant amount of time magnifying and typing out the inscriptions on as many tombstones as I can read – along with any plaques I may have photographed.  You can imagine how long this takes, right?  Anyway…  It’s all done now and I’m very happy with the results.

Enjoy!

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Massey-Steel Cemetery Added

Massey-Steel Cemetery

Lake View

This is one of those projects I’ve been wanting to accomplish since 2008, when a random individual told me about this “Confederate” cemetery, well-concealed and hard to find, somewhere in the vicinity of Pottsboro.  I looked on Google Earth, searched maps and queried various tables for two years before I started closing in on the location.  Even when I actually pinned down the geographic location, it took some doing to find it.  Forget the fact that it takes about an hour and a half just to get there from the Dallas area.  That’s only if you don’t get lost, take a wrong turn, or not factor in that some roads have the same name and appear in three places with differing destinations…

But we did find what we were looking for – and it has a stunning view of the lake.  We also found another interesting cemetery along the way, that I haven’t finished processing yet.  Hopefully soon…

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Dallas Pioneer Cemetery Added

Pioneer Cemetery Dallas

Pioneer Cemetery

At long last, my wife and I made the trek down to the historic Dallas Pioneer Cemetery to photograph it for this site.  Many things make this particular cemetery unique.

  • It is a combination of four cemeteries.
  • A substantial Confederate Monument occupies one corner of the grounds.
  • Many historically significant people are buried there.
  • Is is bounded by the Dallas Convention Center
  • A massive bronze cattle drive is part of the park’s attraction.

Also, this is the first of the cemeteries I’ve covered where I made a concerted effort to capture as many of the monuments as possible and transcribe all of them – in addition to transcribing all the plaques.  Over 130 photos make up this display.

Photographed on March 6, 2011 and posted on March 19, 2011

Stay tuned for 2 more postings I’m still working on.  An obscure town cemetery in rural Grayson County and – a necropolis I’ve been looking for this last 2 years – a well- concealed Confederate Cemetery in Grayson County.

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Updated Galleries

Now that the site is finished, I felt I needed to get busy and process two cemeteries I photographed last year, but never posted.

While we were in Pennsylvania in March of 2010 (drizzling rain the entire time…) we took a day to investigate the Amish country.  If you have never been, you need to schedule some time to investigate this region.  Aside from the beautiful green rolling hills and farms, the simple life these people lead is soothing if only to visit for a short time.  In our travels, I spotted a very old, classic cemetery and spent a little time evaluating it.  There are a couple of very odd images in this collection I think you will find interesting.

The second project is a cemetery outside St. Jo, Texas that I found while searching for a certain Texas oddity to show my wife.  Some of the history in this rural Texas necropolis, the final resting place of some Pioneers, is quite interesting.

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Up at Last!

Finally.

The new site is up and running with a little over 40 cemeteries represented here.  I’m happy with the new layout, even if it was a lot of work.  Aside from the interface, the biggest change is the effort put into the documentation to try and list as much information about each image as possible in a text format to make it more search engine friendly.  This was done to assist those searching for genealogy information about their relatives.

If there is anything you’re looking for that you don’t see in a cemetery I’ve recorded, contact me and I’ll see if it’s in archival images I chose not to display for one reason or another.

I am also available as a “hired gun” to photograph specific grave sites if your relatives are buried in Texas (or Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico – actually anywhere you’d care to fly me) and you are not local.  Feel free to contact me if my services are of interest to you.

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Part-way done with the site rebuild

This site has been in a regular state of updates since it’s inception in 2007.  However… The site design itself has been woefully stagnant over the last three years with absolutely no cosmetic changes or improvements.  All of this is changing, with a completely new website design and a rebuild of every single listing page as well.  In other words I’m re-engineering every cemetery page from scratch, with many of the older ones getting re-rendering of all the images to bring them up to my current standards.

I am also adding anecdotes and image identifying information to every photo to assist in searching for loved ones’ final resting places that I have documented.  If you’re looking for someone you don’t see here – but I have photographed the cemetery, contact me and I will look through the archives to see if it’s in an unpublished image.

Stay tuned for the launch announcement sometime after the first of the year.

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