General Digest, Vol 31, Issue 2

Hi Sofia and Maria,

Cemeteries are a rich and wonderful source of genealogical information. I
like to visit the "Cementerio General de Guatemala" every chance I get. It
was built in 1871 at the site of an older cemetery and it has record books
dating from the year it was built. My parents, grandparents and great
grandparents are buried there, plus hundreds of close relatives. The
cemetery is laid out like a small city, with broad avenues and streets lined
up with trees. You can go to the administration office and find out where
your relative is buried. They keep excellent records. You can drive your
automobile right next to the mausoleum and read the plaques on the outside
walls. There is a small archive (two rooms) where you can look up your
ancestor's burial place in neatly kept books. You can even photograph the
pages you would like to have or they can photocopy them for you. Of course,
Guatemala is a city of several million people. In the last few years
several modern cemeteries that look just like the ones in the USA have been
built.

My experience in Mexico has been different. I went to Tepic, Nayarit, in
2002 and 2003 to look for records of my ancestors. My great-grandmother
Josefa Frías Ruiz de Esparza, born in Rincon de Romos, Ags. in 1848 grew up
in Tepic and got married there in 1870. I found her marriage record at the
Cathedral in Tepic and at the Archivo Historico del Estado. The family
moved to Guatemala in the late 1870s or early 1880s.

Of course, one of the first places I wanted to visit in Tepic was the
cemetery where my great great grandfather Antonio Frias Jaso (Josefa's
father) and his son Antonio Frias Esparza (Josefa's brother) had been
buried. So my wife and I headed for the city's cemetery, Panteon Hidalgo.
We stopped at the office where an employee pulled out a card with
information about the burial of Antonio Frias Esparza, who died in 1908. It
had important information, such as the cause of death, age, names of the
parents, etc. The person in charge had no idea where the burial site was,
but said we could go inside and take a look.

The cemetery consists of one street that ends in a beautiful old chapel that
was being restored. No cars allowed inside. The burial sites are scattered
on both sides of that street without any other streets or walkways, so we
ended up reading plaques in hundreds of tombs without ever finding any
relatives. I was told by my cousins in Guadalajara that most old cemeteries
in Mexico are like that. On a recent trip to Aguascalientes, Zacatecas and
Altos de Jalisco I walked into the cemetery at Mexticacan, but could not
find anyone either. It was a tiny cemetery. I imagine other small towns in
Altos de Jalisco have similar cemeteries. Be prepared to spend a lot of
time looking around.

Bill

----- Original Message -----
From: "mcortez"
To:
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2008 9:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] General Digest, Vol 31, Issue 2

Hi Sofia,

Funny you should ask about visiting the graveyards in Los Altos. Some
years
back I asked my Dad to take me to the cemetery and he looked at me as if I
had taken leave of my senses. He asked me why I would want to go there and
I explained that I hoped to read inscriptions on the tombstones and gather
genealogical facts that way. He said there were few tombstones and mostly
crosses. After that bit of disappointing news I did not...
Maria