Introduction

    These pages list the names of some 23,000 persons who are known or who are strongly suspected to have been buried in Colorado County, Texas. It also provides information on the more than 130 cemeteries or burial sites which have been located in the county.
    Though every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information presented, this website should not be used as a primary source. Rather, it should be used as an index to direct researchers to the cemetery itself or to concomitant sources. It is axiomatic that in compiling data of this volume, amateurs such as ourselves, under pressure of time and burdened by constant interruptions, will make errors.
    The Nesbitt Memorial Library began actively cataloguing and surveying the county's cemeteries in 1987. The library used earlier surveys, taken by various persons, as a base, but often, as was felt necessary, verified their accuracy and augmented them with additional on-site surveys.
    The library's surveys only began with the transcription of the tombstones on the site. Afterward, the surveys were supplemented and expanded, with family and biographical data and, in some cases, full names and dates being extracted or inferred from other sources, including newspapers, courthouse records, church records, funeral home records, census records, etc. Often such records provided the names of persons who have no tombstones. Accordingly, though the great majority of persons listed on this website do have marked graves, the researcher should not be alarmed or convinced that thieves have been at work if he or she cannot locate a tombstone for a particular person on the site.
    No attempt has been made to reproduce inscriptions on the stones absolutely. Many inscriptions have been amplified, for instance, in many cases, a person's full name, and/or the full dates of his birth and death, has been included in these records though it does not appear on his/her tombstone.
    A major problem with compiling surveys of active cemeteries is, of course, keeping them up to date. It is impractical to resurvey every cemetery every year or two simply to record new burials. Rather than go to that length, since it began this project, the library has dutifully entered data from obituaries published in each of the four Colorado County newspapers into its cemetery record data base. However, it is evident that obituaries are not printed for every person buried in the county, and accordingly, we have certainly missed some recent burials.
    In some instances, information taken from one source differed from that taken from another. Because our format (and common sense) restricts us to only one date of death, one date of birth, one set of parents, etc., to resolve conflicts between the records, we have established a hierarchy among them. We regarded information contained in the official county records at the courthouse as the most reliable, followed by church records, funeral home records, newspaper obituaries, tombstone inscriptions, and reliable personal affidavits. Be warned however that we have not checked each of these types of records for every individual contained on this website.
    We have also included information on persons whose exact burial site is unknown, but who are believed to have been buried somewhere in Colorado County. In most cases, what little is known of these persons has been extracted from newspaper obituaries. Library staff and volunteers (notably Elizabeth Schoellmann and Dorothy Albrecht) have combed through every known extant issue of every known Colorado County newspaper for such information.
    The library previously published, in very small editions, two collections of its cemetery records. Volume 1, which was published in 1992, covered only the southwest portion of the county. Volume 2, which was produced in 1993, covered the Columbus area. This website covers the entire county and completely supersedes the previously published books.