58 | SUNRAYS
OCTOBER 2013
ONLINE:
SCTXCA.ORG
J
ohn Christeson moved to Sun City
Texas 11 years ago. Already a dedi-
cated genealogist, he continued his
hobby with the Computer Club’s Geneal-
ogy SIG. His personal research led to
collecting photographs of family graves,
which often meant traveling many miles
to track them down.
But when Ancestry.com began linking
its profiles to the website Find A Grave,
John discovered that he was not alone;
there were others taking photos of head-
stones and family graves―and they were
posting them online! This meant that he
and other genealogists would be able to
get photos for documentation without
having to travel.
NEW TECHNOLOGY
In the days of film cameras, when you
could only take a maximum of 36 frames
and developing, printing and scanning
the photos to a computer was required,
there were not that many pictures on
the website. Then came the age of the
digital camera, which revolutionized the
whole process. Although early digital
cameras only held 72 pictures inmemory,
the expenses of developing and scanning
photos were eliminated. Compared with
today’s digital memory of 800-plus pic-
tures, a maximum of 72 photos seems
laughable.
The new technology gave John the idea
that he would visit every cemetery in
Williamson County, photograph the in-
dividual headstones, and post them on
Find A Grave. Many cemeteries were
public and maintained by county or city
governments, but some were private―
family plots in a corner of a ranch or
farm that were not maintained at all
and, in time, they soon fell into disre-
pair. Land changed hands, families
moved away, and the little cemeteries
were all but forgotten. Most headstones
were made of limestone and, therefore,
relatively fragile, often broken or over-
turned from weather or cows grazing.
John found these little cemeteries and
trimmed the brush and grass enough
to take a photo of a headstone, but the
rest of the cemetery was neglected and
overgrown. These small cemeteries were
crying out to be cleaned, repaired and
restored―and John heard them.
RESTORING HISTORY
At most of the cemeteries John finds,
there are fallen trees to cut and remove,
weeds to whack, grass to cut, and the en-
tire site needs to be blown clean or raked.
When the area is cleared, John comes
back with Wayne Ware, the Williamson
County Historical Cemetery Chairman,
The
Graveyard
Hunter
By Edna Heard
PHOTO SUBMITTED BY
JOHN CHRISTESON
John Christeson finds and restores area cemeteries for families and genealogists to find online.
