The history here is literally under your feet, and now it’s a lot easier to find.
The city of Galveston has launched a new online tool that allows residents, families, historians and researchers to search cemetery records that were previously buried in handwritten ledgers and historical documents.
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The city and its Geographic Information Systems team spent three years digitizing and verifying those records, mapping out more than 18,000 gravesites and identifying more than 10,000 of them across six city-owned cemeteries.
But the work wasn’t easy. Time and Mother Nature have taken their toll on many of the markers.
“Some of the headstones are very hard to read,” said Jennifer Reynolds, a city spokeswoman. “They date back to the mid-1800s, and in some cases the early 1800s. Salt air and weather have worn them away. Storms and the grade raising have also played some issues with knowing where everybody is.”
It’s exactly why Reynolds says the city decided it was time to move these old records out of the ledgers and into a digital database, one that anyone can access from anywhere.
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“From the city’s main website, galvestontx.gov, it’s right here under GIS maps,” Reynolds said. “You click on that, and it takes you to the GIS hub. If you type in a person’s name — John Sealy, for example — it will take you to the gravesite. If you click on the name, it comes up with the person’s full name, age at the time of death, birth date, death date, and where they are located.”
The tool is designed to help families, historians, researchers and genealogists locate gravesites across the city’s six cemeteries — all from the comfort of home.
Historian Carlton Houston says this kind of work is vital to preserving history and making it accessible to everyone.
“We are seeing more people who may have always been curious about their ancestors and their family story but didn’t have the means actually to do their research,” Houston said. “The technology is making that so much more accessible. My family roots are in Texas, but we’ve scattered to both coasts of America and beyond — and so to be able to do that type of search from a distance is a game changer.”
The new tool is now available at galvestontx.gov in the GIS maps section.