The Map I Wish I’d Had

Some months back, I found the birth certificate for my second great grandmother, Emily Jane Melton Davis Olive, on footnote.com.  I knew the day would come when I would make the trek to find her gravestone at Itasca Cemetery in Itasca, Texas.

My first stop for grave markers now is findagrave.com.  From there, I found information that I already had plus a plot number – D3.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a cemetery map, so the D3 didn’t hold a lot of promise for me.

I came prepared with my camera and a folder with a) a list of photo requests from findagrave.com for gravesites in Itasca Cemetery, and b) a list of all Davises and Olives in the cemetery in case I found any relatives.

When I arrived, I noticed that the crossroads within the cemetery were marked with numbers.  I was hoping that the 3 of D3 referred to the crossroad.  After wandering for a while, I found a group of Davises from my list.  I took the pictures, then noticed that they were listed at B3.  Eventually I got my orientation and later found the grave I was looking for.  Score!  The search took about an hour.

An interesting discovery was that the cemetery land is actually two cemeteries side by side:  Itasca Cemetery and Luke Tipton Cemetery.

The next day, while I was uploading photographs to findagrave.com, I decided to check out the Luke Tipton Cemetery.  Wouldn’t you know it?  There was the cemetery map I had needed the night before.