Last Tuesday July 7th I received a request to take a picture of a grave stone at Oaklawn Cemetery in El Campo which is in Wharton County Texas. This was my second request since I joined http://www.findagrave.com/ . The first time I was asked to take a picture, I was not able to get out to the cemetery right away, it was 30 miles away and we were having car trouble. By the time I was ready to go and take the picture someone else had already visited the cemetery and take care of the request. Finally I have another request to help someone get a picture of their ancestor's grave stone.
This cemetery was a good 40 miles away, but hubby agreed to go for a ride after we had taken care of personal business. He is not really into my grave hopping but loves to be with me and I try to not spend to much time at any one time wandering around the cemetery.
The drive was nice but nothing special. I had googled the cemetery name and came up with an address and directions. Off we went. Got to El Campo but never could find the road we were suppose to take. Stopped and asked a couple of people in a truck and they would point us in a different direction. Just as we were about to give up we decided to stop at a gas station. Asked if anyone knew where Oaklawn was, no one really knew. Showed the address to a mail carrier and she says that is a residence area no cemetery there. The address listed with cemetery is the owners mailing address. Not the address of the Cemetery. Good lesson for my next visit. Check out where cemetery really is. Call a phone number if possible. Thanks to the mail carrier she noticed I had a phone number. Why not call the number? I had never noticed this.
Sure enough the sweetest lady answered the phone. Gave me really good directions and even guided me to the grave.
This is a small cemetery in the country. Once we had the right directions it was really easy to find.
When I was given the request they did not know which husband their ancestor had been buried with. This lady was married twice. I told my my new friend at the phone number for the cemetery that I did not know last name on grave stone. I read off the two husband's last name and she says " LANGDON " you will find Elsie there. She was buried with hubby number two. This lady knows her cemetery.
She shared that her husband had started this cemetery in the 1950's. They raised 4 children and put all four through college., one is a lawyer. You could tell she was really proud of this. She is now probably in her 80's and just sold the cemetery in April. Her health is failing and she can no longer go out there to check it , to plot out the graves and everything else she took care of.
Well here I am wandering for a bit, temperature is 100 degrees and sunny. Really hot for sure.
After taking the pictures of the Langdon grave and took pictures of 8 more graves which gives me 11 names to list http://www.findagrave.com/ site.
We had a nice ride home and I had some pictures to load and list on http://www.findagravecom/ . We had a great adventure that day. Not sure if we will be out that way again in the future but if so we know our way to Oaklawn cemetery.
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