When I thought about our visit to Texas as a genealogy trip, there were several things I wanted to learn.\u00a0 Although my cousins and their parents, and my grandparents for the last parts of their lives, had lived in Texas it is not an ancestral location.\u00a0 They were the first of our family to live there.\u00a0 This meant that I had no urgent wish to visit an archives or library or courthouse.\u00a0 However, my grandparents had died in Texas and been buried there.\u00a0 I knew from www.findagrave.com what their grave marker looked like but I wanted to see it for myself.\u00a0 I also wanted to discover where my uncle and aunt were buried and see their final resting places.\u00a0 I had been told that there were old family pictures to go through and looked forward to that.\u00a0 And lastly, I wanted to clear up some questions I had about my aunt\u2019s family.\u00a0 Most importantly, the three cousins there had worked out a plan to get us all together for a day to eat and talk.\u00a0 I wanted time with all of them.<\/p>\n
Since this was the first time in 60 years that we had been to Texas, my sister and I also hoped to see a little of the area and do a tourist-y thing or two.\u00a0 There was the San Antonio River Walk for example.\u00a0 Maybe the hill country.\u00a0 The missions.\u00a0 Mexican food was high on my list.\u00a0 It seemed as if there would be plenty to keep us busy for a few days.\u00a0 So our plans started to shape up.<\/p>\n
My grandpa Lyle and his wife Cena (as well as his last wife, Hazel) are buried at the Ft. Sam Houston National Cemetery.\u00a0 This is a very large National Cemetery but we had the location information so we knew (at least theoretically) what we were looking for.\u00a0 It turned out to be easier than we had feared (although huge, the sections and a few landmarks like chapels were well marked) and we had a map of the cemetery.\u00a0 We had an interesting time wandering a little in the general area of grandpa Lyle\u2019s section.\u00a0 Luckily my sister, and it turned out my cousin too, didn\u2019t have any objections to reading stones and thinking about the people and their lives.\u00a0 Here are views of I think we were all struck by the number of service members who had served in multiple wars.\u00a0 The majority we saw were relatively recent \u2013 from World War I to present \u2013 however there are reportedly much older sections since this cemetery and military base go back to the earliest days of Texas.<\/p>\n![\"2017-10-20](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/2017-10-20-12.07.29.jpg\" "\\"2017-10-20")
<\/a>![\"IMG_2539\"](\"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/IMG_2539.jpg\" "\\"IMG_2539\\"")
<\/a>grandpa Lyle\u2019s stone and the back of it which memorializes his wives.<\/p>\n