A new face for Old Bayview Cemetery

How you can help If you have relatives buried at Old Bayview Cemetery or know people who do, call Geraldine McGloin at 853-2011 to help compile information about those buried in the city's oldest cemetery.

The historical information that has captivated Geraldine McGloin and Rosa G. Gonzales isn't bound in the pages of a book. It's buried at Old Bayview Cemetery.
   "Bayview is like an open history book that has living links to people here," explains McGloin, who with Gonzales is leading the survey of the cemetery.
   The master plan for Old Bayview Cemetery preservation project, sponsored by the Nueces County Historical Commission, of which McGloin and Gonzales are members, calls for the restoration and preservation of the cemetery as well as security for the site.
   The group chose Old Bayview because it is the city's oldest, largest and most vulnerable, says Monsignor Michael Howell, who has family buried there.

George Gongora/Caller-Times

Monsignor Michael Howell (from left), Clarence Roscher, Ruth Roscher Murphey and Geraldine McGloin are working to survey Old Bayview Cemetery and make contact with descendants of those buried in the city’s oldest and largest cemetery.

   Through the years, vandals have toppled markers and chipped away at tombstones. With the new Concrete Street Amphitheater opening off North Tancahua Street, increased traffic in the area will make Old Bayview even more vulnerable, adding urgency to the project, McGloin and Gonzales say.
   Preservation of Old Bayview is not a new effort, the women say.
   But there is a different approach in this latest effort.
   In addition to documenting all stone artifacts, trees, fencing and stone curbing, as Texas Historical Commission guidelines dictate, McGloin and Gonzales are looking for living relatives of those buried there.
   "We're working to establish the standards of preservation and descendants of those buried at Bayview should have first say about how that should be carried out," Gonzales says.

Contributed photo

A visitor to Old Bayview Cemetery stands before the ornate monument to William and Esther Mann in this 1940s photograph.

   Established in 1845 as a military burial ground for 10 soldiers killed in the explosion of a steamer transporting them here to join Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor's troops, Old Bayview also is the resting place of the city's first mayor, first sheriff and black cavalry members known as buffalo soldiers.
   The buried also include veterans from the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War, the Civil War and various Indian campaigns as well as victims of yellow fever epidemics.
   The cemetery has about 400 tombstones. Making the survey difficult are markers barely visible under layers of soil.
   Others are nothing more than fragments, destroyed by vandals or weather.
   Gonzales and McGloin are cross-checking their information with county and funeral home records, and using "Cemetery Data of Nueces County, Texas," a publication compiled years ago by retired Del Mar College professors Brooks Noel and Charles Ward.
   On the Web

George Gongora/Caller-Times

The victim of vandals and time, the Mann monument is in shambles today.

   Their survey, however, will far exceed the physical preservation of the old cemetery.
   Eventually, the women plan to post the names of the deceased, their birth and death dates, a biographical sketch and a photo or portrait, if available, on the Corpus Christi Public Library's Web page research link.
   Family tree clues
   The library's Web link will allow anyone around the world whose genealogy research leads them to Corpus Christi to access Old Bayview's data for possible clues about their family tree.
   "But in order to do this we need the living," McGloin says.
   Technology
   "We need them to come forward with information about those buried there. Bayview is an incredibly important part of our local history, too important a site to just go in and repair a few headstones. And the technology we have now is enabling us to do a whole lot more with preservation that simply wasn't possible in years past."