Needle in a Hay Stack

We arrived at Concordia Cemetery after 3pm today -- full of expectation. Hoping there was an office where we could search for my great-grandmother's grave, but there was only a phone number. I called and it said leave a message... since we were scheduled to leave the next day, it didn't seem like it would be useful. I took down the information so I could mail in a request for info in the future if needed. My father refused to look at the Buffalo Soldier memorial because "they" were against "us" in the Revolution (he spent the entire car ride from California to El Paso reading a book about the Mexican Revolution/Pancho Villa/Teresita Urrea -- and we haven't been able to move him from the topic of Astral Projection since) this despite the fact that his grandparents (one of whom we were in the cemetery to search for her grave) certainly died as a direct result of the revolutionarios (the "us" in the above equation). Yeah, I don't get it either. Let's just say if we had said "Don't look at the Buffalo Soldier Monument" he would have insisted on seeing it.

We perused the map to see if we could figure out how to search for Tomasa. It was just another time when we kicked ourselves for not planning ahead. Ah well, we were there and had several hours before it would close, so what the hell. We staked out that she would have to be in one of the plots listed as "Catholic" -- there were four of these on the map.

Off we went in search of the first section to search ... it seemed simple enough until we were driving around and none of the "street name" signs were where they were supposed to be. Then we saw two men in a minivan hanging out. I pulled in next to them and pretty quickly one of them came over to chat -- in Spanish. He told us that his "boss" would help us find the grave -- all we had to do was go to the office and he had the number and address.

I called the number he gave me and made plans to go over to the office where they had records we could search -- a break! Even though we hadn't planned ahead, we could get help locating her grave. All I wanted to know -- what year did she die? What year did my grandmother become an orphan? What year would she have landed in the Indian School? I wanted this info so that it would be easier to search for records once we reach Santa Fe.

We headed to the office -- where the woman who answered the phone had already been looking through the books for Tomasa's grave. No dice. She checked from 1910-1916 and no Tomasa. But, she did give us the information that the public library had death records we could search -- and off we went.

Several hours later, my dad had the name of two more books he could read on Teresita and I had nothing.

Nothing... no Tomasa died in Texas between 1905-1930. Umm... when you search for a needle in the haystack, sometimes all you find is hay.

Back to the drawing board on everything.