Aguascalientes Cemeteries

A cemetery or pantheon is a place where dead bodies are buried and cremated remains kept. The term cemetery (from Greek: resting place) implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground. For more information see: History of cemeteries

On March 1, 1784, King Carlos IV ordered the establishment of cemeteries for urban areas of major cities of the viceroyalty. This was followed by the order of April 3, 1787 directing that these cemeteries should be built on the outskirts of cities. With this order every churchyard should be closed. However, the order was republished in 1804, showing that there was resistance from parish priests.

Many tombstone inscriptions and many books on cemetery burials exist and can provide additional information that is not in church or civil death certificates.

There are two main types of cemetery records in Mexico:

• Information recorded on gravestones

• Information recorded by the clerk or owner of the cemetery, there are also parish registers and civil registers of burials or deaths

Often time the cemetery records themselves included more information than the burial parish registers or death certificates of civil registration. It may include the name of the deceased, age, date of death, date and year of birth, and information on the husband. These records can provide clues as to military service of the deceased, religion, occupation, and place of residence at time of death.

Few inscriptions on tombstones or monuments have been transcribed. There were many poor people whose impoverish state did not allow them to have monuments or headstones. So you should look for other types of records, such as books of burials, parish records and civil records. Often relatives are buried in adjacent places, so you should look at the original records, if available, or visit to the cemetery to see who were buried around them.

To find the registers of headstones, you have to know where your ancestor is buried. It may be that they were buried in ecclesiastical cemetery, a municipal cemetery or a private cemetery. People were buried close to where they died. The announcements, parish records and death certificates can guide you to their burial place.

The law of July 31, 1859 gave the civil government of Mexico the right to inspect the dead and control burials. At present the civil government is in charge of cemeteries. Some municipal archives have information on lots and private cemeteries. If you know exactly where your ancestors lived, you can ask the local archive if there are cemeteries on private land.

Other sources of cemetery records include:
• The current parish priest, who holds the records of burials

• A neighborhood library, historical society, a historian who may have records, a family relative who lives in close proximity to family plots or cemeteries that have changed locations

• The Family History Library has very few records of cemeteries in Mexico, and has none for Aguascalientes. However, deaths and burials record will be useful in the parish. To locate these records, look in Place Search (search in place) where your ancestors lived. Then click on:

CHURCH RECORDS

PARISH REGISTERS

DEATHS or BURIALS

To find a specific cemetery in Aguascalientes, should look at the website BillionGraves for cemeteries in Mexico. For now they only have directions to cemeteries, but afterwards they will add dates of those buried there and their tombstones.