Washington Park Cemetery

Washington Park
5500 James S. McDonnell Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63134
 

Year Opened:  
Year Closed:  
Type or Affiliation: African American
Number of Burials: 0
Removals To and From: Various.  See SLGS Cem. Vol. 5, pp. 109-206
Old Cemeteries of St. Louis Vol. (Pg.):
StLGS CD Vol. Number: 3
StLGS CD Ref. Number: W05
Fiche / Film: 
Sacred Green Space (Pg.): 437
Additional Sources: Washington Park Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri Reinterments, R 977.866 W319
Notes: Located at intersection of Natural Bridge Road and Brown Road in North St. Louis County.  Many burials removed for airport and metrolink expansion.  Cemetery in poor condition and has been in private hands for decades.  

Records

There are 2 files of physical cards. Name Cards (a.k.a. burial cards) and Lot Cards. Ideally there should be:

  1. One name card for each person buried containing:
    - last name, first name (with suffixes attached in this field)
    - age
    - address (many times this contains a hospital)
    - cause, place, and date of death
    - burial section, lot, and grave
    - date of interment
    - other information like burial permit and undertaker
     
  2. One lot card for each section/lot containing:
    - purchaser’s info, salesperson, price (out of scope at this time)
    - name of each person, grave number, date of interment
    - notes on container and grave type
     

Data Issues

  1. Some people are in one file but not the other.
  2. Sept 1987-1989: Over One-Thousand name cards contain no section/lot/grave and some people who appear on lot cards have no name card at all.  These lot cards are hand-written on index cards and easy to identify
     

Cemetery Maps

 

Locating a Burial at Washington Park

Each search for a grave at Washington Park Cemetery, Berkeley, MO, is a research project. The following process was developed by Dan Newman, long-time Washington Park volunteer and recorded by Kathy Franke, St. Louis Genealogical Society:

  1. Once you find the Section/Lot/Grave numbers, go to a map of the section. (If no map exists, you have to kind of figure out the section layout yourself).
  2. Find a grave marker in the section and look up the location of that person’s grave by using Find-a-Grave or cemetery records at St. Louis Genealogical Society or Missouri Historical Society.
  3. Locate that lot number on the section map and note it’s relative distance from the lot you seek.
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until your search leads you to either a grave marker for your person or to a nearby grave.
  5. When you are close by, you may use measurements to find the grave you are seeking.
  6. Many stones have moved over the years by either erosion or human intervention. So you must use your detective skills to decide which locations to trust.

 

Measurements

  1. Most lots are either 3-grave lots or 6-grave lots, measuring 10’ x 9’ and 10’ x 18’, respectively. The lot dimensions are on the surveyors’ maps. (That is 10 feet by 9 feet and 10 feet by 18 feet.)
  2. Be aware that the maps show ditto marks for adjoining lots which may look like the number 11. Look for the lot measurements on a lot near the edge of the section.
  3. Walkways are usually 4 feet wide.
  4. Measuring from grave 1 to the adjoining lot’s grave 1 should be 10 feet.
  5. Measuring from grave 1 to grave 2 in a 10’ lot will be 3 feet, 4 inches.

 

General layouts of WPC

  1. Original maps of the whole cemetery show section 9 near the front, it was never used up there (except for one burial). Section 9 is in the back along Hwy 70. Where it is shown on the map is now Sec 1A.
  2. Section 6 and 6A seem to be the same area.
  3. As far as the layout of graves within a lot, most have the graves arranged with 1 being in the South West corner (or on the left as you face the gravestone) and 6 being in the North East corner of the lot.
1 2 3
4 5 6
  1. A few lots are laid out in the reverse. This can be difficult to determine:
6 5 4
3 2 1
  1. All sections have odd-shaped lots along roads or other obstacles.  These usually have a letter next to the lot number. This also occurs when the roads were narrowed to accommodate more graves than planned in the original surveys.