Civil War Veteran Grave Sites | Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society

Civil War Veteran Grave Sites in Orange County

by Guy Ball,

The Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society is proud to support the amazing work of several gentlemen who are working to preserve and celebrate the memories of the Civil War veterans who came to Orange County in order to create a better life for themselves and their families after the American Civil War. These vets and their families often played important roles in the early birth and growth of Orange County during the late 1800s. If you'd like to know more about this topic, we encourage you to follow the links and get involved with the Civil War Round Table of Orange County, visit the websites we've listed, or read Gordon Bricken's book, The Civil War Legacy in Santa Ana,

Link for Biographies for Civil War Veterans Buried in Orange County:
http://occgs.com/projects/civil_war/cw_index.html

100+ year old solders memorial at the Santa Ana Cemetery

by Charles Lewis Beal

While studying for my land surveyor's exam in 2004, I came up with an idea to combine my land surveying experience with a current project I was involved in locating Civil War Veteran graves of Orange County, California.

First, here is some background information about this graves project. In 1999 the Civil War Round Table of Orange County spearheaded by Paul Gillette (also with Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War) documented approximately 725 Civil War Veteran graves in nine local cemeteries. Those cemeteries are: Anaheim Cemetery; El Toro Memorial Park; Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mortuary; Good Shepherd Cemetery; Loma Vista Memorial Park; Magnolia Memorial Park; Old Mission Cemetery; Santa Ana Cemetery and Westminster Memorial Park.

Another earlier contributor to this project is Gordon Bricken, the former Mayor of the City of Santa Ana and a member Sons of Confederate Veterans Captain James Iredell Waddell Camp #1770 assumed the responsibility of maintaining the graves database after completion by the Civil War Round Table of Orange County. My project documents these findings.

I became a participant in this project in 1999 by researching the old local newspapers on microfilm at the Santa Ana Public Library during my lunch hour to find additional names and I helped locate some of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Post records for the four GAR Posts that existed in Orange County. Glen Roosevelt (SUVCW) was another participant who helped greatly in locating these GAR records in Orange and Los Angeles Counties and in the State of Arizona. With the newspaper articles, partial GAR records, we were able to add additional names to the list as not every grave stone is identified as showing they were a Civil War Veteran.

The goal for my project was to photograph and determine the latitude and longitude coordinates on every grave and plot the graves on aerial photographs. As the project was coming to an end, I realized that this project will also help preserve the grave stones that are aging with time and are becoming very difficult to read.

Continue reading this Introduction by opening the full version.

Charles has created 11 Google Earth files that you can just pull into Google Earth (a free program at earth.google.com) and each file will plot out all of the grave locations for that cemetery. The GAR veterans are in blue and the CSA veterans in gray. To use these, download the file and pull them into Google Earth after the program is running.

Anaheim (Updated)
El Toro
Fairhaven (Updated)
Good Shepherd (Updated)
Holy Cross (New)
Loma Vista (Updated)
Magnolia (Updated)
Melrose Abbey (New)
Old Mission
Santa Ana (Updated)
Westminster (Updated)

Civil War Veteran Grave Sites in Orange County

by Guy Ball,

​