This database includes the entries from the San Fernando Burial Registry from January 2, 1744 through December 26, 1860 as translated and transcribed by John Leal. CAR’s report,  Archival and Historical Review of the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio Property, Downtown San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, addresses burial entries of the individuals interred on the hospital property from November 1, 1808 through August 1855. Leal’s transcription was entered into the database by researchers, students, and volunteers. The Center for Archaeological Research is responsible for any mistakes in the data entry.

Click on the arrows in the bottom right corner of the database below to expand your view of the records. For records that are only partially displayed due to length, hover your mouse over the entry to display the full record.

Compiling the Burial Records

This burial records database includes the translated San Fernando Parish Burial Register entries dating from January 2, 1744 to December 26, 1860. These translations/transcriptions were made by former Bexar County Archivist John Ogden Leal between 1973 and 1975. Between 1731 and 1844, San Fernando Parish was the only civilian church in the San Antonio community and the burials recorded represent the community as a whole. The individual Franciscan Mission, too, had their own burial records for their communities. The original records of San Fernando Parish are held by the  Archives of the Archdiocese of San Antonio and microfilm copies of those original records are also available at the  Bexar County Spanish Archives. The entries in the burial registers were made by the priests that served the parish.

The current database that UTSA/CAR is making available through this website originated as a project of Dr. John Reynolds, Professor of History, Emeritus, at UTSA. Dr. Reynolds obtained copies from the San Antonio Public Library of Leal’s manuscript “Camposanto – An Ancient Burial ground of San Antonio, Texas, 1808-1860”. Dr. Reynolds had his history seminar class students transfer the information from the typed manuscript into Microsoft Excel to begin to examine population in San Antonio during the period. Subsequently, UTSA/CAR Staff, in collaboration with Dr. Reynolds, expanded the burial data to include the earlier 1744 to 1807 records also translated/transcribed by John O. Leal. While UTSA/CAR’s report,  Archival and Historical Review of the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio Property, Downtown San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, addresses burial entries of the individuals interred on the hospital property from November 1, 1808 through August 1855, the database includes the larger period. Leal’s translations/transcriptions were entered into the database by researchers, students, and volunteers, but the Center for Archaeological Research is responsible for any mistakes in the data entry. UTSA/CAR welcomes corrections and edits to mistakes within the work.

Using the Database

There are a number of conventions and terms that you may find helpful to access the database.

Spelling and Language

The first consideration is the spelling of both first and last names. Names in the original records suffer from incorrect spelling, approximations of spelling, and changes in the choice or use of letters to make specific sounds. As for bad spelling, the priests of San Fernando were much like us, with some who were better spellers than others, and this resulted in having sometimes more than ten different spellings of the same names.

Approximations in the record represent honest attempts by the Spanish speaking priests to spell a non-Spanish name using Spanish – for example, the Master Blacksmith Jean Vanul and his wife Marie were immigrants to San Antonio from the French speaking area of the former Spanish Netherlands, and the family names were revised to Juan and Maria Banul. In 1823, during the Mexican period, the American John William Smith immigrated to San Antonio, converted to Catholicism, and married into the Tejano community. His name in the Spanish records of the period is Juan Guillermo Esmitt – a Spanish approximation of his English name. One of the more enjoyable approximations is the word Quintoque to describe where an individual was from. Breaking the Spanish pronunciation down, it becomes clear that the priest was saying the individual was from KEEN-TOH-KAY (Kentucky).

Changes in Vowels or Consonants

Changes in the value or preference of both vowels and consonants in Spanish also creates some confusion in the original records or in their translations. The most common of these are as follows:

  • Y and I – as in Ysabel (early) or Isabel (late)
    • or Ygnacio (early) or Ignacio (late)
    • or Ynojosa (early) versus Hinojosa (late)
  • X and J – as in Xavier (generally early) or Javier (generally late)
    • or Ximenez (generally early) or Jimenez (generally late).
  • B and V - as in Christobal (early) versus Christoval (late)
    • or Abila (early) and Avila (late)
  • S and C and Z – as in Sisneros (early) and Cisneros (late)
    • or Zoto (early) and Soto (late) or de la Zerda (early) and de la Serda (late)

Some spellings of common surnames also changed – for example, Carabajal, over time, first became Caravajal, before changing to the more common form of Carvajal used today. To make the database more useful for searches, UTSA/CAR chose to standardize the names in the database using modern usage, rather than have multiple spellings of the same family name.

Name Search

The database includes search bars for either First Name or Last Name, or both can be used concurrently. Since these are free text searches, they will find any name that contains the text you have typed. So for example, typing "Garza" in the last name search field will include names such as "de la Garza" or searching Travieso will include names such as "Alvarez-Travieso".