Iowa Graves Survey

If you've got ancestors who were buried in Iowa, you should check out the Iowa WPA Graves Registration Survey site. The surveys were done in the 1930's, so later burials will not be there, and the following counties were not included: Appanoose, Benton, Cherokee, Clinton, Dallas, Des Moines, Dubuque, Hardin, Humboldt, Ida, Iowa, Jasper, Lyon, Monona, Osceola, Pottawattamie, and Warren.

The entry on my 3rd great granduncle James Moore (1837-1903, buried in White Oak Cemetery, Prairie, Keokuk, Iowa) stated that he was a Civil War veteran, serving in Company A of the 9th Illinois Cavalry. From this I was able to find him in the Civil War enlistment and pension indexes on Ancestry.com (pay site). He enlisted as a Private on 01 Sep 1861 and was at some point promoted to Full Sergeant. He enlisted in Company A, 9th Cavalry Regiment Illinois on 18 Sep 1861. He reenlisted on 16 March 1864 and mustered out on 31 Oct 1865 in Selma, AL. On 11 Jul 1884, he applied for a pension as an invalid, filing from Iowa.

With a common name like James Moore, it can be hard to identify the correct person in these indexes, but we already knew that his brother John enlisted in the same Company, on the same day and was later a POW, held at Atlantica, Georgia, so I'm pretty certain that we've got the right records in this case.