Historic Williams Arizona Mountain View Cemetery Project

 Cemetery Project Background

Located west of Williams Arizona along Historic Route 66,  an 8 acre cemetery was established in the late 1890s. The management of the cemetery was equally spread amongst two service organizations. The Order of Knights of Pythias owned and managed the east half,  and The Independent Order of Odd Fellows owned and managed the western half of the cemetery. In the mid 1980’s 6 acres west of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows portion of the cemetery was purchased by the Masonic Service Organization, which almost doubled the overall size of the cemetery.  Generally these service organizations, who had active chapters within the community of Williams, were responsible for the management of the cemetery and they designated and sold individual or family plots to the residence of Wiliams and the surrounding areas.  

In 1987 Nancy Carter, with the Northern Arizona Genealogical Society, compiled a list of information taken from a ground survey of the headstones located within all sections of the cemetery.  That list is what was used to later compile the information found in the program “Find-A-Grave”.  Also about this time, the City of Williams began taking over management responsibility for the cemetery. However they received few records of the locations of the existing burials from any of the service organizations. Also the primary documents they have listing the names of plot owners and their locations are spread across 4 maps with handwritten notes, for the most part.  The information on these maps appears to have not been synchronize with each other nor with the headstone inventories.  In the mid 2010s death records for the State of Arizona were scanned and made available online. Genealogists and “down winders” conducting family research soon began contacting the City and Williams Public library.  Most were requesting information on family members who’s death records or obituaries listed them as being interred in the Mountain View Cemetery, but their names were not listed in the program Find-A-Grave.  In some cases, they were also not listed on the 6 maps.  Therefore if the person was not listed on the 4 maps, or they were not recorded as part of the headstone inventory, it is very difficult to confirm they are interred in the cemetery or know exactly where they are located within the cemetery.

To address this issue the volunteers of the Williams Historic Photo Project and History Room initiated the cemetery project. The purpose is to synchronize the various known headstone inventories into one document, compare that list with the information handwritten on the 4 maps handwritten maps representing the KP and IOOF sections and the maps for the Mason section, and then physically verify the information at the cemetery.  The updated maps, photos and associated information will then be uploaded to this website and made available to the public.