Report #1 on my 2011 genealogy research trip to Panama
Last month, in just a matter of days, I went from having no idea when my next trip to Panama would take place to having a ticket booked for a ten day trip in June. The main purpose of this trip was to do genealogical research. This and my next several postings will report on what I accomplished.
It may sound a bit morbid, but no genealogy research trip would be complete without a trip to cemeteries where ancestors are buried. I made two separate trips to Corozal Cemetery, the grounds of which is divided into the well-groomed side maintained by the Americans and the much larger and significantly less comely portion managed by the Panamanian government. All of my relatives laid to rest at Corozal were buried on the Panamanian side. In this post I’ll focus on my mother’s side of the family.
Tio Lucho, my mom’s brother, showed me where my maternal grandfather Hilarion Vallee Cadignan was buried. As you can see in the pictures below his grave is marked by a cross and there is no headstone to announce whose remains are found at that spot. Thankfully Tio Lucho remembered the general area where he was buried and the grave number, 8455, so we were able to find it easily.
Next we went to Jardin de Paz, the cemetery where my maternal grandmother Maria Anastasia Colomb de Vallee and my aunt Ilka Hortensia Vallee de Trottman are buried side by side. Since Jardin de Paz is a privately owned cemetery the grounds were kept up quite nicely.
For many years now Tio Lucho, the only one of his siblings that never left Panama, has wanted to have Hilarion’s remains exhumed and reinterred at Jardin de Paz for a final reunion with my grandmother, Nana Tere. Aside from the symbolic act of reuniting his parents this makes practical sense because the location of the Corozal cemetery is out of the way and is not cared for very well. He took this opportunity to inquire at both cemeteries about the steps that would need to be taken to have this done and has already started the process, which of course involves paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork. We will order a plaque matching Nana’s to mark his new and final resting place very soon.
I Am the Diaspora 
Sounds like an interesting trip! I can’t wait to hear more. By the way you have a minor typo, my mom was buried in 1997, not 2001. lol
Eeeks! Some family historian I am! Thx so much for pointing that out. I fixeded it. I had so many problems entering those captions I had to re-write them a million time, I didn’t even realize I did that. I remember it was my freshman yr in college, aka the year I graduated from HS, but somehow I put my college graduation year instead. Lord help me.