Cemetery Records

Today we are going to talk about cemeteries. Cemetery records can be hard to locate if you don’t live nearby. If you live close to where your ancestor died, I’d encourage you to go visit the local cemeteries and find your ancestors’ graves. Most cemeteries have an office or an indexed registry. Sometimes the office may be the mortuary as well. They may be able to give you an obituary or copy of death certificate. It’s worth it to at least ask. Once you locate your ancestor’s grave, walk around in a circle, check the other graves. You may find an ancestor that you didn’t know about.

If you don’t live nearby, here are two of my favorite free online resources. http://www.findagrave.com and http://www.billiongraves.com Both of these websites function off of volunteers.

On Findagrave, you can make photo requests of your ancestor’s grave. Volunteers fulfill those requests. I have also found obituaries and death certificates on some of the “memorials”. One downfall of Findagrave is the search function. It’ll conduct an exact name search, unless you click the box that says “Do partial name search on surname”. So again be creative on your search. Try different spellings. Here are step by step instructions on searching Findagrave.

·         Go to http://www.findagrave.com
·         Notice the left side is for famous graves and the right side for any other grave.
·         Click on the right side “Search 103 million grave records” (This number could change if viewing later)
·         Type in search information

Billiongraves is kind of new (to me). It is very similar to Findagrave. The difference is Billiongraves, the volunteer takes a picture with a GPS App. The advantage of this is you can see (long distance) which graves are close to each. The disadvantage, you have to be a special member to use this benefit. But, anyone can search for free. Here are step by step instructions on searching Billiongraves.

·         Go to http://www.billiongraves.com
·         At the top of the website, click “Search”
·         Type in search information

Cemetery records can help you find birth and death dates. On both websites you may find some names that don’t have the birth date listed, but when you look at the picture, it may say “Aged” and you can figure an estimated birth. Remember always double check your source.