Cemetery Records Search

Historians hot on the trail of the past often find themselves in some very unusual places to glean information. A cemetery can be one of those places.

Sure, it might sound a little creepy and it might not be a lot of fun to muck around in a cemetery for long, but the truth is that cemeteries, their documents and the tombstones they hold are often treasure troves of valuable facts about people’s pasts. Cemetery searches can also come in handy for amateur genealogists like me who are desperately trying to fit pieces together about their family's history.

Fortunately for those of us who are a little uncomfortable with the prospect of hanging out in cemeteries, there are two very viable ways to look for records. One of them doesn't even require a stroll through the tombstones.

Online Cemetery Databases

The less involved, yet very effective method for doing a cemetery search requires using different online database programs that can return information about burial locations.

Holding the records of literally thousands of cemeteries, these databases can help family historians find out all kinds of information about their ancestors, including birth dates, death dates, burial locations and even sometimes information about surviving relatives.

These databases are sometimes accessible for no charge. Other times, a fee must be paid for information. How much information can or will be returned, will depend on the database itself. While this is a great way to locate dates, names and confirm where a person is buried, it might not provide as much information as an actual trip to the location.

A very good source for obtaining all types of death records about deceased people, including cemetery records and obituaries - is People-Records.net. This is a subscription based website that provides access to many public records databases and resource directories - to help people find all types of publicly available records, including death records, online.

If you wouldn't like to pay for your searches and you don't mind investing some time and effort in the search process, then there are some very good free resources that I would recommend for cemetery records searches, which include FindAGrave.com and Interment.com. These are the main free sources that you should try if you are not into paying for death related records.

Offline Cemetery Searches

The second method – a physical trip – can turn up a bonanza of information. Visiting the older cemeteries in locations where family once lived can net a bevy of information, sometimes even beyond what a database search might reveal. By actually going to the location, family historians can see and record the tombstones and inscriptions themselves.

While the standard tombstone only reveals names and birth and death dates, that's not always the case. More elaborate tombstones might also include family members names, hobbies, occupations, religion and club affiliations.

The markings on a tombstone can be very valuable for helping a genealogist learn more about a person, who they were and what they did. It was not, and still is not, uncommon for tombstones to bear symbols of a person's religion and their club affiliations, such as Mason's marks. Sometimes, there’s even a photograph set right in the tombstone under some type of unbreakable glass.

A tombstone can also help reveal information about a person's status to an extent. The jackpot is hit when a visit to find a single tombstone pays off with a family plot where many ties to the past can be studied all at once.

Combined Search

One of the best ways to use cemetery searches and tombstone inscriptions in family history creation is to actually combine the two when possible. Use the databases to locate cemeteries where family members might be buried and then pay them a visit in person to record inscriptions and perhaps do stone rubbings (which will be the subject of a future article) for your files.

Genealogists and historians know this is a fantastic method for researching families and particular people in general. A search might not turn up anything at all, but in some cases it can provide enough information to heat up a cold trail.