Locating Cemetery Records

One important genealogy resource that often gets overlooked by researchers is the information written on a cemetery stone. While the quality of some markers is poor (e.g., sandstone), they often outlast the records of even our modern society. So if a courthouse was burned to the ground during the US Civil War or French Revolution, something carved in granite may still exist to prove the existence of your ancestors. But how do you find it? In the past, you had to walk through cemeteries and hope that there was an index posted on-site. Or, you had to contact the administrators of the property and send them money to search the records. These days, you may not have to go to a cemetery - even if you are fortunate enough to live in the same town where your family members are buried. As I've said before, though, visiting places that preserve the history of your family provide a greater reward than simply trusting the Internet sources... So, if you can, get out there and have an adventure at the local cemetery - it may be just a simple matter of locating the family plot and documenting the names on the stones. Don't forget to contact the family church - especially if they run the cemetery - their records are probably more extensive and contain additional details. On the flip side, you may not find anything, even when the caretakers say your family is there. I once visited a cemetery where the only visual evidence of my family being buried there was the section and row markers the church provided - there weren't even any tombstones (there was, however, a curb-stone that showed the family name). For each dead-end, though, I've also had some luck.

If you can't visit a cemetery but you want to know more about your family, you can use the web to track down burial records. Here are some great sites you can use:

Find-A-Grave
Interment.net
USGenWeb Tombstone Transcrtiption Project

You may even be lucky enough to be able to view a picture at their site, taken by someone who cataloged the burials in that cemetery and posted them online. In addition to the links above, you may want to check out the records that some major Catholic Dioceses have posted on the web - here are just a few:

Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal Cemetery
Catholic Cemeteries of St. Louis
Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries

Last point: We haven't talked about this a lot, but you should consider posting things (photos of cemetery stones included) that you find during your research, even if they aren't "yours." Our goal as virtual genealogists should always be to augment web resources for all family history researchers - everyone benefits that way. Happy hunting!