The Search for an Ancestor's TombstoneBy Connie LenzenAn article published in the 18 May 2005 issue of the Vancouver Columbian. |
As a confirmed genealogist, I admit to a certain fondness for cemeteries.
They are places of solitude and beauty. They are also record repositories.
They contain a permanent record of our ancestor’s birth and death dates.
With Memorial Day at the end of May, most cemeteries are cleaned and ready
for a visit. Now is the time to locate your ancestor’s burial places.
Our ancestors may have been buried in family cemeteries, church cemeteries,
or cemeteries maintained by the town or a private cemetery association. If
you are fortunate, you may find the name of the burial place indicated in
family papers, an obituary, a local history, church records, or the records
of a mortician.
If you know the church where your ancestor was affiliated, check to see whether
that church maintained a cemetery.
You may need to narrow your search to those cemeteries where he most likely
would have been buried. Determine which community cemeteries in the area were
in use at the time of your ancestor's death. The local historical or genealogical
society may have a list of all known cemeteries in the county with their dates
of establishment and locations.
Many of our earlier ancestors, especially those who lived in rural areas,
were buried in family burying grounds on their own land. You may find an indication
of this among family papers, or an older relative may remember hearing of
such a family graveyard. Check deeds to land owned by your ancestor and his
family. When the land was sold, the family burying ground may have been excluded
and its location described in relatively specific terms. Old family cemeteries
may be marked on county maps, county surveyors' maps, and topographic maps.
The worst-case scenario is that you may never find an ancestor's burial place.
Not all graves had tombstones. A tombstone may have disintegrated or disappeared.
The entire cemetery may have been moved or may have disappeared when all evidence
of burials was lost or forgotten. However, the search for our ancestor’s
tombstone is one that we all make.
Internet aids for finding cemeteries
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), online at http://geonames.usgs.gov/,
maintains a database of almost two million physical and cultural geographic
features in the United States and its territories. Cemeteries are one of the
features. You can query GNIS for a list of cemeteries in the county where
your ancestor lived.
The US GenWeb, online at www.usgenweb.org, is arranged by state and then county. Many county pages include the names and locations of cemeteries. Some include the names of burials.
© 2006
Connie Lenzen, CG
CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.
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