One of the biggest comments I find on a post about cemetery searches is "Call the cemetery office". I'd like you all to stop saying this to people and here is why.
While it's true that some churches and some cemeteries have an office, many MANY do not. Let me just say that in states like where I am (Alabama) there are zero cemetery rules. In fact, there is no mandatory registrations out there of burials. This leads to cemeteries who have zero need for a records office. The majority of cemeteries in my immediate area are in fact open to burials on your own and you don't even have to have a funeral home involved if you don't want to. Several years ago, I interviewed a man who was working on a local cemetery to clean up one of the oldest sections that had been buried under decades of leaf debris, downed trees and left to return to the earth on it's own. His great grandfather was a civil war soldier and was buried in this old section. He made it his personal mission to clean up the whole place. The cemetery was on a small hill outside of a very small town hidden in some trees. There were no gates, no night time lights, no fences or security. He spent many many months, and long long days in that place. He not only cleaned up that area, but became a sort of guardian over the cemetery. What he did find out was that many young Mexican mothers who most likely were illegal here would come in at all hours of the day and bury infants where ever in the cemetery. This is hugely sad, just for the fact that these children will never have a written memory, but also because these young families were just picking any spot and digging a few inches down. This cemetery was previously already filled up. Not all burials had markers. These families were burying young infants and children on top of other unmarked graves. We know this to be true. On the flip side, I once visited a cemetery in Muskogee, Oklahoma. it was a city cemetery and it also had a main office. While the office was very small and only open on occasion, I happened to hit a good day. Not only did they have a record of where the ancestor was buried, they had kept file information from that burial in 1908. These records of the unmarked plot said who was in each grave, what they died of, who paid for the burial, and also a bunch of other things. What I'd like you to advise people about instead of to visit the office, Ask them to find local burial regulations first. If there are NONE in that city, county or state, they may be better off going to newspapers instead and saving the gas money. I'd also like you to ask them to find a local cemetery buff. People in just about every town are interested in this and many know more than you can ever find in documents. And just to make a hundred or more of you even more mad at me - FindAGrave(FG) is NOT a valid source of information. Sure, you might get some there - someone posts an obituary or a photo. But all the info is User Entered. Any familial connections are prone to errors. Use it as a "Hint" to things and NOT as a primary source. I'm not a fan of FG. Never have been. It is always the LAST entry I look at on sites like Ancestry. And many times I will totally disregard the information. So while you are searching for churches and cemetery offices, make sure you know if they are required to keep information or not. You sure could save yourself a lot of headaches and time with those Adventures in Genealogy.
1 Comment
1/30/2022 08:10:04 pm
No, find a grave is absolutely not a reliable source of information. While it can be helpful, do the rest of your homework. Findagrave insists that my dad is dead. They list the information as "date of death unknown". My dad is 91 and very much alive! I've tried and tried to get them to correct the information to no avail. Use caution when the information out there is based on an entity having a contest on how many grave sites they could photograph and the number of Graves they could document. The information is only as good as the person and their knowledge that enters the information into any given database. 🙃
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AuthorMichele is an obsessed mother of 4 residing in North Alabama. Hobbies include long walks in the woods, on the beach and in strange cemeteries and libraries. Genealogy friends need only apply. Categories
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