Searching Amongst The Dead

Recently, we had a client who’s 90+ year old mother had recently passed. She wanted to scatter her moms ashes with her mother’s sister. Unfortunately, she didn’t know where her aunt was buried. As a part of our research, we were able to find this information! She was happy to be able to close that chapter and “reunite” her mother with her sister. When doing genealogy research, its common to come across the final resting place of your ancestors. How can this be helpful in your research? Often, the death certificate often lists the burial location. In some cases, families are buried together on private land in a family cemetery. Often people are buried in the church cemetery. If the family attends the same church, they will likely be buried in the same place. The parishioners of one church are predominately one race, so their respective cemeteries tend to be segregated. Most old cemeteries are traditionally segregated. Even if a cemetery was for civil war soldiers, they were separate cemeteries for black and white soldiers.

Some cemeteries have private records that can be searched online. The most common place to find cemetery records online, however, is FindAGrave.com. Much of the information entered on this site is submitted by generous individual contributors. The details often include the name of the cemetery, name of the deceased, birth and death dates, and may even include a photo of the burial site.

What can this knowledge do for your genealogy research? It may give you a clue about how your ancestor presented racially or give you insight about relatives you don’t see in records. Until 1950, the racial segregation of cemeteries in the US was legal. There were different funeral homes for blacks and whites. You may know from research or oral family history that an ancestor is of mixed race. When you see them listed as white in historical documents, or buried in a white cemetery, this may be an indication that they lived as a white person. Also, since families were buried together, you may find relatives that were previously unknown. I once found the burial location for a woman, but had no information on her parents. I searched Find A Grave for other people with her maiden name and who’s age range would make them eligible to be her parent. You may first find an aunt or uncle, but if you can find them in a census record, it may lead you to the parent or even grandparents. You may also find children that passed at an age younger than 10. They wouldn’t be in a census record and their death record may not show up if you don’t know they existed.

Cemeteries and cemetery records can be very helpful in the genealogy research process. If you have a cemetery near your home that you can’t find on FindAGrave.com, you may consider adding the information to the site for other researchers. You never know who you may be helping!

Keep Searching,

The Tangled Roots Team