There are four main types of cemeteries, the church burial yard, the public or municipal cemetery, the family burial plot and the commercial memorial park. The tombstones in those cemeteries often give information about the children and the names of wives that may not appear in any other records. When looking for tombstones, you should have a notebook containing the surname variants, maiden names of the women on your pedigree charts, and the dates your family members settled that area. Usually, family members are buried in clusters. Even when the surname in that cluster may be unfamiliar, consider the probability that they could be related.

There are two kinds of cemetary records. One is an inventory of stones, taken by somebody on a notepad, or with a recorder, as they walk the cemetary.

If you are searching the actual stones, please - do not use vinegar or shaving cream or powder, and don't do a rubbing! Use a reasonably good camera and MIRRORS! Turn the mirror in various directions, changing the way the light hits the stone, and you will be able to see as much or more as with other methods, and NO damage to the stone.:)

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The other cemetary records are the actual burial records and plot ownership records of the cemetary (sometimes ownership of plots and burial records are kept separately). These are oftentimes lost for older cemetaries.


Information you will be hoping to find:

1. First and foremost, a date of death from which to lookup probate records, wills, and obits. And, if you're lucky, a date of birth, too. Plus probably, in some cases, as accurate a spelling of the name as you've gotten. (Not infallible, but generally more reliable spellings here than in the census records.)

2. Tombstones of other family members in the same plot, or same general area, or same cemetery, who might be candidates for inclusion in the family... more obits to get to check out, etc. Particularly when the stones say "Father of, Son of,", etc.

3. From the second kind of record described above, ie burial records, usually some kind of description of a location to help you find the darn stone, if you're looking for it.

The data pages for each of the counties will help with lists of cemetaries that have been transcribed, and where to find those. Start on the County index to get to each county, and click on its data page.

Internment.Net Incredible site for Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Great Britain! Tremendous information, descriptions of counties, locations of parishes and additional links to informative websites.

The Obituary Links Page has had many new links added!

The Obituary Archive Search Engine now has over 290,000 obituaries indexed and searchable by keyword.


The Virtual Cemetery archive contains continuously updated, user-generated content that is unique and difficult to duplicate. All images are filed geographically, and include text transcribed from the tombstone, making it easy to locate tombstone images by geographic location or by content.



EarthVision is a new site with a mailing list for folks doing obituary research and/or helping to make data available. THEY NEED IRISH VOLUNTEERS !!
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