How to Locate Someone in a Cemetery
There are many reasons why someone might wish to find a grave in a cemetery. The most common is the desire to find an ancestor as part of a genealogical search. Historians, on the other hand, may be looking for individuals whose burial location or dates of birth and death can help confirm some aspect of an important event. Because of the Internet and the popularity of genealogy, there are quite a number of national and local Web sites that can help you locate a particular person's resting place.
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Instructions
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Obtain the Individual's Death Certificate
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Contact the Vital Records office in the state where the person died. The CDC has a very helpful Web site that provides the physical address for that office in each state and its online resources, if any. Some states allow you to order records online.
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Go to the online resource for the appropriate state and follow the guidelines for that state for obtaining a certificate. Each state differs, so follow the rules carefully. It will take one to two weeks for your certificate to arrive.
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Search the death certificate for an indication of where the person was buried. Also note other clues, such as the dates of birth and death, and the exact spelling of the individual's name, to assist in your search for their grave site.
Check Cemetery and Church Records
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Call the local historical society in the county where the death took place. They may keep cemetery records, or can tell you where to find them.
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Call the cemetery office of the cemeteries where the person is likely to have been buried. Every cemetery is different. Some will have very good records that show the location of each grave and the person interred there. Others will not, and you'll have to go about the search from another angle.
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Call the church that the person attended. Churches sometimes keep records of their parishioners' births, christenings, marriages and deaths (including burial information). If you do not know where the person you are looking for attended church, a family Bible might also contain this information.
Use National Burial Databases
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Check the Web site of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, if the person you are seeking served in the military. The Web site will ask you for the person's name, dates of birth and death, and the cemetery name. If it finds the person, it will provide you with the section, row and site number of their plot.
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Go to the Find-A-Grave Cemetery Search Web site and enter the name of the state, county, and cemetery (or as much as you know). It is a nifty and comprehensive Web site that will give you photos of the cemetery, a list of all interments, and (when you click on a specific person's name) all of the information the cemetery has on that person. They even include photos of the headstone.
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Check out Cyndi's List, a comprehensive index of genealogical resources on the Web. It has an entire page devoted to cemetery resources.
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Tips & Warnings
If the individual died prior to about 1919, when all of the states began to register birth and death records, a death certificate may not be available for them.
Most Vital Records offices charge a fee of about $10 to $15 just for the search. In addition, if you are not a close relative, spouse or legal representative of the family, they may not release a death certificate to you.
