How to Locate a Burial Location for an Individual for Free
Locating a burial location for an individual requires knowing a few details prior to beginning a search. Helpful facts are the full name of the individual, birth date or at least an approximate year of birth, religion, and date and place of death. Armed with this information, contacting funeral homes or cemeteries in the town or county where the death occurred is a good place to begin. Searching online is also an option. There are many free cemetery websites with both genealogy-user contributions and historical-type society contributions. Finally, locate a volunteer online who will do cemetery record searches for free.
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Instructions
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Conduct an online search for a death certificate. Death certificate forms are not standardized across the United States, however, most certificates will list a "burial" or "cemetery" location. This location may only be a city and state, but that is a good starting point.
There are many free, online organizations and societies that publish death certificate indexes and documents. FamilySearch.org is one such organization that provides some free death certificates.
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Conduct an online search for specific cemeteries and funeral homes. Enter [town name] cemeteries or [town name] plus funeral home, into a search engine box and review the results. Depending on the religion of the deceased, begin by contacting relevant cemeteries. Contacting funeral homes is a good second option.
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Conduct an internet search for "grave sites" and review the results. Many historical and genealogical societies place indexes and full cemetery transcriptions online. Sites like FindAGrave.com list grave information, sometimes with photos, for cemeteries all across the United States and the world. This type of site also has contacts available if a cemetery is listed but not a specific grave. The contacts will do a search for free.
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Consult Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness website. There are many volunteers online who will do cemetery record searches for free. Review the request guidelines, search for a specific state, then sort through the results by county and what type of information is being sought.
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Tips & Warnings
Transcription errors do occur, so be sure to search not only by the full legal name but surname variations.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit grave marker image by pearlguy from Fotolia.com
