The Value of Cemeteries

To the genealogist, cemeteries provide several pieces of information. First of all, headstones give you at least the death date and often the birth date of the individual. During certain eras, especially the mid-19th century, only the death date and the age of the deceased were given on the stone. The problem with this accounting is that it is very prone to error. The headstone of one of my ancestors reads, "died Oct. 13, 1862 aged 60 Ys, 9 Mo, 13 Ds." By my reckoning, this puts her birth date as Dec 31, 1801. But the family record book, written by the woman's step-mother, who kept meticulous records, says she was born on Jan. 1, 1802. So, beware of this and get independent confirmation from other sources.

The genealogist can also glean family groups from cemeteries. Many times several relatives of a family are buried close to one another, especially spouses and children. The marker sometimes says who the parents or spouse was. If you can access the cemetery records, you can find who bought the plots. You can also find people buried without headstones in the cemetery's accountings. Military headstones give the rank and unit of the person along with which conflict they fought in, and many gravestones in regular cemeteries have the military plaque added, often to the back, so check both sides of the stone, when taking pictures.

Headstone showing marriage date and icons for the Freemasons and Eastern Star.

In general, more elaborate gravestones have more data. Some have marriage dates, maiden names, or children's names. Also, membership in groups, like the Freemasons or Eastern Star, are often shown using icons or badges.

Growing up, my family often went to family reunions. Part of the ritual was that Saturday afternoon always included a tour of the local graveyards. As a kid I didn't really understand it from a genealogical standpoint. I just enjoyed running around the mowed lawns and headstones. As I got older, I started listening to the stories about the people under the sod. About the same time I started enjoying my mother's family tree research. The branching charts puts some order on all these stories and people.

It is a major effort to tour the country, visiting cemeteries of past relatives. My relatives are scattered across the country, from Maine to California, from Alaska to Florida. In their travels, my parents stopped whenever they were near one of the ancestral burial grounds.

Fast forward about 30 years. Not long after I took over my mother's research because of her Alzheimer's, my friend, Bill, took me on a short road trip. We drove out to a cemetery and he took some photos of headstones. Then we hit two more cemeteries. He told me about a website he had found that was a cemetery database. He signed up to take pictures when people requested it. It was Find A Grave. All the years of family reunions, plus a couple of trips to England walking through churchyards, came together with a very nifty web app. I fell in love.

Find a Grave is a cemetery search engine. It contains data about the cemetery as well as those buried there. You can search for a name in a particular cemetery or in the entire database. You can put birth and death years along with country, state, and county into the search criteria. You can create new memorials for people if you know where they are buried. All from your own home. You can even ask volunteers to take photos of the headstones, as Bill did. I have built a huge network of the relatives I can find on the website, and, most importantly, see the data on the headstone. No longer do you need to travel across the country to check headstones. The Internet will do it for you.

I just found the Find a Grave Android app. Unfortunately, it needs a lot of work. Many of the functions available at the website are not built into the app, such as virtual cemeteries. I'm sure these will appear later, but right now, except for creating memorials in the cemetery and checking memorials away from home, the app is not ready for prime time.

Other cemetery databases to check out are Interment.net, the Nationwide Gravesite Locator of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War National Graves Database, the JewishGen Worldwide Burial Registry, and the RootsWeb Cemetery Database. Also, many states and counties, as well as historical and genealogical societies, have put their records online. Individual cemeteries may also have search functions on their websites.

Even with the latest in technical solutions, I still want to walk a cemetery every now and then. Maybe I should become a photo volunteer for Find a Grave.

New sources!

Because of this blog, I've been contacted by a woman who is descended from Benjamin Adamson's second wife, Sarah Browne Adamson, but through her first husband, John Higgins Armstrong. So, something like fourth half-cousins. She told me that Sarah Adamson wrote a diary for 33 years, giving a day-to-day account of pioneer life in early Ohio and Iowa. The original diaries are in Ohio and Iowa historical societies. I want to get copies of these diaries for the Adamson book project, so I'm going to contact the museums to see if they have electronic copies.

She also had handwritten pages from an Adamson/Armstrong record book, which she thinks was originally started by Sarah, based on the handwriting. This record contains data on Benjamin's first set of children with Susannah Pool. It also contains children and dates that I've never seen, such as the two Susannah Adamson's, one who was born in 1806 and died in 1808, and one who was born in 1809, married Charles A. Moore, and died in 1872. This record has filed in a lot of gaps in my notes. Thank you, J.

So the research for the book proceeds. I'd really like to get more information on the children of Benjamin and his first wife. These have been the big gap from previous Adamson books.