Cemeteries and Obituaries

A source of

Vital Information

Cemetery Records• Can be a place to find…

•Family members •Relatives in other plots•Children who died young•Women not found in other records

Cemetery Records

• Often include information about:

•Birth•Marriage•Death

And sometimes:•Military service•Religion•Membership in an Organization

Cemetery RecordsVary in completeness and accuracy.

Records may be difficult to locate.

Cemetery RecordsDetermining a burial place can be

a difficult problem.

Use Obituaries and Death Certificates to solve this problem.

Burial place listed here.

Burial place listed here.

There are There are 5 TYPES5 TYPES

of Cemeteries of Cemeteries in Americain America..

1. Churchyard

Members buried here.Custom from the Old World.Common in colonial states.

2. Church-owned Cemetery

• Not adjacent to Church building but is owned and operated by the church.

• Example in SLC is Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery .

3. Government-owned Cemetery• Includes military

• Can be at town, county, state or national levels

• Maintained by taxes

• Salt Lake City Cemetery is an example. DeRuyter Town Cemetery,

New York

4. Privately-owned, non-church cemetery

• Operated as a business enterprise; is a corporation.

• More common in recent years.

• Larkin Sunset Lawn is an example in Salt Lake City.

Poukeepsie Cemetery

5. The Family Cemetery• Often just a small

corner of the family farm or estate.

• Set aside for family members and relatives.

• Found throughout Utah on hillsides and farms.

2 Types of Cemetery RecordsCemetery Records1. Sexton’s Records 2. Tombstone or Gravestones

1. Sexton’s Records

~ started around the time of the Civil War

Sexton’s Sexton’s RecordsRecords

Provide ~

Names and dates

of those buried.

They are not obliged to share these records.

Sexton Sexton

may also provide

Maps of

burial plots

Salt Lake City Cemetery

How to Contact Sextons• FHL Resources include:

• “Cemeteries of the United States”– Organized by County

• “United States Cemetery Addressbook”– Organized by State and Town

“Cemeteries of the United States”

United States

Cemetery Address

book

• Tombstones or Gravestones•The Other Cemetery Record

Have been around a very long time.May be only record that a person lived and died.

• The two types of Cemetery Records:

• Sexton’s Records• Tombstones or Gravestones

These may be transcribed and found in publications.

How to Find Transcriptions of Cemetery Records in the

Family History Library and elsewhere…

One FHL Tool:“The Cemetery

Record Compendium”

1979by Jack Stemmons, FHL

[has a Key to Format]

Lists some of the Library Cemetery Record Holdings

Uses our film numbers

Other Tools for finding Transcriptions of Cemetery

Records• Library Catalog Topics:

– Cemeteries

– Vital records– Also found under Newspapers and

Obituaries

•PERSI

The FHLC can provide Cemetery helps like

“Index to United States Cemeteries”

Let’s do a search for a Mrs. Roxana Dame in the Niagara, New York area.

We’ll use the FHL catalog.

4 search paths

L.D.J. December 6, 1884, p 2 c 5 In Royalton, Nov 28, 1884 – Dame- Mrs. Roxana Dame, relict of Samuel Dame age 88 yr., resided here 50 yr. Born Vermont. Early to Canada. 1st husb. Capt. Cutter with whom came N.Y. 4 children. He died consumption. She mar. Samuel Dame. Members M. E. Church Grandchildren. Miss Sara and Orlanda Dame. Lived with James C. Swift Family, Mrs. Swift being a step-daughter.

Lockport Daily Advertiser is a close match.

How can we locate

a newspaper

entry?

This shows the location where a copy of the actual newspaper article can be found.

Let’s do another search.This time we’ll use PERSIPERSI because the catalog doesn’t

have what I’m looking for in Dryden, Tompkins, New

York.

Periodical is New York Genealogical and

Biographical RecordBYGBR’s

Found in FHL

This gives tombstone readings

The Sexton’s Records for Willow Glen Cemetery

look like this…

Another source for Cemetery or

Obituary Records is

Newspaper Newspaper TranscriptsTranscripts

A valuable source of older record

information

Easier to find than original copies.

Abstracts can look

like this…

They can provide

good information.

The FHL cannotcannot house microfilms of all newspapers.

It has some.

The FHL can be a good source for INDEXES to newspapers.

Good example of a

newspaper Index is

the “New York New York

Times IndexTimes Index”

Use the index to locate actual articles.

Locating an actual

obituary can be very

valuable in gathering

family histories.