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| Lafayette Cemetery # 1 in New Orleans, Louisiana |
"LOCATING & VISITING CEMETERIES," by William Dollarhide
GENEALOGY RULE #21: To understand the living, you have to commune with the dead--but don't commune with the dead so long that you forget that you are living! (From "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil")
Although I would not consider myself to be obsessed with death, burials, or other ghoulish activities, I have had some wonderful experiences in cemeteries. I am sure I am not alone. Since visiting cemeteries is part of what we do to find information about our ancestors, every genealogist has a cemetery story. These stories may include the weird problems associated with cemeteries as well as the wonderful discoveries that can be found there.
To most genealogists, the first problem is always that of finding the exact location of a cemetery where an ancestor was supposed to have been buried. But once the cemetery has been located, other problems prevail, such as finding a gravestone in an old unkempt graveyard with no finding aids available.
Here are some thoughts on finding and visiting cemeteries that may be of use to genealogists:
Finding-Tools for Locating a Cemetery:
Death Certificates and Funeral Homes. A death certificate may give the name of a cemetery where the deceased was interred, as well as the name of a funeral home. The funeral home (or its successor) is probably still in business and should be contacted. To do this, use the "Yellow Book" (a directory of funeral homes) to find a funeral home today. Funeral home directors are clearly the best experts on the location of cemeteries in a particular area.
The "Yellow Book" is distributed annually to every funeral home in North America. Anyone should be able to call or visit a local funeral home and request to use their directory to find an address and phone number for any other funeral home. Fortunately, the same "Yellow Book" database is now on the Internet at www.funeralnet.com where the address and phone number for virtually every funeral home in the U.S. and Canada can be found online.
GENEALOGY RULE #3: When visiting a funeral home, wear old clothes, no makeup, and look like you have about a week to live--the funeral director will give you anything you ask for if he thinks you may be a customer soon.
Obituaries:
Another possible source for locating a cemetery where an ancestor was buried is to see if a printed obituary for the deceased person includes information about where the body was interred. Obituaries are found in newspapers published near the place where a person died. Many old newspapers are available to genealogical researchers on microfilm, and they usually are located in a public library, college library, archives, genealogical society, historical society, or some other institution near the place of death of the subject.
A two-volume publication, "Newspapers in Microform," published by the Library of Congress, is the best listing of what newspapers might be found on microfilm. The publication acts as a means of identifying and then borrowing rolls of film, which can be used at a local library through the national Interlibrary Loan System at more than 6,000 libraries in the U.S.
In addition, state libraries or state archives usually have the best collection of newspapers for a particular state. Most state archives now have a website on the Internet, where you may discover a detailed review of county newspapers.
The Internet is also a good place to search for obituaries that may have been published for a particular area. Check www.cyndislist.com under that category, or use your browser to search the web for the keyword, "obituaries."
Using the GNIS to Find a Cemetery:
There is another great tool for locating a particular cemetery that may not be obvious to researchers. The most complete listing and locations of named cemeteries in the U.S. can be found at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website at http://nhd.usgs.gov/gnis.html.
This site has the USGS's Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which encompasses some two million place names (map features) in America, of which about 107,000 are cemeteries. The GNIS includes the largest list of named cemeteries published anywhere. (A few years ago, a very expensive printed publication advertised as the "most complete list of cemeteries in America" was produced, showing about 25,000 cemeteries--less than one-fourth the number that can be found in the GNIS listing.)
The GNIS cemetery names were taken from the detailed maps of the 7.5 x 7.5 minute series published by the USGS. (Each map in this series covers 7.5 minutes of latitude and 7.5 minutes of longitude, a rectangle representing an area about 6-7 miles wide by about 7-8 miles deep.) For the 7.5 series, more than 50,000 maps were required to show the entire U.S. and its possessions.
In addition to cemeteries, all other named features from the maps were extracted, including cities, towns, villages, hills, mountains, valleys, oil fields, airports, post offices, streams, lakes, and any other place on a map with a name. For years, genealogists were compelled to pay up to $3.00 per map for the USGS 7.5 series maps. Today, they are all accessible from the Internet and can be downloaded directly to your printer.
Visiting a Cemetery:
Typically, a cemetery of interest to a genealogist will be either too big in size or too small. The very large cemeteries, such as Forest Lawn in the Los Angeles area, are not user-friendly to genealogists. They have restrictions on giving out information about the interred--unless you go through a time-consuming process of inquiry. The very smallest cemeteries are a problem because they are without any official maintenance or sponsorship and sit neglected (and often invisible).
The commercial and viable cemeteries today are those that are supported by a good-sized population base for a community, city, or county. These cemeteries have an endowment or trust that supports perpetual care and a staff of administrators and maintenance people. For a genealogist, these are the best cemeteries because they are well maintained and have a full-time staff of people who can locate the exact burial for any person interred there. These types of cemeteries are the ones a genealogist can visit without any advance notice or research because the information is readily available once they have arrived and have found the cemetery sexton's office.
Most cemeteries, however, are those in between the largest and smallest in size. These are the ones that are maintained by some governing body, such as a cemetery association, or a county, city, or church. Although most of these cemeteries have an official sponsorship and in most cases have written records of the interments, there is usually no sexton's office at the site. So, a genealogist should try to find out who is the keeper of the records before actually visiting the cemetery.
Can You Get Help from Your Ancestor?
Some years ago, I was able to visit a cemetery outside the little town of Edna, Kansas, where my great grandfather, Benjamin Watkins, was buried. I was accompanied by my genealogy friend, Joyce Hensen, of Linden, Kansas, a well-known genealogy witch. Joyce uses divining rods to "witch" for unmarked graves. She can find exactly where a burial is located by using this method, including the size of the grave and whether the burial was for an adult or a child. It may sound a bit oija-oija, but I have seen it work and have become a believer. (The divining rods do not work when I am holding them--it takes a person with the "gift" to do it, just like witching for water).
Joyce Henson believed in ommunicating with her dead ancestors to assist her in finding the exact location of their graves. I have been with her in several unindexed cemeteries, where she instructed me to stand at the entrance to the cemetery, put my hands over my head, turn in a circle, and yell out to my dead ancestor something like, "Lafayette Black! Where are you?!"--then sense a direction to walk and find the tombstone. In at least two previous occasions, this technique worked beautifully. One time, while at Liberty Cemetery near McFall, Missouri, after yelling out to Lafayette Black, I headed in the first direction that came to my mind--and I walked in a straight line to his grave, some 200 feet away.
Now, I know this may sound a bit far-fetched, but it has worked two different times in two different cemeteries. The other time, Joyce and I were visiting a cemetery outside of Waco, Texas. When we yelled out the deceased's name, we both turned immediately and walked, simultaneously, in the same direction. At the same instant, we both spotted his gravestone less than 20 feet away. We looked at each other with our mouths open, amazed that the direction had come to both of us at the same time.
So, as a believer, I was with Joyce again, this time in Edna, Kansas, attempting the same technique to find Benjamin Watkins' grave. Since we approached the cemetery driving out of town, we saw that there were three entrances to the I.O.O.F cemetery. So Joyce, who was driving, raised her hands and cried out, "Benjamin Watkins, where are you?" a few times. (I had to hold the steering wheel so we wouldn't go crashing into the ditch!) She immediately slowed and turned into the second entrance, stopping about halfway into the cemetery. We got out of the car and repeated the hands-over-the-head thing, turning in a circle and calling out, "Benjamin Watkins, where are you?" but neither of us could get a strong sense of a direction to walk. In fact, after about an hour of walking aimlessly around the cemetery and not finding Benjamin Watkins' gravestone, we gave up and went back to the car.
I talked Joyce into going back into town so we could visit that little coffee shop we had passed on our way through town. She agreed, reluctantly, and we discovered that the coffee shop was occupied by several retired farmers, all of whom were dressed in bib overalls and baseball caps and were having a grand afternoon gab session. I asked one of them if he knew who was in charge of the cemetery and whether there were any records of the burials there. I was told immediately that Charlie Brown, who happened to be on the local cemetery district board, was the keeper of the records. With the retired farmer's directions, in just a few minutes Joyce and I were knocking on Charlie Brown's door.
Charlie took us out to his garage, where he had a length of PVC pipe over his workbench in which was a rolled-up blueprint diagram of the Edna Cemetery, showing all the burial plots and the names of all interments. We found the name "Benjamin Watkins" in no time and had an exact plot location for his burial, so off we went again to the cemetery.
Now, with a little sketch map Charlie had made for us, we knew where to look for Benjamin's grave, which, as it turned out, was fairly close to where we had entered the cemetery the first time. We took the second entrance, went into the cemetery over half way in, and found Benjamin Watkins' tombstone in a matter of seconds.
The reason we didn't find the grave marker the first time we entered the cemetery was because Joyce, who had been communicating with Benjamin, had stopped the car where she thought Benjamin was telling her to go. We didn't find the grave marker the first time because it was underneath the car!
Although I still believe my method was the surest and most logical way to find the grave marker for Benjamin Watkins, Joyce proved to me, once again, her uncanny ability. But in this case she was too accurate. She had parked the car over the grave!
I'm not saying that everyone will find their ancestors' burial sites using Joyce Hensen's techniques, but it is certainly worth a try. In the meantime, when you are ready to visit a cemetery, there should be someone in the local area who has information about the burials. If a cemetery has obvious care, someone knows--and finding that someone should not be very difficult. It is a matter of contacting someone in the community to learn who has the records of that cemetery. A local genealogical society may help. Or, start by contacting a local funeral home to see who may have the records of a particular cemetery.
GENEALOGY RULE #4: The cemetery where your ancestor was buried does not have perpetual care, has no office, is accessible only by a muddy road, and has snakes, tall grass, lots of bugs, and many of the old gravestones are in broken pieces, stacked in a corner under a pile of dirt.
Cemetery Resources on the Internet:
Not too long ago, I stumbled onto a website called "Cemeteries, Graveyards, Burying Grounds: Resources on Cemetery History and Preservation." This is a very interesting place to learn about cemeteries in general, including the preservation of tombstones, cemetery history, culture, and more. Visit the site at www.potifos.com/cemeteries.html. Included are dozens of links to cemetery sites on the web, including some with indexes to burials in cemeteries all over the country. This is also a good place to find out about historical cemetery associations, statewide cemetery preservation groups, and so on. You can even find out where famous people are buried, including all of the presidents of the U.S., beginning with George Washington.
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TOOLS FOR LOCATING DEATH RECORDS
Speaking of death records, any of the following books would be an asset to anyone hunting for death records.
INTERNATIONAL VITAL RECORDS HANDBOOK. 4th Edition
Divided into two parts, this fourth edition contains the latest forms and ordering information for birth, marriage, death, and divorce records for each of the 50 states and also furnishes details about the records that were created prior to statewide vital records registration. Then, in alphabetical sequence, it covers all the other countries of the world, giving, where available, their current forms and instructions. Since many nations have neither a centralized vital records registration system nor application forms of any kind, this work provides as a substitute a list of national and provincial record repositories or key addresses of other institutions that might be of assistance.
http://www.genealogical.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&item_number=3148&NLC-GenPointers1
THE RESEARCHER'S GUIDE to American Genealogy. 3rd Edition
Among other things, THE RESEARCHER'S GUIDE contains an in-depth discussion of death and other vital records in the U.S., including where and how to find them. This third edition incorporates the latest thinking on genealogy and computers, specifically the relationship between computer technology (the Internet and CD-ROM) and the timeless principles of good genealogical research. It also includes a new chapter on the property rights of women, a revised chapter on the evaluation of genealogical evidence, and updated information on the 1920 census. Arguably the best book ever written on American genealogy, it is the text of choice in colleges and universities or wherever courses in American genealogy are taught.
(Genealogy Pointer 5/29/07)
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