on visiting cemeteries

Well, didn't expect to be that long between posting.

A few weeks ago, we took a vacation and ended up visiting three cemeteries to locate some grave sites. This wasn't a research trip - we just wanted to get out of town for a few days. We'd planned this trip for earlier in the year but decided to postpone it due to a pet illness.

Visiting cemeteries can be exciting, especially when it gives you new leads and answers some big unknowns. Deciding what cemetery to visit to find your answers can be confusing when you don't know if any of your people there and, if you do, are faced with 30 acres of plots to walk to find them.

Contacting cemetery offices for information can run the gamit from not being able to actually find an office to having to make an appointment to ask your questions. I've not had any really bad experiences with those in cemetery offices but I have heard of others who have traveled a number of miles only to find that no one can or will help them.

Plan ahead, even if you might never ever get to visit that cemetery. Some cemeteries are online and have posted their procedures (and pricing) for providing information. I read county message boards to see if anyone else has ever been to or dealt with a particular cemetery and follow their suggestions. Posting a request for someone to help you find a burial may generate some answers.

The three that I recently visited I dealt with in differing ways. One cemetery held an aunt, uncle, and cousin, whose burials I was not present at. In fact, I wasn't even told about them until after the fact. I found through the county message board that there wasn't an office as such and that calling the nearby church would be the best way to verify a burial. So I tracked down the church office phone number and called. The church receptionist was very nice and helpful, but she did not have the information and gave me the phone number of the person who had the burial records. I called that person, who turned out to be a very nice woman watching her grandchildren, but who went through her records to verify that the three were indeed buried there (I knew that two were but didn't know if they were all in the same plot) and she even offered to go there a few days ahead of my trip and place a marker at the site so that I could find them. Since we canceled the initial trip, I never did call her back to let her know we were coming, but the cemetery was not as large as it appeared on the maps and the plot was found within fifteen minutes.

The second cemetery was a very large and old one and still quite active. I had been there before so I knew that I had to have my info in line. The last time, I wrote to the cemetery office and gave them the two names that I was looking for along with their death dates and asked for a map location of their plot. They responded in a timely fashion and found the plot on my next trip. I also wrote to the cemetery office for this visit, giving the name of the person I was looking for, her death and burial date, and requested a map location of her site. I also enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope for their response. Which, even after four months, I never received. So I knew their office hours and stopped by with my request, which was very quickly answered and I was on my way.

The third cemetery I went to was a last-minute decision. I have a very understanding spouse who asks when we are on the road if there are any places that I need to visit. While we were trying to decide what to do on our way home, I suggested that there was one more cemetery I would like to stop by. I already had the lady's death and burial date but since she wasn't in any of my direct lines, I never really gave a thought to looking for her. It was in another one of the older and historic cemeteries where we were vacationing, so I thought I should go ahead and look for her while I was in the city. We drove out there, I got the location and a listing of everyone in the plot and directions, and I was on my way.

It was a relatively painless trip as far as finding these burials go, but the point here is that I knew where they were buried and I had death and/or burial dates. I've never gone cold into a cemetery office - they are usually understaffed and are probably more concerned with burials currently going on. Some offices require a payment even if you already know that they are buried there - but they won't verify or provide a map or plot burials without one.