BEST WEBSITES FOR CEMETERY SEARCHING
by Karen Hansen
I would highly recommend that you read “The Best Grave Sites on the Internet” by William Dollarhide in Everton’s Genealogical Helper, July/August 2007, pp. 69 – 88. It contains a wealth of information to help with locating cemeteries and your relatives’ burial places. Most of the websites were free, but I will note where he wrote that they require a subscription.
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/ This is the most complete database of cemeteries in the U.S. The names come from the USGS 7.5 series topographic maps, which are the best for family history use.
www.placenames.com This site is a gazetteer to find countries, cities, towns, mountains, hills, rivers, lakes and other place names.
www.google.com Use the advanced search feature and put in the name of the cemetery that you are searching for.
www.worldvitalrecords.com (Subscription) GeoCoding is used to link data to a place.
www.funeralnet.com Here you can find names of current funeral homes and cemeteries.
www.findagrave.com 200,000 people have contributed to identify 15 million graves, making this the largest database of burial information on the internet.
www.interment.net Over 4 million burial records from over 8,400 cemeteries can be searched at this site. It is one of most used genealogy websites in the U.S. with up to 17,000 visitors a day.
http://userdb.rootsweb.com/cemeteries/ Volunteers from around the U.S. have been contributing records for the longest time of any to this site.
www.rootsweb.com/~cemetery/ This takes you to the US GenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project. It is a coordinated effort of volunteers to index cemeteries in every county of the U.S.
www.accessgenealogy.com/cemetery Here are several cemetery databases and links to other sites.
http://geneasearch.com/cemeteries.htm The Cemetery Records Online page links to many cemetery sites.
http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/j2ee/servlet/NGL_v1 This is a locator site for U.S. veteran burials.
http://www.abmc.gov/wardead/index.php The American Battle Monuments Commission has searchable databases here for veterans buried outside the U.S.
www.gravematter.com Tombstone inscriptions and photographs from New England cemeteries are available here.
www.cyndislist.com/cemetery.htm#Locality Cyndi’s List is helpful if you are looking for a cemetery and know the name of it, not only the location.
KH