Judith Batchelor explains how online memorials, photos and burial records can help you…
Find where ancestors were buried
Locating where an ancestor was buried isn’t always easy. Even within a small area, there could be several cemeteries or churchyards where they may have been laid to rest. Thankfully, the growing digitisation of burial and cemetery records has helped to overcome this problem. The two best free sites are Find a Grave (owned by Ancestry) and Billion Graves. Here, we’ll explain how to use both.
Search ‘Find a Grave’
Find a Grave (https://findagrave.com) has the world’s largest collection of burial records and images. Volunteers have submitted over 226 million indexed memorials and photos, which are all free to view. If you become a registered member, you can add new memorials, upload photos to existing memorial pages and leave virtual flowers for loved ones.
Search from the home page by typing your ancestor’s name and their birth/death years – you can select up to 25 years before and after. Also select the burial location, whether a specific cemetery or a place name.
Click ‘More search options’ to add more criteria to your search, including maiden name, whether they’re an army veteran and whether there’s a photo of the grave. Ticking the ‘Similar name spellings’ option is particularly useful because surnames often had many variations in the past.
My Thorndike ancestors originated from Suffolk. Because it’s a rare name, I searched by just last name and added ‘Suffolk, England’ to the Cemetery Location search field. It gave me 23 results, including James Thorndike, who died in August 1814. There’s a photo of his tomb ( 1in our screenshot above), as well as links to his parents 2and to Ancestry records on him 3 .
Search BillionGraves
BillionGraves (https://billiongraves.com) has a stronger focus on photos than Find a Grave. Members use its app to upload photos with their GPS coordinates, making it easier to locate the grave.
To find a grave, click Search BillionGraves at the top right and choose either a People or Cemetery Search. If searching for records in the UK, choose State and select England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, then add the county.
I found a photo of the grave of my grea
