Cemetery Research and Reading Gravestones

How to find where an ancestor is buried, what to look for on the stone and in the cemetery office, and how to photograph old markers without damaging them.

2 min read

A gravestone is often the only record a person left that the family created themselves. It can give exact dates when no certificate exists, reveal a maiden name, or show a family plot that groups relatives you didn't know were connected. Here is how to get the most from cemetery research, online and in person.

Find the cemetery

Start with the big online indexes:

• Find a Grave has over 200 million memorials added by volunteers, often with photos and links to family members.
• BillionGraves has GPS-tagged headstone photos.
• The VA Nationwide Gravesite Locator covers veterans in national and many state veterans' cemeteries.

If you can't find a memorial, the death certificate or obituary usually names the cemetery or the funeral home. When a cemetery has vanished or been renamed, the USGS place-names database (GNIS) and old county maps can help you locate it.

What a stone can tell you

• Exact dates, or an age at death in years, months and days, which you can count back to a birth date.
• Maiden names, such as "Mary, wife of John Miller, daughter of Thomas Hayes."
• Birthplace or origin, especially on immigrants' stones, sometimes in their home language.
• Military service: government-issued markers give unit and war.
• Symbols: a tree-stump stone often means membership in the Woodmen of the World; a square and compass, the Masons; clasped hands, a marriage or farewell; a lamb, usually a child's grave.

Look around the grave

Families were often buried together. Photograph the whole row and the stones on either side, not just your ancestor's. A "stranger" in the family plot may be a married daughter, an in-law or a grandparent you haven't identified yet. Note the layout in your research log.

Ask the cemetery office

Stones are only part of the record. The sexton or cemetery office may hold:

• Burial registers with date of burial, age and sometimes cause of death
• Lot-ownership records showing who bought the plot, and who else is buried in it, including people with no stone at all
• Funeral home names that lead to more records

Church cemeteries usually keep these with the church's records.

Photograph stones without harming them

Old stones are fragile. Never use shaving cream, chalk, flour or wire brushes on a gravestone. They leave residue and damage the surface. Instead:

• Photograph in raking light: early morning or late afternoon sun across the face of the stone makes worn letters stand out.
• Use a mirror or a piece of foil-covered cardboard to reflect sunlight across the inscription at a low angle.
• Spray plain water on the stone, which can darken carved letters temporarily.
• Take several shots from different angles, plus one wide shot showing the stone's location.

Once you have a name and death date, the next stop is the obituary. See Finding Obituaries and Death Records.