Practical step-by-step guides, archival research methods, and conservation advice to help you find gravesites, preserve monuments, and honor family history.
A practical 6-step roadmap to locate any individual's final resting place using death certificates, digitized obituaries, cemetery plot maps, and parish records.
Visiting a large cemetery? Learn how to decode section, block, and plot numbering, decipher weathered headstones with raking light, and record GPS coordinates.
Discover how to access free municipal interment books, church parish burial registers, military gravesite locators, and volunteer monumental surveys.
Essential rules for visiting active and historic burial grounds, why traditional headstone rubbings cause damage, and safe photography best practices.
Understanding historical terms when searching registries, municipal deeds, and church records.
A churchyard is consecrated land immediately surrounding a parish church. A cemetery is typically a larger, non-denominational or municipal ground founded away from a church site.
A memorial monument erected in honor of a person or group whose remains are buried elsewhere (e.g., lost at sea, deceased abroad, or buried in war graves).
An officer or employee charged with the maintenance of church grounds, grave digging, and preserving the official physical burial register books.
A large, flat inscribed stone placed horizontally over an entire grave or underground family vault, common from the 17th to 19th centuries.
A freestanding wall, structure, or room containing recessed niches specifically built for the respectful interment of cremated ashes in urns.
The designated rectangular section of earth allocated for single or multiple family burials, registered with specific coordinates in cemetery books.
Help us document historic resting places, photograph headstones, and preserve genealogical heritage worldwide.
