Find a Grave......and another and another

One of the best places to find information to substitute for "vital" records prior to the actual filing of the familiar paperwork now required for births and deaths are cemeteries.  For example, Missouri did not require these records to be kept until 1910 but there are hundreds of cemeteries with grave markers providing the very dates needed to further our research.  And if you're really fortunate, the stone will include much sought after clues to relationships such as "Wife/Husband/Son/Daughter of ......."

Findagrave.com boasts overs 80 million entries in its database of cemeteries and burials.  You can search by name and narrow it down by state, county, etc or you can search for a specific cemetery and browse the entries.

All entries are entered by members of the site but you don't have to be a member to perform searches.  (It's free to join though, all you need is an email address to sign up.)  Members can add entries (including biographical information and photos of the headstone and/or the individual), leave "virtual flowers" on existing memorials, as well as leave comments.

Another nice feature offered by Find-a-grave is the ability to request photos be taken and to fulfill photo requests of other members.  Not located near an ancestor's cemetery? No problem!  You can submit a photo request and hopefully a fellow benevolent genealogist will take a photo for you and upload it to the site which will then notify you.  Better yet, it's FREE!!

In the box below, you can give searching a try.  The link is designed to search only Butler County but the drop down menu will allow you to choose to search the 80+ million records instead.

Search for cemetery records in Butler County, MO at by entering a surname and clicking search: Butler County, MO (651 names)All of Find A Grave (77.6 million names) Restrict search to Surname

Find-a-grave also has a special search feature for celebrities as shown below to search and view the final resting place of your favorite celebrity.  Not sure who to look for? Try Elvis Presley or George Burns.  There are usually lots of photos and thousands of comments.

Search for famous graves at by entering a name or keyword and clicking search: Name or keyword(s):

Don't be shy about taking your camera to the cemetery with you this Memorial Day and keep checking back for more cemetery information as we draw closer to Memorial Day weekend!