Imagine this scenario: You become interested in visiting the gravesite of a deceased ancestor or relative, paying homage at the place of their burial. There's just one problem you don't know exactly where they are buried.
Imagine this scenario: You become interested in visiting the gravesite of a deceased ancestor or relative, paying homage at the place of their burial. There’s just one problem—you don’t know exactly where they are buried. Maybe you know the town but not the specific cemetery. Maybe you don’t even know what part of the country their final resting place is in. What can you do to locate their grave so that you can visit and pay respects?
There are multiple tools and resources to choose from, but the most useful is FindAGrave.com. This is a simple, easy-to-search online directory that will allow you to input the name of your deceased loved one. (If you also know the year of their birth or the year of their death, or have some idea as to which city they are buried in, that can certainly help.)
While this database is not absolutely comprehensive, it draws on a range of resources—including military records, data from genealogy websites, and newspaper obituaries—to provide you with some sense of where you can find your loved one’s grave.
It’s a helpful tool, but if you’d like something a little more hands-on, you can also visit with your local funeral director and let them know you’re trying to locate someone. Your funeral director can access their own set of data and their network connections to help you find the information you’re looking for.
Either way, there are usually some good options for locating the final resting place of a loved one—making it possible for you to celebrate their memory however you wish.
