England Cemetery Records

Cemeteries, churchyards, and parish records are great resources for researching one’s ancestors. Often, memorials are etched in headstones made from either wood or stone. Some families were buried inside the underlings or in a vault in the church; however, most were buried in a churchyard.

One of the biggest problems is that these headstones have been deteriorating, and if your family was poor, they could be buried as a pauper in a common grave without a headstone. Many burial grounds are overgrown with natural growth, and tombstones are cracked or destroyed. The interiors of the churches with the tombstones and various plaques are usually in much better condition; however, these usually represent land owners, those of wealth, or heroes who may have died in a military conflict. Cathedrals are famous for having individuals in the church or on their grounds. 

Societies and various groups throughout England realized the poor condition of the churchyard tombstones back in the 1970s and began to walk through the cemeteries and record what was on the tombstones and created what is known as ‘Monumental or Memorial Inscriptions’.  These records are usually published and available through those societies as well as through the parish church itself and other libraries throughout the area.

Many of the MI records have been filmed along with parish burial registers and are available through a Family History Center or in the Family History Library. The Society of Genealogy (SOG) also has a very large collection of MIs. The one caution is that these were handwritten records and could contain errors as with any other record that individuals have transcribed due to the poor condition of the tombstone or just a simple transcription error.

When researching cemetery records, one must be familiar with the customs and the laws in effect during the specific time of the ancestor. Not only did churchyards provide burial locations, but to compensate for overcrowded churchyards, private companies formed to fill this need with a primary difference that anyone could be buried for a fee.

Originally, parish burial registers gave the scantiest amount of information, which included the name of the person and a burial date. To aid this, the “Burial in Woollen Acts 1666-1680” may provide some assistance as it was required that individuals have a woolen shroud. If the family could afford this, the register was marked with an “A” for the word ‘affidavit’ to confirm this was done or a “P’ for ‘poor’ for those who could not afford the shroud. There are also some separate registers where this information is recorded. For instance, the FHL catalog lists this entry for Barnby-in-the-Willows in Nottingham:

                                        “Register of burials in woolen, 1678-1734”

The above record is located on Film # 0580859 on items 21-23. The Rose Act of 1812 changed that and brought in printed registers to use which gave more information to help in identifying the deceased.

Eventually, the English government stepped in and created a ‘burial board’ to handle locations and cemeteries across the country. There are histories for some cemeteries and these can be found in various locations online or in books or on film. It is simply looking in a catalog for a particular repository.

Some families had private burial grounds on their own families, and the deeds for that burial property would usually be held in the families’ papers. There are many war memorials for those who died serving their country. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission was put in charge of handling these records. The various cemeteries are located in many different locations. Their website is a great aid to locating a specific individual at https://www.cwgc.org/. The site provides a wealth of information on fallen soldiers.

Another resource for burial information may be an academic location. Often founders and benefactors of the institution may have an obituary in the library and could be buried on their grounds. There are various governments and other outstanding individuals buried in unusual places in a country, depending on their stature in society. All these situations are often overlooked when researching and need to be considered if one is a descendant.

Here are a few online locations where burial records can be located:

1. www.ancestry.com 
2. www.freereg.org.com
3. www.ukbmd.org.uk
4. www.findagrave.com/geographic
5. www.deceasedonline.com 

Mentioning cemetery records, one can’t overlook obituaries. Various newspapers and histories could easily contain enough information about an individual who has passed on and provide burial information.

As one reflects on using cemetery records, the death of a loved one could have generated a number of documents depending on their status in society or their parish. One needs to look at all the possible places records could exist where death was recorded, including the family bible as well as the National Burial Index, which is available on CD and www.FindMyPast.co.uk. Currently this index contains over 18.4 million names and is representative of many family history societies hard work over the last 15 years. This index covers records from parish, non-conformist, Roman Catholic, and many other cemetery registers for the years from 1538 to 2005.

Researching English cemetery records in its various formats is definitely a great aid to family history researchers everywhere.