Sunday, March 11, 2007

Digging for Cemetery records

I added online cemetery records to my "to-do" list for online resources that might lead me to the parents and ancestry of my Cornelia Bresee.

I chose the two major online cemetery repositories:

1) At www.interment.net, the Search box is real small in the left hand frame. I put in my Bresee/Brazie/Brazee/Brusie/Bries/Brees/Breese surname variations. You get a number of entries and list of cemeteries with those entries. To find the actual entries, you have to click the cemetery link and you get an alphabetized list of the gravestones, with the inscriptions. I found several death dates for people already in my database, but nothing that leads me to Cornelia's parents.

2) At www.findagrave.com, the Search box is centered well and is noticeable! I put in my surname variations. The results come 40 at a time - one line for each person. You can see the name, birth date, death date, and location for each person in the search results, but you have to click a link to see the list of the gravestones and the inscriptions in the cemetery.

It looks like www.FindAGrave.com has 14 million people listed, but www.Interment.net has fewer - perhaps only 5 million. These are a fraction of the total number of graves, so there may be hope for me in published books or manuscripts. There were no cemeteries listed for these surnames in the counties around Albany NY where I've been searching.

Do you know of web sites with more cemetery records? If so, please let me know!

1 comment:

Miriam Robbins said...

Randy, I would check out transcribed cemeteries for the counties you want on the county genealogy websites at USGenWeb , The American History and Genealogy Project, and The American Local History Network. I'd also see what's available on Cyndi's List, both on her cemetery resources page, and the pages for local resources for the Albany area. Checking out local genealogical and historical societies and public and private archives may help uncover printed resources for local cemeteries as well. Good luck!