It isn’t always going to be possible for a genealogist to visit the graves of his or her ancestors in person. If you live far away from where they are buried, the travel expense might be more than your budget can handle. One option is to make use of the many virtual cemeteries that are online. It is free, and might provide the same genealogical information that you would seek at the actual cemetery.
There are two popular websites that genealogists can use to locate an image of the grave of an ancestor. The same resources will allow you to add photos and and information about any gravestones that you find when you visit an actual cemetery. This is a good way to help out other genealogists who cannot travel to where you are.
Find A Grave has records of over 88 million graves. You can browse by location, “claim to fame” or even do a search for famous graves. You can search for graves from a particular cemetery or just view newly added photos. New images are added often.
Billion Graves will let you do a headstone search by the given name of a person, the family name, the birth year, or the death year. Do an advanced search to filter the name of your ancestor by country, state, or county. You can also do an advanced search that starts with filtering for the cemetery by country, state, or county.
Harvey County Roots is a website that recently added information about the cemeteries in Harvey County in Kansas. Use the sidebar to select the research guide for Cemeteries. From there, you can choose to search through a particular cemetery, or you can use the search engine to filter your search.
Virtual Cemeteries of Slovakia has information about the gravestones from many cemeteries in Slovakia. This might be a good resource for genealogists who have ancestors who lived, and died, in Slovakia. The website gives you a list of specific cemeteries to browse through.
Genealogy.com has a Virtual Cemeteries project. Fill out the form to search for a deceased individual by putting in the person’s name, birth place, birth date, death date, and place of death. Another form asks for the name of the cemetery and the location of the cemetery. When you are ready, click the button that says “Search the Virtual Cemetery”.
Image by The Kingsway School on Flickr