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Considering Cemeteries
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 5, First Published: May 2004I have a deep affinity with cemeteries dating from my teens, negating the idea that all family history enthusiasts are old people.
I was a shop worker in the era when Wednesday was half day closing, and I used to enjoy ‘wandering and wondering’ in my local cemetery on Wednesday afternoons.
I once took flowers for a grave of total strangers because of a tenderness I felt for them.
As they say in the North East of England:
"There’s nowt as queer as folk".
It was because the husband had died at age 32, and the only son had been killed in the Second World War at age 22. Years later I passed that grave again to see that ‘Devoted wife Gertude’ was with them at last, and I knew that the kindly hand of death had healed her heart.
I failed to pass this quirk on to my two sons, but thankfully I succeeded with my grandchildren, and we’ve spent happy hours strolling and reading the head stones. At first they found it strange to be ‘walking on dead people’ but now it’s the most natural thing in the world.
They call the place where their grandfather is buried the ‘Row of the Grandads’ because there are several grandfathers there.
If you want children to learn family history and family love at the same time, take them to a cemetery where they can soak in concepts like:
Together Forever in Paradise
Too dearly loved ever to be forgotten
A grand man
Sweetheart husband and best friend
A treasure house built without hands awaits the day we are together forever
Death is but a pause
Till we meet again
Yes, cemeteries provide riches of peace, tranquility and memories even though they mark the place time and date when earthly hopes were extinguished.
There’s also the wealth of information, to be considered from two angles:
FIRSTLY: When a death date is known:
Check the local paper for an announcement.
Use the references in the cemetery register to search individual grave records for a list of the people buried together. This shows dates, sometimes relationships and addresses, the owner of the grave, (and occasionally the depth of each burial!).
Find the grave itself to check for a head stone, which will often give family relationships.
Remember people may be in the grave but not on the stone, or vice versa, and the stone may mention family deaths elsewhere, such as:
Died off the Cape of Good Hope 20 April 1872 aged 32 years.
Died of yellow fever in Rio De Janeiro 31 March 1869 aged 27 years.
Three more children died in infancy.
Cremated at Gravesend Kent 29 September 1984.
At rest nearby.
Use ages at death to search for a births.
SECONDLY: When a death date isn’t known.
AVOID GIVING UP AT THIS POINT! There are solutions to the problem, and some lead back to the cemetery.
Try to establish the year of death via reference to events such as family births, marriages, divorces, incidences of chicken pox or measles, and holidays, or national events such as wars, coronations, and elections. (ie before the war, after the coronation, when John had mumps and so on).
Search the cemetery registers around the proposed dates, and if successful continue with the above guidelines.
If unsuccessful, and there’s no headstone index, just do what I did: divide the cemetery into its sections and walk round looking at the headstones.
I really enjoyed the last one since it incorporated one of my favourite activities, and I was rewarded with a wealth of information, some of it for deaths I wasn’t even researching at the time.
I was then able to check local papers, grave registers and so on.
I’ve noticed in my wanderings that a headstone is sometimes raised when the grave is full and not at the first death, which means you need to ‘walk on by’ more than once.
If the cemetery ‘walk about’ doesn’t yield anything, don’t forget cremation records, which have steadily increased from the 1960’s.
When you become really despondent never give in.
Ponder on the fact that everyone not alive now has died, and will be buried or cremated somewhere. Know in your heart that you’ll find them one day, and never forget that belonging is more than having your name on a gravestone.
If you need to wait, just wait. Come back to the problem later, and view it with new eyes, with clarity, freshness and energy.
In the meantime, walk round the cemetery enjoying the inner peace and the nearness of thousands of ‘loved ones’ who are ‘Gone but never Forgotten’
