01Start with the death certificate
The death certificate is the most reliable single document for identifying where an ancestor died and, often, where they were buried. United States death certificates typically include the place of death, the disposition method (burial, cremation, entombment), and the name of the cemetery. Death certificates from the mid-1900s onward are held by state vital records offices and can be ordered online. Earlier records vary by state — some states have death records back to the 1880s, while others didn't mandate recording until the 1910s or 1920s.
If you don't know the exact death date, search the Social Security Death Index (for deaths after the 1930s) or census records (the person who appears in one census but not the next likely died in between). State archives and historical societies often have earlier death records or indexes that predate official vital records.
02Search obituaries and funeral home records
Obituaries frequently name the cemetery where the person was buried, along with surviving family members that help confirm you have the right person. Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, and Chronicling America (the Library of Congress's free newspaper archive) are the primary obituary databases. Local public libraries often maintain obituary indexes for their area, and many small-town newspapers have been digitized by state historical societies.
Funeral home records, when they survive, can be even more detailed than obituaries. Funeral homes typically recorded the cemetery name, plot location, and sometimes the grave's section and lot number. If the funeral home is still in business, they may look up records by phone. If it has closed, records may have been transferred to a successor business or a local historical society.
03Check volunteer-indexed cemetery databases
Find a Grave (findagrave.com) has more than 265 million memorial records built by volunteers who photograph and transcribe headstones. It is the broadest cemetery database and should be searched for every ancestor. Search by name, optionally with birth and death years, and filter by state, county, or cemetery. Results may include a photograph of the headstone, biographical information, and family links to other memorials.
BillionGraves (billiongraves.com) adds GPS coordinates to headstone photographs, making it valuable for locating graves in cemeteries that don't have official digital mapping. Coverage is thinner than Find a Grave in some areas but stronger in others, particularly outside the United States. Search both databases for every ancestor.
04Contact the cemetery directly
Once you know the cemetery name, call the cemetery office. Most active cemeteries will search their burial register by phone for a single inquiry. Ask for the section, lot, and grave number, and whether they have a map of the grounds. For cemeteries that are closed or have no office, the county historical society, genealogical society, or local library may hold preserved records or indexes.
For very old or abandoned cemeteries, the headstones themselves may be the only surviving record. WPA grave surveys from the 1930s documented thousands of American cemeteries and are available through state libraries and historical societies. If no records exist, a site visit with GPS-tagged photographs uploaded to Memor preserves what the stones show.
05Use plot adjacency to break through brick walls
Cemetery plots reveal family relationships that documents obscure. Families bought multiple plots in the same section, so the graves adjacent to your ancestor's may belong to parents, children, siblings, or spouses whose maiden names you didn't know. When you find an ancestor's grave, photograph and transcribe the stones on either side and behind it. These neighboring graves often break through genealogical brick walls.
Memor's GPS-mapped cemetery records make this easier: when you view a grave on the interactive map, you can see and identify the surrounding plots. Search the neighboring graves by name and you may find the connections that census records and death certificates never showed.
06Record and preserve what you find
When you find an ancestor's grave, photograph the headstone from multiple angles, transcribe the inscription exactly, and note the GPS coordinates. Create a memorial page on Memor with this information, and attach any family records, obituaries, or photographs you've found. The memorial page ties the genealogical research to a physical place that your descendants can visit and navigate to.
Genealogy's quiet tragedy is that research dies with the researcher. A memorial page on Memor is a living document tied to a real place — one your grandchildren can walk to, with the story already attached.