I would like to find out where a great-uncle and great-aunt of mine are buried, but I’m not sure the best way to search, and so any tips would be appreciated.
I know their names, the city they lived in(Detroit), and the Christian denomination they belonged to(Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod), although not the specific congregation. I know what year(1976) my great-uncle died, and I presume his wife, my great-aunt, didn’t long survive him. They had moved from their home of many years to a retirement home, but my father, their nephew, can’t remember the name.
If you know what kind of agencies or groups to contact in my search I’d appreciate it. I’ve Googled their complete names plus other keywords, but so far I’ve come up short.
Call the library. First you’ll want to find obituaries, because that gives you cemeteries usually. You can narrow down at least the month of death using the Social Security Death Index and then the most you’ll have to hunt through microfilm is a month. Then, it depends - some cemeteries have published grave indexes, some haven’t.
I hope you have good luck. A few years ago I asked my aunt to show me my grandparents’ graves, and I’m lucky I did, because she was in her late 70s and already having a hard time getting around.
And without her guidance I don’t think I ever would have found those graves. They were in a tiny, very obscure Jewish cemetary in a small town north of Montreal far from any highway. Right in the middle of some chicken farms. If you didn’t know it was there you would never suspect there was a Jewish cemetery there. (Not too far from Mirabel airport, for those who know the area.)
And then the gravestones had no English (or French) on them at all – just Hebrew or Yiddish. So my aunt had to indicate which ones were my grandparents.
Some libraries (including ours, which believe you me is one of the suckiest parts of my day) will e-mail you obituaries. Everybody’s guidelines vary, depending on what finding aids they have and such (we have an index of front page death lists, so we’ll look for a month for you) but you may be surprised at what a library you don’t even belong to will do for you.
The LDS has the collection of Michigan Death Indexes through 1995 or 1996 (can’t remember the ending year) and that should help you.
If/when the search returns a list of hits, mouse over (or click) on the person’s name to see the record info. I tested a few common names – such as the ever-creative “John Smith” and typed “Michigan” in the location. It returned some death records. The records provide the date and city/town of burial, but not the exact cemetery. Other records might have the name of the cemetery but, if not, at least you can narrow it down to a location and hopefully it will be more precise.
And, you never know what else you may find in the search.
That’s not true. Many people walk local cemeteries and photograph the gravestones to put up memorials, or work from obituaries. It’s not just family members of the deceased.
Baker, in addition to the suggestions already posted, if you know where the relatives died you can try contacting nearby funeral homes. If you can locate the one that took care of them they should have records of where the burial occurred.