Cemetery interment lists cause a lot of buzz on my NYC Facebook group. I think it is amazing that cemetery offices exist at all and am glad to know that records were methodically kept. Yes, it is always nice when one can get a scanned copy of the index card detailing the 8 burials in the grave post-office fire in 1906.
It listed the name, age at death and date of burial. The later entries from the 1960s provided extra information such as the name of the priest and the parish of the Mass of Christian Burial. Invoice numbers were added as well to the more recent burials.I was even able to determine the marriage details of the eldest daughter who was not buried in the grave because her baby boy was buried there in 1919. Sadly he was her only child and lived bu 5 minutes.
Better yet was the listing of the family patriarch who died pre-fire in 1902. A date of death and burial was finally figured out from burial card that was updated with pre-fire information as post-fire burials were added. There was even reference to two earlier burials of lost infants which provided the girls’ names and explained the unlikely 5 year gap between the 2nd and 3rd surviving children of a family of nine.
There were actually 11 children born to this mother in 1883, 1885, 1887, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1895, 1898, 1900 and 1900. The matriarch stopped bearing children in 1900 at age 42 but it is possible that she might have been able to have one last child even later in life had her husband survived into 1903.
While statistically unlikely, her three younger sisters all managed to have children until they were 45, 44 and 44. Most impressive of all was the sister who married at 42 and bore threes sons at ages 43, 44 and 45. These events took place in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1902 in rural Ireland well before in vitro, chlomid or perganol.
Back to interment lists and annoyed researchers. I can appreciate that money doesn’t grow on trees. However, that is true for cemetery associations as well. One has a few possibilities when trying to track down burial information. One likely scenario is that no record survives of where an ancestor is buried. The next is that even though a death certificate or obituary lists a place of burial there is no headstone and the rural cemetery where he is buried has no paper records that survive. The whole cemetery is therefore your ancestor’s grave.
The next set of possibilities is as described above where an office survives with impeccable records and will send digital copies for free by e-mail.
The last is a well maintained cemetery where there is an office staff that will provide information. This staff is able to provide single burial details if you know a name and date of death or at least a year of death, gratis. Urban cemeteries often have multiple burials within a single grave and there is the rub. This information ordinarily does not come cheap.
My pastor used to remind us every October that the angels did not come mow the lawn, plow the snow or pay the other maintenance bills. I am certain cemeteries fall into this situation as well. They are well within their rights to request a fee if they have to search their records for burials in a specific location in the cemetery for multiple years. The index card may list the years of burial 1883, 1883, 1889, 1889, 1928 and 1933 for example but they have to look up every burial for those years to create the list detailing the name, age, place of birth and date of burial of everyone in the grave. In the above set of dates the people all shared a single surname but they were buried in Jan 1883, Jun 1883, May 1889, Jul 1889, Jun 1928 and Jun 1933. It would take even more time to find them if they all died in Dec of the years in question.
The other issue is that some of our poorer relatives did not have perpetual care on the grave. My grandfather was buried in 1948. In 1983 to bury Grandma the estate had to pay all the arrears to open the grave for her burial. Posters are incensed when the cemetery sends along a list detailing what arrears remain on the grave. They will still provide the burial information free for a single inquiry or for a fee for an interment list. The mention of the arrears is not a legally binding bill. It is a hope that some civically minded researchers will offer to put the grave in perpetual care and make the appropriate donation. It cant hurt to ask.
99% of researchers are NOT the the owner of the cemetery deed of the graves in question. They are not legally responsible for the upkeep of the grave nor the arrears in fees. However, they are also not therefore entitled to any information on the burials within the grave. Sometimes we cannot have our cake and eat it to. I am glad that the cemetery is willing to provide as much information as it does even when it can be very costly. The people who share a grave always share a relationship either by blood or marriage. This is what makes interment lists so helpful.
