Life From The Roots: How Do You Find Your Ancestors in the Boston Cemeteries?

The Life From The Roots blog topics have changed several times since I began this blog in 2009. I initially wrote only about the family history I had been working on for 20 years. Years later, I was into visiting gardens, historical homes, churches, libraries that had genealogical collections, historical societies, war memorials, and travel/tourism places. I also enjoy posting autographs and photos of famous people I've met or have seen.

Along with my New England roots, other areas include New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada.

Please check out the labels on the right side for topics (please note, they need work). Below the labels and pageviews is a listing of my top nine posts, according to Google. Four of them pertain to Lowell, MA. These posts change often because they are based on what people are reading.

Friday, April 20, 2018

How Do You Find Your Ancestors in the Boston Cemeteries?

The Granary Burying Ground, Boston, MA

How does somebody go about trying to find a person in this cemetery? The Granary Burying Ground is one of the oldest in the United States, and perhaps the most historic. What about in the other cemeteries in Boston? Recently I discovered my 7th great granduncle was buried here. This cemetery is well known to me, as I recently wrote a post about Louisa May Alcott's father being this cemetery, and I took the above photo for the post. http://lifefromtheroots.blogspot.com/2016/07/what-did-louisa-may-alcotts-father.html

How was I ever going to find my Jeremiah Fitch? Not by walking around all day, that's for sure But it did take me much of the morning to find the PERFECT site to help you discover if your family members are buried in Boston. And, I am happy I won't have to waste time among the tourists! A special map for the tourists is shown at the bottom of this post.

The instructions are very simple, so I hope my example and additional words make it easy for you. The first link is https://www.boston.gov/departments/parks-and-recreation/historic-burying-grounds-initiative It brings you to Search Historic Headstones, a very long page.

The above is almost impossible to read, so go to the link to read about the two options. I used option 1, shown below. https://www.boston.gov/departments/parks-and-recreation/search-historic-headstones

To see if your surname is in this database, use the drop-down feature for Last Name, and choose the cemetery, but if you don't know which one, all individuals with that surname will show up in any cemetery. Nice feature. Since I knew the cemetery name, in figure 2, I have several choices.

OPTION 1

https://www.cityofboston.gov/Parks/HBGI/search.asp

FIGURE 1 (find surname in drop-down box, and choose cemetery)

FIGURE 2, with results

Once you find the name and correct cemetery, write down the location number. In my example, the G stands for the Granary Cemetery, so I only needed to remember B713 for Jeremiah Fitch. Below is a listing of the cemeteries, to get the map, you need to scroll below to the Site Maps section. This is a very long page, so I had to break it into several screen shots.

The Site Maps section shows two choices for the Granary Burying Ground, a right and a left. I chose Right, and got a rather large image of part of the cemetery. Once enlarged, you can see all cemetery numbers, and the layout including the street, and where the Boston Athenaeum is located. See at the bottom for map.