How to Find Where Someone Is Buried

Whether you're looking for a recently deceased relative or trying to locate an ancestor who passed away a century ago, finding a burial location is often easier than people expect. This guide walks through the most effective methods — from online cemetery search tools to county records to old funeral home archives.

Start With Online Cemetery Search Tools

The fastest way to find where someone is buried is to search a cemetery database. Several excellent options exist:

• GraveMapper — Search over 100 million cemetery records instantly. Enter a name and approximate location or date range, and GraveMapper returns matching burial records from cemeteries across the U.S. and beyond. It's free to search and doesn't require an account.
• Find A Grave — Crowdsourced headstone photographs and burial data contributed by volunteers. Strong for U.S., U.K., and Canadian records.
• BillionGraves — GPS-tagged burial records with photos. Particularly useful if you want to know exactly where in a cemetery the grave is located.
• FamilySearch Cemetery Records — Free, massive collection of indexed burial transcriptions integrated into the broader genealogy database.

When searching, try name variations and a date range rather than an exact year. Spelling inconsistencies are common, especially for older records.

Check the Death Certificate

If you have access to the person's death certificate, it will usually list the cemetery where they were interred. Death certificates are filed with the state and county where the death occurred.

• For deaths in the last 50–75 years, contact the state vital records office in the state where the person died. A small fee is usually required.
• For older deaths, many states have digitized records available free through FamilySearch.org or state archives.
• Death certificates before the mid-1900s may list "family cemetery" or a church name rather than a formal cemetery name — in that case, county records become your next step.

Contact the Funeral Home

Funeral homes maintain their own records and are often willing to share burial location information with family members. If you know which funeral home handled the arrangements, a simple phone call or email request is often all it takes.

Even if the funeral home has closed, its records may have been transferred to another local funeral home or to the county historical society. State funeral home regulatory boards sometimes maintain archives as well.

For very recent deaths, the funeral home is almost always the quickest path to a confirmed burial location.

Search County and Church Records

Before formal death registration (which varied by state but was mostly in place by 1920), burials were recorded at the county level or by churches. Here's how to access these:

• County courthouse — Probate records, gravedigger registers, and early burial permits are often held in county archives. Many courthouses will search records by name upon request.
• Church records — Before civil registration, churches maintained burial registers. Catholic dioceses, Lutheran synods, and Quaker meeting houses are particularly good sources. Many have been microfilmed and are available at libraries or on FamilySearch.
• Historical societies — Local genealogical societies often maintain indexed cemetery records, especially for rural and pioneer cemeteries that have never been digitized.

When the Cemetery Is Unknown

Sometimes all you know is that someone died in a particular county or region. In that case:

• Search online databases for all cemeteries in that county and look for your surname.
• Check newspapers from the time of death — obituaries often named the cemetery, and many have been digitized on sites like Newspapers.com and Chronicling America (free).
• Look for the family in census records just before the death, which can pinpoint the county and even the township where they lived — narrowing down likely cemeteries.

Tips for the Search

• Search for both the given name and any known nicknames.
• Try searching for a spouse — if you know where one was buried, the other is often nearby.
• For military veterans, the National Cemetery Administration maintains a Gravesite Locator for all veterans buried in national cemeteries — free and searchable online.
• Jewish cemeteries are often separate from municipal ones; JewishGen Cemetery Database is a free resource for Jewish burial records worldwide.