Alternative sources

[coombs]

If you can do, if you live near to them or can arrange a weekend away or week away or so to go to a county or more where ancestors lived, ie to go to the RO, then a good thing to do is visit some villages where ancestors lived in that county then tour the churchyard or local cemetery and look at every name on every legible headstone, and note down any family names or even names of spouses of ancestor siblings, cousins etc, ones not directly related but you know who they married. If it is a town or city cemetery then best to ask around for burial registers. 

The amount of times I have been to an ancestral village churchyard or cemetery and looked at every grave for family names has paid dividends.

[clairec666]

I looked out for family gravestones gravestones while passing through Suffolk a few years back. Not only confirmed when a few people died, but it grave me an idea of their wealth and standing in the village - they had quite large and elaborate gravestones, and quite prominently placed.

[coombs]

I looked out for family gravestones gravestones while passing through Suffolk a few years back. Not only confirmed when a few people died, but it grave me an idea of their wealth and standing in the village - they had quite large and elaborate gravestones, and quite prominently placed.

I have wanted to go to Foulness, Essex to look at graves there, but I think only the MOD and residents can get there.

I have ancestors from Hacheston and Bredfield, Suffolk and they were millers and they all had headstones, large ones, ditto for my Walder's of Sussex who were farmers and wheelwrights.

[pinefamily]

I'm jealous of all of you who can go to these little (and not so) places to look at headstones, memorials, and even the county RO's. But that is the challenge of researching your family history from afar.
One of my great grandfathers actually wrote a poem that is on the headstone of his wife here in Australia. Priceless.....

[Guy Etchells]

I'm jealous of all of you who can go to these little (and not so) places to look at headstones, memorials, and even the county RO's. But that is the challenge of researching your family history from afar.
One of my great grandfathers actually wrote a poem that is on the headstone of his wife here in Australia. Priceless.....

That was one of the reasons I started making my transcriptions and photos of tombstones available on line.

Back in 2001 just after I first uploaded my Staincross pages I received a heart
warming message from a lady who lived less than 10 miles from Staincross
but had never been able to visit her parent's grave due to disability,
the Staincross site allowed her the chance to view her parent's grave
for the first time.
Imaging therefore the potential worldwide.

I also made the following challenge to Family History Societies

> A quick plug for my latest website of the burial ground of St John the
> Evangelist Church, Staincross, and a challenge
>
> http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~framland/stcr/stjsc1.htm
>
> The site contains photos of the tombstones, transcripts of the
> inscriptions and the complete interlinked burial register for the
> church.
>
> The site was started at the end of January and I visited about one
> morning a week (weather allowing) I transcribed the inscriptions in the
> evening from the photos and checked the printouts of the transcripts on
> my next visit.
>
> The burial register database was given to me by the vicar, The Revd Jim
> Butterworth, (grateful thanks for this) which I split alphabetically and
>
> added in links to the relevant photos.
>
> In all the site has taken about 14-20 days of work to produce. It is not
> perfect by any means [some days I was so cold the camera shook :-))] but
> does show what can be achieved with little
> effort.
>
> Now the challenge,
>
> I challenge each and every Family History Society in the country to
> produce a similar type of free site for an burial ground in your area of
> interest within the next six months.
> I often hear how important FHS are to the family historian but see
> various degrees of proof of this, can you meet the challenge and make me
> eat my words? :-))
>
> Cheers
> Guy

My original challenge was made on 1/4/2001 on the Genbrit/Socgen mailing
list but also appeared on other lists and newsletters (ROOTSWEB REVIEW:
RootsWeb's Genealogy News Vol. 4, No. 14, 4 April 2001) as well as
Family History Monthly, July 2001 number 70 page 29 and Family Tree
Magazine July 2001 volume 17, number 9, page 40).

Cheers
Guy

[antiquesam]

I was touring Scotland a couple of years ago and contacted the Records Office in Dundee before hand for any information on the graves of my family. They provided a map of the cemetary and a list of the owners of the lairs and those interned. I found a name on one of the stones which I found to be an uncle I had no idea existed who had never been mentioned and was born outside the areas I had been researching.

[pinefamily]

So how many took up your challenge, Guy? I don't recall seeing any such sites in my internet travels.

[clairec666]

I'm immensely grateful to people who transcribe gravestones... sorry to say I'm taking the easy option and transcribing parish registers from my computer, rather than getting out in the cold and photographing gravestones!

Coombs - I'd wondered about going to Foulness too, mainly because it looks like a fascinating place and I can't imagine anyone living there. And there's some amazing wildlife there.
From Wikipedia:
"The island's visitor centre is opened to the public on the first Sunday in summer months, but permission must be sought to visit. Until 2007, members of the public could visit the island's pub by telephoning ahead; if they had not done so, access would be denied."

[larkspur]

yes, I have used burials to search for my family too. Now we have the very helpful https://www.deceasedonline.com/
I have found most  of my Newark burials here, including a great uncle that was "missing" he was buried with his dad. There is also the http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi
This one you do have to be careful with, as some are user submitted and I have found some facts are not correct.
My kids were used to outings to graveyards..sometimes incorporated into the annual family holiday