Wisdom Wednesday - Genealogy in a UK Graveyard

Genealogists are interested in cemeteries, in part, because of the information on the gravestones themselves and in any written records maintained by the graveyard owner. When looking for information from an English graveyard, I think North Americans have heard many rumors before they even begin the process. They bury people one atop the other…they remove the gravestones of the first burials…and so on. What is the real story?

Visiting a UK parish church is an experience like no other. In almost all rural settings the church appears to be in the center of a cemetery. The graveyard is not confined to the space behind the building, as in North America.

In the past, all of the church ground was not considered consecrated. Until the last century, there was a common practice to bury the ‘good’ people on the south side of the church and the others on the shadowy north side. Those who took their own lives or the lives of others were buried on the unconsecrated north side, which also was used for secular activities such as games, festivals, and fairs in the 1600s and 1700s. Less charming were the cockfights also held there.

Until the eighteenth century, corpses were usually buried in a fabric shroud. As bodies decomposed, they would take less space. Because more people qualified to be on the south side, the land there may be higher than on the north side. Both facts lend some credence to the belief that more than one body was placed in what we think of as one plot, perhaps one atop the other.  Overcrowding was and is an issue.  Today more than 70 percent of those who die in the UK are cremated.

Notes: In 1667 and confirmed again in 1678, the shroud needed to be made of pure wool. The Wool Acts were intended to promote and support the wool industry. Clergy and later, the family needed to certify that the shroud was woolen or a fine would be levied. These acts were repealed in 1814.  Some parishes owned a casket for the body that was used during the service.

Gravestones became popular in the seventeenth century. The earliest in today’s churchyards often date from the eighteenth century. The stones are considered the property of the person who erected it, and defacing a stone is considered trespass. Check with the parish clergy to see if there is a map or burial records for you to read and to see what the rules and regulations are.

Many local family history societies have recorded the inscriptions on the gravestones and these are available online at the society’s website. You may need to be a member to access the records online, but the dues are usually less than £20 per year.

Source: Friar, Stephen. The Companion to the English Parish Church. London: Chancellor Press, 2000.

Wisdom Wednesday: Burial Grounds for Non-Conformists

I have written about cemeteries as I have given details about non-conformist movements, the Quakers and the Jews, during the summer and fall. To summarize, all towns had a cemetery controlled and paid for by the Church of England (COE) with local taxes, and other denominations owned their own burial grounds. In the U.S., we would call all of these ‘private’ cemeteries and be baffled that the government paid for those owned by the COE. Are there any places in the UK that correspond to our ‘public’ cemeteries where anyone can be burial no matter what their faith or lack thereof? Yes!

Thanks to the September 2012 Norfolk Ancestor, I know that the first non-denominational cemetery in the UK was in Norwich, the seat of the county. The Norwich subgroup of the Norfolk Family History Society took a tour of it last June.

The Rosary Cemetery was originally a five acre market garden, and then it was purchased by Thomas Drummond, a retired Unitarian minister. The first burial took place in 1821, and it was not wildly popular. However, gradually more people began using it so that by 1900 about 18,000 burials had taken place. Later, an additional five acres plot was added. It is located on Rosary Road in the eastern area of the city, off Yarmouth Road. The cemetery was operated by a private board of trustees until 1954, when it was purchased by the city.  

A website to learn more about its history and burial customs generally is found at: www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/social-innovation/rosary-cemetery.htm. Topics of general interest include: body snatchers, water contamination and high death rate. In a section called ‘Restrictions on Dissenters,’ there is a nice summary of how difficult burials were for those not affiliated with the COE.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Deceased Online

Happy Halloween! What better day to talk about www.deceasedonline.com, a UK website specializing in cemetery and burial records.  
As you might guess, I write my blog posts ahead in case something comes up or I’m scheduled to be out of town so I am writing what you are reading on Friday, 12 Oct 2012. Today, Dick Eastman (www.eogn.com), premier gen blogger, notes that Deceased Online has added new records for the Greenwich Cemetery, down river from London.

Some of the following information is from a Deceased Online news release. The addition completes this cemetery which has about 93,000 records covering 1856-2000. Many people buried here were associated with the military.

Other details about Greenwich Cemetery and the others covered by the site are available at the ‘database coverage’ area of www.deceasedonline.com. You need to click on the lower right side of the home page. A list of records will appear, listed by the date they were added to the database. That is good for former or regular users of the site who just want to know what’s new. There is a drop down menu that lets you choose to see the list ‘By Name,’ that is alphabetically.

If you have ancestors in Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time, you are lucky. Your chances of finding their burial information at this site is better than average because four of the five cemeteries and a crematorium are here with a total of over 400,000 records. They are anticipating that the fifth cemetery will go online soon. 

At this point in my posts I often go into detail about using a site, but I am going to refer you to the official Deceased Online blog at http://deceasedonlineblog.blogspot.co.uk. When I first went to the site, the newest post was titled, ‘How to Find Your Ancestors in the Deceased Online Database.’ Just scroll down a little, if there are newer posts in the past two weeks. Please read this information and I will not reinvent the wheel. 

I will highlight these facts: you must register for the site but that is free; full details are not always free, and you will find a chart for buying credits, as is common on UK sites. I did a search for a fictitious Angus MacDonald and 45 possibilities appeared with burial dates, birth dates and cemetery names.

Note: I do have travel plans but hope not to disrupt my posts.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well