Find a Grave Guide: How to Find a Relative's Grave

Find a Grave is a free website where volunteers record cemeteries, headstones and burials. It is owned by Ancestry, and it is one of the quickest ways to find where a relative is buried. The usual route is to get the cemetery's name from a death certificate or obituary, search the site by name and place, and then confirm the location with the cemetery itself. If you can't visit, you can ask a volunteer to photograph the headstone.

What is Find a Grave?

Find a Grave began in 1995, when founder Jim Tipton built a website to share his hobby of visiting the graves of famous people. In 2013 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Ancestry. Everything on it is added by members. In 2023 alone, contributors added 13.7 million memorials and 20.7 million photos, according to the site.

Joining and using it is free. Because volunteers create the memorials, the site can contain transcription mistakes, duplicates and gaps, so treat it as a strong lead rather than proof.

How to find a relative's grave, step by step

1. Write down what you know. Full name, any spellings or maiden names, birth and death years, and the town or county where the person died.
2. Look for a death certificate. Most death certificates record how the body was disposed of and the name of the cemetery, with its city and state. The CDC's handbook for death certificates says this is partly meant to help family and genealogists find the place later. Only certain family members, such as a spouse, sibling or child, can usually get a copy soon after a death, and anyone can request one once it becomes public record. Some states release them 25 or more years after the death, so check the state where the death happened. Our guide to getting a death certificate walks through requesting one.
3. Check obituaries and funeral home records. Notices usually name the funeral home, the service and the place of burial.
4. Search Find a Grave. Try the name with the state or county, and try spelling variants, since transcribers may have misread the stone. Browsing a cemetery's page can turn up other relatives buried nearby.
5. Search other databases. BillionGraves is a GPS-linked headstone database, with a free app and volunteer-transcribed records, and FamilySearch also has a cemetery search.
6. For a veteran, search the VA's gravesite locator. The Nationwide Gravesite Locator covers VA national cemeteries, state veterans cemeteries and some other military and Department of the Interior cemeteries, plus private cemeteries where the grave has a government marker. The VA says it has no information on private-cemetery burials before 1997, and the data varies, so call the cemetery for anything missing.
7. Call the cemetery office. They can confirm a burial, give the section, lot and grave number, and say whether the grave is marked.

Other places to search

The FamilySearch blog lists free cemetery-record sites beyond the big two. A few that serve particular needs:

For UK war graves, see UK war graves and the CWGC. Death records are held by state and local offices, not the National Archives, which points researchers to the CDC's guide to state vital records offices.

How do I get a photo of a grave from far away?

Open the memorial and choose Request Photo. Add any detail that helps a volunteer find it, such as the section and row. Find a Grave sends the request to volunteers near the cemetery and lists it on the cemetery's page. How long it takes depends on where the cemetery is and how many volunteers live nearby, and there is no guaranteed response time. A volunteer who claims a request has 14 days to photograph the stone and upload it, according to Find a Grave's 2019 announcement.

The cemetery office can often give you the plot location in advance, and that makes a volunteer's job much easier.

How do I correct a memorial or take over management?

You don't have to manage a memorial to improve it. Use the suggest-correction options on the memorial's edit page. If you are a close relative and want to manage it, Find a Grave's transfer guidelines call for transferring a memorial to direct-line relatives who ask: a spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, great-grandparent, grandchild or great-grandchild. Explain your relationship in the request. If the manager refuses a request within the guidelines, you can email Find a Grave support, and administrators will step in. The guidelines have been under review, so check the current version.

Can I add a memorial for someone who wasn't buried?

Generally yes. The site has options for people who aren't buried in a cemetery, such as those whose remains were cremated or scattered, and its guidelines say what it accepts. A cenotaph is a marker for someone whose remains are elsewhere. For a very recent death, consider the family's wishes before posting anything.

How can I read a worn headstone without damaging it?

Some old methods do harm. The Association for Gravestone Studies does not endorse flour, which can turn tacky when wet and trap moisture, and warns that shaving cream's chemicals and greasy emollients can stain and fill the pores of the stone. It recommends a large mirror to reflect sunlight across the face of the stone, or a flashlight in shade.

If you plan to clean a stone, the National Park Service's preservation center says to use the gentlest method, a soft-bristle brush and plenty of water, and never to use bleach, wire brushes, power tools or high-pressure washing. Ask the cemetery or the family before cleaning anything, and don't touch fragile stones.

What to do next

• Get the death certificate or an obituary to confirm the cemetery.
• Search Find a Grave and one other database, then check what you find against the headstone photo.
• Call the cemetery for the plot location before you travel, and read their visiting rules first.
• If the cemetery looks neglected or can't be found, see abandoned cemeteries and graves.