A catalogue of new developments and ideas. Each month we'll feature a different area of research. This month:

Memorials

Memorials began to appear in number around 1600 but it was not until the Victorian period that they appeared in quantity. The value of memorials is that as well as recording your ancestor’s date of death, they will frequently record other family members buried alongside. Many memorials have been recorded by family history societies so it is worth checking with local family history societies to see what they know. The Scottish Association of Family History Societies have branches all over the country.

The big problem is locating the burial place, as there are no public official records of where people were buried. Things that can help are family documents, memorial cards, newspaper obituary columns, wills and even knowledge of where cemeteries in the area are sited. Usually people were buried near where they lived, although they could be buried somewhere with family connections. If you can’t identify the burial place, you will have to check each possibility.

A useful document to come across is the burial register. For church burials, registers can either be found at the church or in a local record office. Municipal cemeteries’ registers will be held by the local authority who will search for you, although they may charge for this service and usually you will be expected to know the date of death. Church registers rarely identify an individual grave’s location. Municipal registers will contain a record of the grave number which will allow the grave to be located. You may also find a "grave book". This records the names of those buried and the date of burial. The grave book is valuable since it may contain names of people not recorded on the memorial.

If you can, speak to the attendant or minister. They may know the location of other family graves nearby.

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