Next Steps in Planning My Cemetery Visits

The first step in planning my cemetery visits to all my great, great-great, and 3rd great grandparents for my 2021 research goal was to inventory those burial locations which I had not been to. Out of the 56 individuals I have been to 25 of their gravesites already leaving me with 31 to find.

I placed all 31 of them into a spreadsheet recording their full name, relationship to me, date of birth, date of death, and notes about where I believe they lived at the time of their passing and where I suspect they are buried. 

The next step in planning is to pinpoint the burial locations. Some of them I am sure I have noted their burial location somewhere, in all likelihood it is mentioned on some document that I have just never really paid attention to. However, there are a few on my list that I don't even have their date of death. For some of them I have searched for years for those death dates for years. Maybe some focused attention will find the details though.

I suspect some of these are couples that are buried together which will help to speed along my visits but don't assume that. I know several sets of my ancestors are not buried together. Why is that, you may wonder. Well, some of them died very far apart in time. Widowed young, some remarried and are buried with their second families. My grandmother, for example, died in 1972. My grandfather passed in 2004. That's 32 years. Grandpa never remarried but he left New York State not long after grandma died. Grandma is buried at the local National Cemetery. Grandpa is - well a 1/5 of him, is on my shelf. Yeah, his ashes were divided among his children that were alive at the time of his death. Mom didn't want her share. She thought it was morbid. So, Gramps is on my shelf. 

I also suspect that several of these different family lines are actually buried in the same cemeteries. I'd prefer to make one trip to each cemetery if possible, rather than multiple visits into Queens or Brooklyn or Canada or wherever these folks are. Some of the different lines of my family lived in the same communities; um, that's how their kids met. And many were of the same faith. Lots of Catholics of Queens and Brooklyn are buried in Cavalry Cemetery which has - no exaggeration - about 3 million burials. So I can imagine some of my father's relatives being buried in the same cemetery as some of my mother's relatives. 

So now I am just going to work through my list and try to nail down their dates of death and then burial locations. I suspect there will be some calls required to cemeteries and emails sent to fellow family researchers.

I'll write about each visit after I make the trip. At that point I'll share the process I took to get there then. First up, I think, will be my great grandparents, James Aloysius Fay (11 February 1893 - 1 October 1964) and Mary Lily Prince-Fay (15 October 1893 - 17 July 1983).