Wales Cemeteries

Cemetery records (known as monumental or memorial inscriptions), sometimes provide birth, marriage, death, and occupational information. They sometimes give clues to military service, residence, and cause of death.

To find cemetery records, you need to know where an individual was buried. The person may have been buried in a church, city, or public cemetery—usually near the place where he or she lived or died. You can find clues to burial places in church records, death certificates, or family histories.

Before the Burial Acts of 1852 and 1853, most people were buried in church cemeteries. If the person was buried in a church cemetery, you may need to use church burial records. See the "Church Records" section of this outline for more information on burials.

Welsh family history societies are transcribing the cemetery inscriptions from their local areas. Some societies have also compiled the indexes from several cemeteries. Write to the society in your area of interest to learn more about their work. See the "Societies" section of this outline more information on family history societies.

It is also possible to gain access to cemetery inscriptions through the Internet. There are lists of people on the Internet who volunteer to search various types of records for certain areas free of charge. You can locate these lists through the GENUKI website at:

www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/#Counties

From the above site:


 * Click [County of your choice]
 * Click Genealogy
 * Click Look-up Exchange

The Family History Library has copies of many transcriptions of cemetery inscriptions including many from Glamorgan, Gwynedd, Dyfed, Clwyd and Gwent. Look in the Locality Search of the Family History Library Catalog under:

WALES - CEMETERIES

WALES, [COUNTY] - CEMETERIES

WALES, [COUNTY], [PARISH] - CEMETERIES

The following inventory will identify cemetery records which may not be found in the Family History Library Catalog:


 * Smith, Frank. Smith’s Inventory of Genealogical Sources: Wales. 14 vols. Salt Lake City, Utah: Family History Library, 1994. (FHL book 942.9 D23s; fiche 6110529;). This is a subject and surname index to items within selected periodicals, books, and films.