BillionGraves Index - FamilySearch Historical Records

Record Description
This collection is a name index of burial records posted on BillionGraves.com. BillionGraves has shared the index to the website BillionGraves.com, a large family history database of records and images from the world's cemeteries, all tagged with GPS locations. Volunteers around the world capture images of headstones in a cemetery and upload them to the site.

Record Content
This collection may include:


 * Name of deceased
 * Date of birth
 * Date of death
 * Name of cemetery
 * Date of burial

Information not in the index, but found from time to time on the headstones in the images on the BillionGraves website when you view the image associated with a record there:


 * Relationships (Father, mother, husband, wife, etc.)
 * Marriage place (not commonly seen).
 * Other family members such as parents or spouse of deceased
 * Epitaphs
 * Military service, unit, and rank information for service in wars fought by the United States or British Commonwealth nations. Some British Commonwealth headstones that have military information may have unit insignia as well as ID numbers of soldiers interred, but that information may vary from locality to locality.
 * Religious symbols that may be indicative of what religion the deceased may have practiced. This may aid in later research as many churches, synagogues, etc., may have or had kept records associated with the deceased that have other and more complete information.
 * Other information of various kinds.

How to Use the Record
When searching: As you are searching it is helpful to know such information as your ancestor's given name and surname, some identifying information such as residence, age, and family relationships. Remember that there may be more than one person in the records with the same name as your ancestor and that your ancestor may have used nicknames or different names at different times.

For help searching the collection view the on-line demonstration FamilySearch Search Tips.

Search the Collection
To search by index: Fill in the requested information in the initial search page. This search will return a list of possible matches. Compare the information about the ancestors in the list to what you already know about your ancestors to determine if this is the correct family or person. You may need to compare the information about more than one person to find your ancestor.

Viewing the Original Headstone Photos on BillionGraves
If you find a record while using this collection, you may view an image of the headstone associated with it at the BillionGraves website (link below). There is no fee to view the image associated with the record. You may also view a cemetery's Google map, and see where the headstone you are viewing is on that map, for free as well.

Frequency of Collection Updates
Since BillionGraves users are gathering and uploading new headstone images and those images are being transcribed daily, there will be regular updates to this collection. Updates currently happen frequently, usually every couple of weeks, but never less frequently than around every four to six weeks. The latest update occurred 4 August 2014 and the collection, with that update, now contains 8,553,803 records.

The collection time period box on the upper right of the page says '1001-2012'. However, a few headstones for those who have died in 2014 have started showing up in the index. A headstone with a death date in early 2014 inscribed on it was sighted on the BillionGraves site itself on 27 May 2014.

Related Websites
BillionGraves

Related Wiki Articles

 * BillionGraves
 * BillionGraves section of Cemeteries
 * United States Cemeteries
 * Singapore Cemeteries

Citations for This Collection
When you copy information from a record, you should list where you found the information (often called citing your sources). This will help people find the record again and evaluate the reliability of the source. It is also good to keep track of records where you did not find information, including the names of the people you looked for in the records. Citations are available for the collection as a whole and each record or image individually.

Collection citation:

Record citation (or citation for the index entry):

Suggested citation format for a record in this collection.