Where can I look online to find out if there was an old church and graveyard on my land?

Question

We live in a very old 80 acre farm. It has been in my husbands family for over 100 years. Up by the road there is a foundation to what local people on our road (all of whom are passed away now) say was a little church. I guess the house we live in once was and old school house. (So they say) There is no record of this house it was here when the land was first purchased and it was abandoned. Anyways this very old woman came to the door and wanted to know what happened to the church because her Grandparents were burried in the graveyard to it. We didn't know anything about it. How can I find out? Kind of weird. I just don't want to go plant a tree with my kids or something and dig in the wrong spot. Right? How could a graveyard just be forgotton about? Maybe the woman is mistaken.

Answer 1

Your county may have old historical 'plat maps' that would identify the church and cemetery. Or your local historical society may have them. Historical societies often have listings for abandoned cemeteries, too. They usually are interested in mapping these. Maybe if you contacted your local historical society they will have someone who would come out and search for evidence of a cemetery.

Boy Scout troops may take on the job of up-righting tombstones and maintaining the graveyard if you do find one.
Usually cemeteries are on high ground, if not actually in the churchyard... if you want to search yourself.

Answer 2

This happens more often then you will think especially in the older states before laws were inacted to protect Cemeteries. If you live in a state that was once on the Western Frontier then you will find many cemteries plowed under or left to the elements my own mother's family from Ohio had there family cemetery plowed under by a local farmer and when my cousins went to find this graveyard found all the headstones in the ditch and underneath the farmers house to shore up his foundation so they removed the stones and brought them back to Iowa. Your best bet is to contact your Local Historical Society and your local Genealogical Society and to search through Land Grant Records or Deeds but if the people were squatters then you will not find records as they were settling land illegally I would do these things first before you dig you never know and as the old saying goes "we are not dead unless we are forgotten." So hopefully you can find out this mystery and show some respect for the departed, Gool luck in your search.

Answer 3

I love working land "ancestry" almost as much as people ancestry.
Sadly, cemeteries are frequently lost, abandoned, forgotten. Unless there are active persons in the community who work to help preserve them (and often there are relatives far away, who will BLESS you for doing so).
Online, you can stop first at the usgenweb site for your county, and check out who is handling that, and what level of records are posted. Some county sites are much more active than others.
Next, your local historical society (hope you have one!!) may be able to help with records of old local churches, and what they know.
The place to trace your land's former ownership is the county deeds recorder. Your purchase of the land will show in the grantor/grantee index (you being the grantee). You can look in earlier indexes to find when the former owner bought the land, so forth. For some lucky counties.. you can run down a map of the orginal land grants and know the "beginning". Some land parcels were granted or bought BEFORE the county existed, in which case it can be in what is called the "parent" county.
I've also used www.topozone.com to find old landmarks, that may be in their files but otherwise forgotten. It is cool to zoom in on an area that you live in, and see what they have noted. Cemeteries are normally marked on these maps.
It would sure be a plus, if you happened to ask the woman for the names/ dates of her grandparents, so as to verify when that burial was supposed to be.
One more thought is that you say "by the road". It is very possible that the church was on your parcel, and the cemetery close by, possibly on a close neighbor's land.
All the hard core researchers here are CHOMPING with hopes that you can verify the location.

Answer 4

This sort of thing happens a lot, actually. In the early days of the U.S., large cemeteries such as we have now just didn't exist, especailly for folks out in the country. Every family had a burial plot, especially as infant deaths were so common. My own father (he's 82 now) lost two of his nine siblings while they were still very young - one to diptheria, and one to something that we'd probably now call SIDS.

I'd check with your county offices; records that we now think of as city records were once almost exclusively kept by county clerks, and there's a decent chance that burials will be recorded there. You might also check with genealogical societies in your area, as they often keep up with and catalogue older cemeteries, even small ones.

If you know the denomination of the church, you might be able to contact a parent organization about its location; you might also check for town plats in the county offices as well. You can also try cemetery boards in your area, and funeral homes; they often have records that go back a very long way.

Since you know where the church was, there's a fairly good chance that the cemetery was very close by. If you can get someone from a local university's archaeology department to come out, they may be able to spot signs of disturbed earth that you or I wouldn't see.

Good luck!

Answer 5

You can bet that your local genealogists and historians know! First place to try to contact them will likely be through your library. (I envy your historical challenge.) Part of your research may include genealogical research of anyone who lived in the past where you now live. Do you know how to recognize a hearth or soil and vegetation that shows evidence of heat or having burnt? Or disturbed soil that differs from nearby soil where a building or cemetery may have been? Many small cemeteries have been plowed under by farmers and their headstones destroyed or re-used in building foundations and whatnot.

You didn't say what country and/or state where you live. It may matter. There may be State and/or other laws governing your use of part of your property. Your realtor or the seller's or the title company would have or should have advised you if a cemetery were ever on the real property and may be held liable if that is learned to be true but was not revealed to you when you bought.

Answer 6

That's a possibility. My suggestion is to visit your county's local land commissioner's office or the county clerk's office at your courthouse where these records or deeds may exist. It is doubtful that an on-line search will yield much unless you are connected to an intranet service in which case you probably need a code or password to override the system.

You might want to go to both of the aforementioned locations and then visit your local library and have them help you refine your search and provide access to either microfilm or journals: primary accounts often available in the backrooms of most libraries.

Good luck.

Answer 7

depending on your location, your county courthouse should have records of all cemetaries within the county, at least official ones.

you should haved for her name and her grandparents name, there might also be some record of location of where they were buried.

don't know of any place online to help with your search if this was a long time ago when the church / graveyard might have been there.