Burials

Tracking down the burial ground of an ancestor can provide lots of useful information, and if you follow up with a visit - can make you feel more closely connected to them.

Finding the specific plot, or lair as they were referred to in Scotland, depends on the period of time when the deaths occurred.

Fortunately, this whole process has just been made much easier for searches involving Angus cemeteries.

In 2009, Angus Coucil worked with Internet experts Deceased Online to digitise and make available online all the of the burial records belonging to the County. Over 185,000 records are now available to view on the Internet, often with additional information such as images and links to adjacent lairs. Make a free quick search, and if you find the interment you are interested in - you can purchase credits to search further, for a modest fee.

In general, and for areas not supported by digitised information, up to the mid-19th century it was the normal practice for people to be interred in the Parish Kirk burial ground - although this was only rarely marked with anything as grand as a headstone. The Scottish Association of Family History Societies (SAFHS) is currently co-ordinating a major project to develop a National Burial Index, relating to pre-1855 records. This will eventually be available on CD ROM. Although this will help to confirm that burials took place in parish burial grounds, it will not, unfortunately, indicate the location of the lair.

Volunteers at Tay Valley Family History Society  have a vast array of information on cemeteries, some of it on CD-ROM, and can be very helpful.

If your ancestor was wealthy enough, their grave may have been marked by an inscribed headstone. Over the years, family history societies and other volunteer groups have painstakingly transcribed and indexed such inscriptions - and these are nearly always held in the relevant local history libraries or family history research centres.

By the mid-19th Century, many parish burial grounds had become seriously overcrowded, especially those in urban areas, and this led to the creation of both private and municipal cemeteries. If you know the place and date of death, you should be able to discover the location of a lair, although not all cemeteries and records have survived.

The concept of cremation started to gain popularity in the late 1940s and has increased ever since. Ashes may be taken away by the family, scattered in the garden of remembrance or buried either in the crematorium or in a family plot.

Dundee Burial Grounds

The Leisure and Arts Department of Dundee City Council is custodian of the records of three nineteenth century Dundee burial grounds: Eastern Necropolis, Western Necropolis/Balgay and Western Cemetery. All are still currently in use. You may find the page of information on other burial grounds in Dundee helpful.

Staff at Leisure and Arts can search these records on your behalf. However, certain details are necessary for a successful search i.e. name of deceased, date of death (obtainable from Dundee City Registrars), and maiden name if deceased is female. Where at all possible, postal or e-mail inquiries are preferable, particularly when searching for multiple entries. Please provide a postal address with large e-mail inquiries. The address for inquiries and details of search fees is as follows:

Leisure & Arts Department
Floor 13
Tayside House
28 Crichton Street
Dundee DD1 3RA

Tel: +44 1382 433089
Fax: +44 1382 433211
E-mail: burials@dundeecity.gov.uk

Angus Burial Grounds

All of the records for burial grounds in Angus (excluding Dundee) are now available online at www.deceasedonline.com  Alternatively, you may contact Angus Archives at angus.archives@angus.gov.uk or 01307 468644 who will be able to assist as part of their fee based research service.

Information on Interment Registers & Proprietor Records (lists of who is intered in each lair)

Maps of cemetries, Ground Sales Books - when lairs were sold, who to and how much etc and some images may also be available.