Thousands of Hertfordshire burial records now online

Tuesday 5 April 2011
Read more from our news section
Tweet

The new data covers sites around Hertfordshire © DeceasedOnline

Genealogists with ancestors from Hertfordshire now have online access to thousands of burial and cremation records from the county.

The newly digitised records, available at DeceasedOnline, cover the Dacorum and Broxbourne boroughs of Hertfordshire. The records, which include digital scans of burial registers, are taken from six different cemeteries and date back as far as 1878. The site also recently added 105,000 new records for Aberdeen City.

Family historians can track down individuals by typing a surname into the website’s search engine. Users are then able to browse a list of all burial and cremation records that are stored under that name. Registration to the site and access to basic records is free, but there is a small cost for more detailed information about the death and grave of a person, and copies and scans of records cost up to £5 to print.

DeceasedOnline has been building up its database since 2009, and works with local authorities to collect statutory burial and cremation records. More than 20 councils are currently involved with the project, but it is expected that more will be working with the website by the end of this year.

“Burial records can be seen as the end of one trail but they can be the start of another as they frequently reveal much about generations of a family, opening up new and previously unknown avenues in an ancestral search,” says Richard Gray, head of marketing at DeceasedOnline. “Within the registers, locations on where the deceased was buried or cremated - and often where they lived - is usually revealed, and the grave details give information on others buried within the same grave.”