Where in Berkshire were they buried?
Some researchers pay less attention to deaths and burials of their forebears than to earlier events in their ancestors' lives. Here are a few reasons why that approach is hard to support:
- a recorded age at death (even if inaccurate) helps to pinpoint a year of birth
- a parish burial register entry may confirm where a family lived and ...
- ... may also furnish details of relationships and other key information
- a death certificate may reveal an address that assists other searches
- a death may be followed by a newspaper obituary, funeral notice...
- ... or report on a coroner's inquest
- a date and place of death can help in locating probate documents
- monumental inscriptions can show ages, relationships, addresses, occupations
- the cause of death itself may be of interest
Burial indexes
For burials in pre-1974 Berkshire the society's Berkshire Burials CD is your definitive finding aid.
The 10th edition holds over 773,000 entries from more than 230 churchyards, cemeteries and burial grounds in Berkshire. You can buy the CD from the Shop.
Ancestors often sought to be buried not in the locality where they died but in a former parish where they lived (perhaps where a spouse was buried). Many examples can be found in the Berkshire Burials datasets - underlining the value of the CD as a finding aid.
Other family history societies have prepared local indexes for other counties and the third edition of the National Burial Index for England & Wales (publ. Federation of Family History Societies) carries useful, if much abbreviated, details of burial records but county coverage is very variable; some counties have little or no information recorded.
Death certificates
English certificates are often less helpful to family historians than those issued in some other countries. But an address at the time of death may assist a later census search, a recorded age may help to determine a birth year and an informant may prove to be a relative (or simply a neighbour). Also a certificate is normally issued before funeral arrangments are finalised. Until recently, registration of the event took place in the registration district where a death took place. This may not be the district encompassing the burial place. Certificates of deaths at work, deaths in a hospital or workhouse, and deaths away from home or while travelling may give no clues to burial places.
Other sources of information
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Coroners' Inquests - for those who died unexpectedly. While records do not always survive, inquests were invariably reported in local newspapers. The society has published an Index to Berkshire Coroners' Inquisitions (1688 to 1926) on CD available from the Shop. The index is to surviving papers for the pre-1974 county held in Berkshire Record Office.
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Local (and national) newspapers contain funeral notices, short funeral reports and obituaries. To search newspapers without knowledge of a likely date of death will be time consuming, as most remain unindexed. Forty-nine 19th century newspapers can be searched on a British Library pay-per-view website.
