MISSING GRAVE

[nina]

Can anyone explain why a person would be in a parish burial record but not be buried at the church. One of my ancestors has his burial recorded in the parish records for St Oswald's at Lythe but there appears to be no grave. I have looked at the monument inscriptions (which I was assured was complete by the Records Office) and cannot find him there either. The nearest church is in another parish and as that was geographically closer to where he died I have also checked that out to no avail. Any suggestions

[hughar]

If the burial register shows that the person was buried there, you can be sure that they were. As to why there is no record of a memorial, there could be many reasons. It depends on the time between the burial and the recording of the MI's. But for example, maybe
(a) no memorial was ever erected
(b) the memorial was removed at some time.
(c) the burial was in an existing grave, and its memorial was not updated.
(d) burial in a pauper's grave
etc.

[Neil Wilson]

I have looked at the monument inscriptions (which I was assured was complete by the Records Office) and cannot find him there either.
Monument/Memorial Inscriptions are what they are, so if they did not have a headstone, there wouldn't be any MI's. You would need to view the grave yard register which records the burials to see which grave/plot they were buried in. You would need to approach the church/cemetery direct if they are not in the local records office.

[Geoffers]

Everything the others have written, plus - is there more than one cemetery? Many churchyards were full or getting close by the 19th century and additional space was needed for burials.

When was the burial to which you refer?

This thread records discussion on a similar matter in Norfolk
http://www.british-genealogy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8632
scroll down to posting number 7 and read on....
It shows that you are less likely to find a marked grave than you may have thought.

Geoffers

[nina]

Many thanks to you all

The burial was 1764. I will endeavour to locate the graveyard register. I cant see him being in a paupers grave as he was a farmer. I suppose, given the length of time, that the memorial has been removed/badly damaged.

Nina

[Wilkes_ml]

Out of all the burial's in one cemetery that I have looked up, I have all the plot numbers and locations, but only half of them had a stone. And these were from the 1900's.

My great grandfather was reasonably well off - he died in 1929 and he was buried at St. Paulinus Church at Crayford. He is in burial registers and the Church Clerk said he is definitely buried there, but can not say where he is buried as there was no stone - seems they don't have records showing plot numbers so "he could be anywhere in the church yard".

Going back to the 1700's and 1800s, the chances of finding a grave is even lower I think.

[arthurk]

Am I right in thinking you're referring to Lythe, NRY - a few miles up the coast from Whitby? If so, then according to the National Index of Parish Registers it might be worth checking in Egton (St Hilda's) as well. This is because Egton was a township in the parish of Lythe, and didn't become a parish in its own right until 1807. Having said that, there does appear to be a different set of registers for each church - though experience in other places suggests that sometimes entries from a subsidiary church (chapel-of-ease) were copied into the main church's registers as well as its own.

An earlier response mentioned graveyard registers, but in the Church of England you'd be very unlikely to find anything other than the burial register, and these rarely if ever give any clue as to whereabouts in the churchyard a burial took place.

Arthur

[Wilkes_ml]

Sorry if I confused you - as Arthur correctly mentioned churchyards don't usually have an additional register of plots or a map of location. All of the graves I have been able to locate are at cemeteries.

[nina]

Thanks Arthur, and yes I am referring to Lyth near Whitby. There is no mention of my ancestor in the records for the Church at Egton and as his abode was Newton Mulgrave only some 4 miles from Lyth in comparison to the distance from Egton, I would have expected him to be buried there. The nearest church to his abode is Hinderwell (only a mile away) which is in a different parish but which I checked out just in case as it serves as a cemetry for several churches in the area.

Nina

[Pam Downes]

I know this is later than Nina's burial mystery, but my great-grandfather is recorded in the burial register for Boston St Botolph in 1869, though he is actually buried in Boston Cemetery.
I've never quite been able to reconcile him as someone without two ha'pennies to rub together having a service in the very large parish church followed by burial at the cemetery. But there was a chapel in the cemetery grounds, so I now wonder if the services held in the chapel were automatically recorded in the PR for the main (parish) church of the town? I will have to investigate further with a few more names from the PR.
There was certainly no room in St Botolph's churchyard for burials of ordinary members of the public at that time. The spanner in the works is that I think that the cemetery is actually within the boundaries of another parish (Skirbeck Holy Trinity), but perhaps because it was Boston cemetery it would come under the parish church of Boston.
Pam

[arthurk]

Sounds like you've done your homework, and you probably know more about the area than I do anyway - I was only going on what I found in a book. (A very good and useful book, mind!)

I see that the Cleveland FHS has published a transcript of the Lythe MIs, and there are some extracts from this on the society website. Do you know if this was the transcript that the Record Office was using? Another possible line of enquiry might be Whitby Museum - I think I once heard that they were quite good on local and family history stuff.

Having said all that, I think the most likely explanation is that any stone there might have been either crumbled or became illegible, so wasn't recorded. Just a thought - did the chap leave a will, which could coneceivably have included instructions about a memorial, or a wish not to have one?

Arthur

[nina]

I visited the cemetary again at the weekend and found so many graves with completely illegible inscriptions that I can only think it must be one of those. Many of them were completely blank as if nothing had ever been on them. Thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions.

Nina

[benjamin]

Can anyone explain why a person would be in a parish burial record but not be buried at the church. One of my ancestors has his burial recorded in the parish records for St Oswald's at Lythe but there appears to be no grave. I have looked at the monument inscriptions (which I was assured was complete by the Records Office) and cannot find him there either. The nearest church is in another parish and as that was geographically closer to where he died I have also checked that out to no avail. Any suggestions

We were told when this happened to my mothers sister that the dead person could be buried with anyone being buried that day if the family could not afford a burial.Especially if it was a child l