Cemeteries

The Genealogy Department at the Herrick District Library has a large collection of cemetery books. Most of them are in Ottawa and Allegan counties, there are some cemetery books for other areas in Michigan, and some for other states. There is a four volume index to the Pilgrim Home and Graafschap Cemeteries. Pilgrim Home Cemetery is an outgrowth of the burial grounds of Holland's first log church, built by the colonists in 1847. In the map files in the genealogy department, there are large maps available of Pilgrim Home Cemetery. The Graafschap Cemetery is also a large cemetery in Holland, and some of Graafschap’s first settlers are buried there.

In addition to cemetery books, a very good website to look for information on cemeteries is Find A Grave.   According to their website, it is the world’s largest gravesite collection and has over 190 million memorials.  Also, in addition to burial information, there is sometimes other information available, such as obituary, so it is a very worthwhile website to try.  Some other websites to check are Billion Graves and Internment.net.

The library offers a host of other resources for finding your ancestors. Check us out today.

Still looking for more? Check out The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide.