You Can Help! Institutional Cemeteries Website Seeking Assistance -- Let's Do What We Can to Remember These Often Forgotten Individuals

Steven Seim has created a website, Institutional Cemeteries.org,  ...

He is requesting your help!  Per a blurb on Facebook ...

I’m looking for some help with a project I’ve been working on.

I’m trying to catalog all cemeteries established for residents of asylums, poor farms, orphanages, prisons, etc. – in other words, cemeteries for the unclaimed. Most of the people laid to rest in these cemeteries were forgotten in their own lifetimes, and often the cemeteries themselves are abandoned or neglected.

Please check out my website: http://institutionalcemeteries.org/ and check in particular the cemetery listings near you. Red icons mean that I still need GPS coordinates for the cemetery, and yellow icons mean that the listing of burials on Findagrave is not complete.

If you have more information about one of these cemeteries, or one that I’ve missed, I’d love to hear from you. Together we can preserve a record of these forgotten burial sites.

Many many families had family members who ended up in an institution, for one reason or another, and many ended up dying in one.  Many are buried in unmarked graves ... long forgotten.

To use this resource, click on the appropriate region -- Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Southwest or Northwest -- to see that regional map.  Click on any icon and you will see a bubble that comes up.  The bubble will include a link to the appropriate find-a-grave page and also to an informational page with AKA names, a statement about the completeness of the find-a-grave information, location, and other details.

This is a neat project and an important one. 

Some related resources:

+ Tips on Researching Institutionalized Ancestors (Upfront with NGS)

+ Poorhouses & Poverty, Orphans, Prisons, Prisoners & Outlaws, Hospitals, Asylums & Sanitariums (Cyndi’s List)

+ Ancestors in lunatic asylums (WDYTYA – UK version & many of these suggests are relevant elsewhere)

+ Asylums, State Hospitals, and Private Institutions, Researching Your Ancestors in the Poor Farm (Genealogy Today)

+ Genealogical Prison Records (Blacksheep Ancestors)

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