A part from paying your familial respects, there are a number of reasons for visiting the grave of an ancestor. For example, you may find other members of the same family buried nearby. However, the gravestone itself may reveal all sorts of information of genealogical and personal importance, and these details are not always in online cemetery databases or burial indexes.

The most basic of grave memorials were made of wood or iron and have usually long since been lost, which is why many graves no longer have a marker. Gravestones are more durable, and were often made from whatever stone was easiest to obtain locally. The inscriptions on them, in their simplest form, comprise an appeal to remember the deceased such as ‘Sacred to the memory of’, followed by a name and a date of death.

However, many gravestones hold a lot more information than this.

Relationships
The text on a gravestone may reveal how affectionately someone was held during their lifetime. Phrases such as ‘my loving husband’ or ‘in fond remembrance of’ convey the sadness of those who survived your ancestor, suggesting they were genuinely loved. Some stones were even paid for by friends or colleagues as a mark of respect. A detailed headstone in Edinburgh records how admirers of the actor William Woods paid for his stone to be restored in 1866 as he was a ‘favourite and leading actor on the Edinburgh stage’.

An inscription may also reveal family relationships by identifying others such as spouses, children or parents. This can be extremely helpful when trying to confirm suspected family connections or to differentiate between ancestors with the same name. If your ancestors were wealthy enough to have a family vault or tomb then you may find several generations commemorated together. People of means are more likely to have a coat of arms depicted on their gravestone too, which may also help you confirm a link between branches of the same family.

Headstones may even refer to family members who are not interred there. For example, mention is sometimes made of the parents of the deceased because they were prominent local people. Another example of this is referring to women in connection with their husbands, such as ‘Grace, wife of William Turner’ even if William later re-married and is buried elsewhere. Other family members may be referred to for all sorts of reasons. A memorial to James Johnson in Wiltshire says that he died after a fall from his horse in Bath in 1774, and adds that, bizarrely, his elder brother had died from the same cause in the same place a few years earlier.

A common scenario is to find the deaths of other family members commemorated on a relative’s headstone because they had died abroad or their body had not been found. This is often the case with military men who died in service overseas or people who drowned. For married couples, you may also discover lists of babies or children that are difficult to find elsewhere.

Causes of death
Gravestones can be a valuable source of information about the nature of an ancestor’s demise, especially if the death was traumatic or unusual. In this situation, a grave can sometimes be the only source of the information about what happened or it may provide basic details that encourage you to go away and find out more.

Some of the more common causes to be recorded on a headstone are deaths in wars, drownings and women who died in childbirth. Ancestors who died in shipwrecks quite often have the ship identified on their headstone which, together with the date, will enable you to research the tragedy further. Where a body was not recovered, which is common, a shipwrecked ancestor is quite often mentioned on the headstone of another family member such as a parent.

Inevitably, perhaps, it is the dramatic deaths that are the most interesting. David May of Southwold was murdered by ‘hands of treacherous pirates’ in the Gulf of Florida in 1819. Poor Matthew Quantock from Chichester was just thirty years of age when he died by falling through the ice while skating in 1812.

The grave of 17-year-old Richard Parker in Pear Tree parish church, Southampton, records a most grisly end. In 1884 ‘after nineteen days’ dreadful suffering in an open boat in the Tropics, having been wrecked in the yacht Mignonette… he was killed and eaten by Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens to prevent starvation’. A similarly alarming termination of life was meted upon 33-year-old barmaid Hannah Twynnoy, who was killed by a tiger that escaped from a travelling circus in 1703. Her headstone at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire records her fate in rhyme:

“In bloom of life,
She’s snatched from hence
She had not room
To make defence
For tyger fierce
Took life away
And here she lies
In a bed of clay
Until the Resurrection Day.”

Occasionally death from disease is mentioned, although this is rare. For example, the headstone of John Pearce at Shirwell, Devon records his death from smallpox in 1789. More often, the citation on a gravestone hints at causes of death such as ‘after a long illness’ or ‘released at last’, and so forth. The gravestone of James Gammon in the same churchyard as John Pearce reads:

“The world grieves my Father no more,
No sickness can shake him with pain,
The war of the members is o’er,
And never shall vex him again.”

Roles and locations
Gravestones will sometimes reveal the place where an ancestor was born, such as ‘Robert Harris, formerly of Salisbury, who died in Bitterne’. This can be so useful if you’re trying to trace your family’s geographical roots. You may even sometimes find a precise address in the form of ‘Janet Hoyes of Yew Tree Cottage’. In this case, you can follow up the history of that house: did another family member live in it before Jane? what happened after Jane died; did the house stay in the family? is it still standing?

An ancestor’s role or occupation may be given on their headstone, particularly for those who served in the military. In this case you will usually find a rank given, and sometimes a regiment for soldiers, or a ship for Royal Navy personnel. Military conflicts or bravery awards might be recorded as well. John Hill, for example, died in 1861 and his headstone proudly records his role as a sergeant in the 40th regiment of infantry. Furthermore, he served as ‘A Waterloo man, and through the Peninsular War, with the Duke of Wellington’. His epitaph concludes with a delightful rhyme: ‘With faith in Christ and trust in God, The sergeant sleeps beneath this clod’.

For civilian roles, it is often the more distinguished occupations that are recorded since these people were pillars of the community and they include the traditional professions such as physician, lawyer, and minister. However, more humble occupations that are not uncommonly encountered include seaman, teacher, and blacksmith, as well as significant voluntary roles in the community such as lifeboatman or churchwarden.

Finally, the design, size and location of a gravestone may give some indication of your ancestor’s prosperity or status. Larger, more ornate stones with extensive inscriptions located near to the church tend to indicate higher status or greater relative wealth.

Imagery
The value of gravestones to a genealogist goes beyond the text that they display because the images on them can be surprisingly instructive too. To some extent the prevalence of images is determined by and by local custom: some churchyards seem to have a very large number of them, others have few.

Images may give clues to an ancestor’s employer or occupation. They may depict, say, a stonemason or a carpenter’s tools, show the regimental badge for a soldier, or the emblem of Trinity House for a lighthouse-keeper. Seafarers may have a ship or an anchor, but note that the anchor was also a common Christian symbol meaning something like ‘hold fast to the faith’.

Plants were particularly used to convey meanings in the 19th and early 20th centuries, although they should be interpreted with caution. Some plants were traditionally used simply to represent death and mourning, such as ivy, lilies, ferns, poppies, and willow. There were subtle differences between them. Ivy is evergreen and suggests that memory of the deceased will continue; poppies, being a source of opium, indicate the long sleep of death with perhaps a hope of reawakening some day in heaven. There were ‘fads’ for some plants. Willow, for example, was popular in the mid-19th century after it emerged that willows grew on Napoleon’s tomb.

Some flowers have a range of potential meanings. Lily of the valley is a popular motif on early 20th century graves and can denote humility and purity, perhaps because it is white. Yet one tradition is that the flower was created from Mary’s tears so it can also mean sorrow, or the happiness that will return after sorrow (because Jesus returned from the dead).

If someone died very young, then childhood flowers such as daisies might be depicted or flower buds to indicate that a life had not yet blossomed. A broken column on a grave usually means that the dead person was an adult cut off in their prime.

Christian symbols include various different versions of the cross but also abbreviations. The letters IHS represent the initial letters of Jesus in ancient Greek, and XP the first letters of Christ. The abbreviation INRI stands for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum (Jesus the Nazarene king of the Jews). Angels signify heaven, or innocence if shown on a child’s grave, and an angel blowing a horn depicts the resurrection or ‘life after death’. Other Christian symbols include the dove (at peace), a flame (eternal life), grapes (the blood of Christ), or a crown (victory over death).

Non-Christian religions use their own symbols such as the Star of David for Jewish ancestors or crescent and star for Muslims.

Hands can feature a lot on graves. Two hands clasped, usually a man and a woman’s, typically indicate one marriage partner bidding farewell to the other, but with the marriage bond not broken and an expectation of being reunited. A pointing hand represents God calling the deceased to him. A rather charming symbol is a hand holding a little heart. This is usually taken to mean someone who ‘gave from the heart’, and implies that the deceased was a notably generous or charitable person.

Hopefully, this introduction to the value of family gravestones will inspire you to visit your ancestors’ last resting places or to seek out images of their headstones online.