Search this index of monumental inscriptions and discover your Scottish ancestry. The records provide your ancestor’s burial place and age at the time of death.
In each record, you will be provided with the following facts about your ancestor:
Name
Alternate last name – in most cases this is a maiden name
Age
Birth year
Death year
Burial ground
County
Country
Notes – provides a link to the Scottish monumental inscriptions website where you can, for a small fee, purchase an image of the monument.
The Scotland monumental inscriptions index includes records from 14 Scottish counties including the Isle of Skye and 209 burial grounds. A full list of the burial grounds, organised by county, found in Scotland monumental inscriptions index can be found through the link provided in Useful links and resources. In this index, you will find burials as early as 1507, like Robert Graham buried at Kinneff church in Kincardineshire, and as recent as 2016, like Morag Hamilton buried in Carmichael cemetery in Lanarkshire.
In the 19th century, it was common for only men to attend the burial at the cemetery where the close relatives lowered the coffin into the ground. When a person died, all the mirrors in the house would be covered or turned to face the wall and all the clocks would be stopped. These actions were part of other superstitious practices, which were thought to help the deceased’s spirit to leave the house and find peace in the afterlife. A bell within the town centre would ring to notify the town of the death, and the community would attend the funeral and the feast. The family of the deceased was responsible for putting on a seven-course feast where men and women would eat separately, men in the barn and women in the house.