For years, I assumed that my aunt Elizabeth (Trautvetter) Herzog, was buried in one of two cemeteries where she had relatives. It seemed reasonable that she was in a grave that was never marked or where the stone had worn away. Dying in her early thirties, she was not buried with her husband who had remarried after her death.
Turned out she was buried in a cemetery where no other relatives are located. Most likely it was near where she and her husband were living at the time of her death.
Not everyone’s buried in the same cemetery as their local kin.
And…it also helps to have the name of a female relative’s last husband.
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One of my Dad’s Navy buddies is buried in a nearby cemetery, even though he was from New Jersey (We’re in Florida). His sister came down when Andy died, with plans to take him home, but she changed her mind because all his friends were here. So, even though I barely remember him, I still go to the cemetery once in awhile to say ‘hello’.
Folk dying far from home may also be buried where they died rather than the family pay the sometimes considerable cost of taking a body home for burial. My mother died here in Canada; where she was living, and wished to be buried next to her first husband; my father, BUT the cost of taking her body home to England was totally out of the question, so instead she was cremated and her two grandchildren and I; her last relatives, took her ashes to the Graveyard where her first son, her first husband and her original MiL are buried to be scattered. Eventually I do hope to put a plaque on Dad’s stone commemorating her, and her other son, who was buried by his wife in some unknown place; she never had the grace to even tell me he had died; a mutual friend rang and informed me.
I have finally got this figured out.
We have no idea why a Florida uncle who died in Europe in WW2 was buried in the Little Rock National Cemetery but he’s there.
But just two weeks ago my brother died in Arkansas. His home is in Texas, and he grew up in Oklahoma. But after organ donation and cremation it’s been decided he will also be interred, with full military honors, at the Little Rock National Cemetery in a few weeks. He was in the Navy, a graduate of the Naval Academy.
I will make notes in our family history to explain this for future generations.
Which brings up another tip. Nowadays most burials are within days of death, but the two events may be weeks, or months apart. And, the place of death is not always the place they lived at the time of death. If they died in the hospital it may be in a larger city. That county will be listed on the death certificate as the place of death, but they may never have lived there.