City-Owned Cemeteries Burial Records
Looking for someone who you think might be buried in a City of Tallahassee-owned cemetery? Here's where to start.
- Is this your first visit? In that case, we recommend that you read the information below. Otherwise, you can jump right to the index.
- The main listing includes only burials that have occurred and been recorded in our master database since the mid-1980s, with a handful of exceptions. (We have information here at talgov.com on why this is the case.)
- To see the definitions of some (possibly unfamiliar) terms, see the list below.
- Remember that many -- perhaps most -- burials in Tallahassee are in private cemeteries, not in the five owned and operated by the City government. Some of these private cemeteries may also have on-line sites you can check; more likely, you'll need to contact the funeral home or other institution responsible for the cemetery. (You might also check with area churches, many of which operate their own cemeteries or graveyards. Good lists of local churches are on Tallahassee Freenet and the AOL CityGuide site's listing of Tallahassee churches, which includes links to their Web sites.) The largest private cemeteries in Tallahassee, in alphabetical order, are:
- Abbey Funeral Home at Tallahassee Memory Gardens: 4037 N. Monroe Street, Tallahassee FL. (850) 562-1518.
- Bevis Funeral Home: 2710 N. Monroe Street, Tallahassee FL. (850) 385-2193.
- Culley's Meadowwood Funeral Homes and Memorial Park: 700 Timberlane Rd., Tallahassee FL. (850) 893-4177.
- Another good source of online information for researchers in this area is the Leon County Clerk of Courts Public Records site. Enter at least the first few letters of the last name of the individual you're researching and select (for example) "CERDC - Death Certificate" or "CERDT - Certificate of Death" from the Instrument Codes drop-down list before clicking on the "Search" button.
- Finally, if you're either researching burial information in Tallahassee, or just curious about Tallahassee's sometimes colorful past, be sure to see the information here at talgov.com about an independent survey of some of Old City Cemetery's older grave sites.
We also provide a page of links to information about cemeteries in general, as opposed to burial records.
For all questions regarding information on these pages, please contact the Cemeteries unit at 850-891-8711.
| Terms Used in the Burial Index | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Column Headings: | |||||||||||||
| Block/Lot or Section #/Space | All these terms are used to give a particular grave's "address" within a cemetery. Not all terms apply to all cemeteries.
All grave spaces (the last portion of the "address") are numbered. A normal (non-Babyland) grave space is 5' x 10' in size; such a space can be sub-divided into eight smaller (2.5 x 2.5) spaces in each of which cremains may be buried. These eight sub-spaces are lettered as follows:
In Roselawn, Babyland graves are 4' x 4'; in Southside, 5' x5'. The exact breakdown of addressing scheme, by cemetery, is:
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| Lot Descr | E 1/4, SE 1/2, etc.: Helps to locate the lot within the cemetery | ||||||||||||
| Exception | Indicates whether the grave space contains cremains (see below) or is located within a particular section of the cemetery's Babyland areas. | ||||||||||||
| Other Terms: | |||||||||||||
| Cremains | As you might guess, these are the remains following a cremation. They occupy much less space than a full burial (which would include a coffin, crypt, and so on). | ||||||||||||
| Babyland | Infant burials frequently take place in a portion of a cemetery set aside for such a purpose, rather than in a specific family plot. Such an area of a cemetery is referred to as "Babyland." | ||||||||||||
| Not Deeded to Anyone | Technically, our system doesn't keep track of burials; instead, it records who has purchased each gravesite from the City. (The overall database includes almost 30,000 records, but fewer than half of them are for grave spaces in which someone is yet buried.) In rare cases, we have no record of a gravesite's actual owner, although we know who is buried there, and that's what this notation refers to. Note that although the system in our office records the name and address of the purchaser, we have not included this information on-line for privacy reasons | ||||||||||||
| Plat | The result of an official survey of City-owned property is a plat. | ||||||||||||
| Head End/Foot End | Depending on the circumstances of a burial, the deceased may occupy less than a full grave space. The "head end" of the space is the portion closest to the monument or gravestone; the foot end, that furthest from the monument or gravestone. | ||||||||||||
| Walkway | Areas between grave spaces are often marked (for example, with flagstones, paths, and so on) as areas to be walked on as you make your way on foot through the cemetery. In some extraordinary circumstances, burials may have occurred beneath what are now walkways. | ||||||||||||
| Transferred | Once someone has purchased one or more grave spaces from the City, it belongs to that person (or his/her estate). In rare cases, someone who has purchased grave spaces in a given section may decide later that they'd prefer spaces in a different section, or a different cemetery altogether. The term "transferred" refers to this kind of change -- basically a bookkeeping change, which frees up the spaces owned at the original location. | ||||||||||||
| Reinter(red/ment) | In rare cases, the deceased may need to be relocated after burial from one area of a cemetery to a different one within the same or another cemetery. For instance, if a family later buys a larger plot elsewhere, they may want to "relocate" earlier family members to the new area. | ||||||||||||