Did you know that one of Burlington, North Carolina's biggest industries was once the manufacture of coffins? The Burlington Coffin Company, a leading manufacturer on the east coast, operated here for 88 years between 1888 and 1973 at the corner of Maple Avenue and Tucker Streets and produced as many as 10,000 coffins per year.
FUNERAL HOME RECORDS
Some funeral homes keep funeral programs and newspaper obituaries for the deaths for which they handled arrangements. Funeral homes of longstanding in Alamance County include: McClure, Rich & Thompson, Sharpe, and Lowe.
CHURCH AND CLERGY RECORDS
A few ministers maintained private records of the burials at which they officiated, especially those who performed funerals outside the confines of their religious denomination. There are also some church burial records that have been published for some particular religious congregations. Examples include:
Andrews, Rev. J.D. "Record of Funerals & Record of Infant Baptisms" (Alamance and Guilford Counties, NC 1893-1948)
Offman, Rev. David I., compiler. "Records of Buryings in the Brick Church Cemetery" in Brick Church Records (translated from the original German)
This guide explains various ways of documenting and substantiating a death including information on death certificates, newspaper obituaries, burial records, and cemetery transcriptions.
CEMETERY CENSUS WEBSITE
The cemetery census website is a volunteer effort to provide complete lists of cemetery transcriptions along with pictures of headstones. There are more than 60 Alamance County cemetery records for church, family, and municipal graveyards listed at the cemetery census website at https://cemeterycensus.com/nc/index.htm
PRE-1914 CEMETERY INSCRIPTIONS
The Local History Collection at May Memorial Library has a microfilm version of a card file owned by the State Archives of North Carolina that lists many persons buried in North Carolina cemeteries prior to 1914. This collection is on 34 separate reels of microfilm and is searchable by either the name of the deceased or the cemetery name within a certain county. This data was transcribed by Works Progress Administration workers during the 1930s.
CEMETERY SURVEYS IN GENEALOGY JOURNALS
Local genealogical society journals often contain many cemetery transcriptions. The Local History collection has back issues of the following genealogical journals: The Alamance Genealogist, The Guilford Genealogist, and the Randolph County Genealogical Society Journal.
PUBLISHED CEMETERY TRANSCRIPTIONS
There are several countywide cemetery transcription compilations in the Local History Room. They include:
Tombstone inscriptions: recorded from private or abandoned cemeteries in Alamance and Orange counties / by Durward T. Stokes
Guilford County Cemeteries edited by Mary A. Browning
Chapter 65 of the N.C. General Statutes states that a descendant, a descendant's designee, or any other person with a special interest in a grave or abandoned public cemetery may enter public or private land to visit a grave with the consent of the landowner. If consent cannot be obtained, the aforementioned persons may petition the Clerk of Superior Court in the county where the grave is located to gain access.
The following books may help you understand the artwork and religious inscriptions on old tombstones or tricks to make the writing on tombstones more legible for recording purposes.