Family Historian User Group

This won't be a common problem, but I seem to have found two different burials for two of the people in my file. For people who want all the details, I've written up a question on Stack Exchange: What records might be created when people are re-interred?

Both individuals were born in England, moved with their families to the USA, died in Massachusetts, and were buried in Forestdale Cemetery in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Both appear in the parish burial records of St James the Greater, Slapton in Devon.

When entering information in Ancestral Sources, is it more advantageous to enter the English burial first and the US death record second, with a note about the US burial? I hope to find more information in time that would show whether they were re-interred, but in the meantime, I want to preserve both sets of information.

It would be reasonable for AS to assume a person would only be buried once, so I wanted to post this to see if others had found the same issue. I've read about other cases where service members are brought home from foreign cemeteries, and sometimes whole cemeteries are relocated due to construction or other hazards.

Are these the same two you mentioned in Re:Ancestry (1089)?

tatewise wrote:Are these the same two you mentioned in Re:Ancestry (1089)?

Good catch, Mike.

Charles Edwin Knowles d. 1902 is the person referenced in that thread. When I posted there, I did not know that Cecil E. Elliott was also in the Slapton Burial register.

AdrianB has suggested on G&FH.SE that they may have been cremated. He's absolutely right about that making transport much easier. I'll have to look through my downloads from the local newspapers to see if I have death notices or funeral notices. (I have one possible hit for Cecil Elliott, but the identifying information is sparse so I need to do a little more research.)

Edited to add: the funeral notice I found may be the right Cecil Elliott. It says "burial in Forestdale Cemetery" but of course newspapers can get things wrong. Since it was a news item about the funeral after the fact, I don't think it lists the Funeral Home in charge (which could be cross-checked with the death certificate). If those records could be tracked down, that should indicate whether Cecil was cremated or buried.