The map and database of cemeteries in Delaware were compiled from many sources, including previous DGS publications, transcriptions and publications by other genealogical societies in the State, past published surveys, and Find a Grave. A list of published sources is shown below.
Regina Barry’s website documents the locations of older African American cemeteries in Wilmington, including many burial records.
Dill, Raymond Walter, Willam Martin Dill, and Elizabeth Ann Bostick Dill. Souls in Heaven, Names in Stone: Kent County, Delaware, Cemetery Records. Baltimore: Gateway, 1989. The Delaware Historical Society has a copy of this book.
Raymond Dill collected Kent County cemetery records until his death in 1985. William and Elizabeth Dill followed his dream and published his records in 1989. The book runs to nearly 1400 pages, including an index. All of the cemeteries he recorded are included in the DGS cemetery list.
Downstate Delaware Genealogical Society. Tombstones of Sussex County Delaware, 5 vols. Dover, DE: Downstate Delaware Genealogical Society, 2001-2015. No longer available on the DDGS website. Some volumes are available for sale online.
The Downstate Delaware Genealogical Society recorded cemetery locations and tombstones from the 1950s to 2020. All cemeteries they identified are included in the DGS cemetery list. Their listings include cross references to both the Hudson and Tatnall cemetery records.
Hudson, Millard F. Cemetery Records of Sussex County, Delaware. On microfilm at the Delaware Public Archives (DPA) (RG 9020-002-002). Viewable as film #8217944 at FamilySearch.
Millard Hudson recorded Sussex cemetery tombstones in the late 1920’s. He found over 630 cemeteries in a county of only 938 square miles. His typewritten manuscript runs to 820 pages, including a last name index.
Redden, Robert J. Hudson and Tatnall’s Cemetery Records of Sussex County, Delaware. Lewes, DE: Colonial Roots, 2005. Also available at the Delaware Historical Society.
Robert Redden included an Index to his large transcription of the Hudson and Tatnall’s cemetery records. It provides an invaluable cemetery cross reference to the works of Hudson and Tatnall.
Reynolds, Taylor, Chief of Cultural Resources, Delaware State Parks.
Taylor Reynolds provided a list of 8 cemeteries in Trap Pond State Park. These are maintained by Trap Pond State Park staff and volunteers.
Tatnall, Walter G. Tombstone Records, New Castle, Kent, and Sussex County,Delaware. On microfilm at (DPA) (RG 9020-002-000). Viewable as film #8619012 at FamilySearch.
Walter G. Tatnall (1856-1929) was a Delaware state archivist. In the 1920’s he recorded cemetery records across the state. His typewritten manuscript runs to 1230 pages.
Zebley, Frank, The Churches of Delaware. Wilmington, DE: no publisher, 1947.
Frank Zebley’s work is referenced in several FindAGrave listings of church yard cemeteries.
Welcome to the online version of the fourth edition of the Delaware Genealogical Research Guide!
This guide offers a road map of how and where to find records about your Delaware ancestors. It is designed to complement other online and print genealogical resources. Many chapters include historical information, provide context, and offer suggestions for additional research.
When the Delaware Genealogical Society’s Research Guide Committee began its work on this edition in late 2017, it was immediately clear to us that the third edition of this guide, published in 2002 and edited by Thomas P. Doherty, Ph.D., and his committee, would be our foundation. We are grateful for their thorough work.
As we reviewed and updated each chapter, we sought the assistance of repositories, libraries, societies, and other organizations throughout Delaware. Each was ready and willing to come to our aid, and for that we are thankful. The list of the many people who helped us is too long to share, but we would like to recognize several of those to whom we returned time after time. They are Tom Summers, Randy Goss, and Dawn Mitchell, Delaware Public Archives; Leigh Rifenburg and Ed Richi, Delaware Historical Society; Marie Cunningham and Cathay Keough, Delaware Division of Libraries; Molly Olney-Zide, University of Delaware Library; David Burdash, Hagley Museum, and Library; Rosalyn Green, Regina Barry, and Syl Woolford, Delaware Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society; and R. Hugh Simmons of the Fort Delaware Society. Lastly, we would like to remember Lynn Catanese, former head of the Hagley Museum and Library Manuscripts and Archives Department, whom we thank posthumously.
We were fortunate to have the support of several individuals who, though not official committee members, contributed content and feedback. They include Rosemary Bell, Patricia Curlett, Lynne Fedele, Gary Gittings, Barbara Hamming, J. Joseph Harland, Ph.D., CG®, Douglas Johnston, Kathleen Hauty, Michael Miscoski, Reese Robinson, and Susan Kirk Ryan. Ellen J. Roberts served as our volunteer copy editor with energy, precision, good cheer, and wit.
This guide is designed for you, the researcher. We hope that it opens new doors to your genealogical research journey. Good luck!
The Delaware Genealogical Society Research Guide Committee members for the Fourth Edition: Joan R. Adams, Constance Nelmes Beattie, Marjorie G. McNinch, Robbie Snowdon, and Irene Heffran Monley, editor.
DGS offers many resources to support genealogical research for both the general public and for DGS members. Check out the links below. If you’re not a member, take a moment to learn more about the benefits of membership at Join/Renew.
When the location of cemeteries is pinpointed on a map, you’ve got quite a useful tool for research. Below are two resources to easily learn where a cemetery is located: a Google map of Delaware with over 1,000 cemeteries flagged and a link to a document with the data used to create the map. Both were created by Bob Eckman, a DGS member and volunteer.
Using the map is easy, simply click on it and zoom into the areas that your interested in. Note that the boundaries for Hundreds, quirks of Delaware geography, are provided in black.
The cemeteries are color coded by Hundreds within each of Delaware’s three counties, from north to south. For each Hundred, the number of cemeteries is shown in parentheses ( ). Here’s a legend for each county:
New Castle County
Kent County
Sussex County
Map data
For advanced users, a link to a file with all of the data behind the above map. The data is in a KML/KMZ format; the link is shown below. The data can be imported into Google Earth or Google My Maps so that you can get directions to a cemetery. Download the document to your computer or device, then upload the file to Google Earth (depending on your device, use the sidebar, New>Local KML file>Create) or Google My Maps (depending on your device, use the sidebar>Saved>Maps>Open My Maps>Create a New Map>Import).
The Delaware Genealogical Society list/database of Delaware cemeteries contains information on over 1,000 current and historical cemeteries. This Search Guide is designed to help the researcher get the most from the information that is available. In particular, the data now contains references to various surveys of cemeteries conducted in the past.
Clicking on any row in the database will display a pop-up showing all the information available on the cemetery.
The Cemetery name. Many cemeteries are known by multiple names, and these are listed together in the cemetery entry in the list. The Name filter above the listing can be used to find a specific cemetery, e.g., Adkins Burial Ground, or to look see a list of all cemeteries that contain a specific word, e.g., Presbyterian.
Defunct designates a cemetery that no longer exists.
Name Abbreviations and Conventions
The cemetery names have few abbreviations. The following have been adopted as they are typically used as the church or cemetery name:
AME: African Methodist Episcopal (Church)
AUME: African Union Methodist Episcopal (Church)
UAME: Union of African Methodist Episcopal (Church)
AUMP: African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant (Church and Connection)
Saint, as in Saint Matthews, is abbreviated as St. Matthews.
To distinguish multiple names for the same cemetery, names after the first are preceded by a “/”. For example: “Williams Family Cemetery / Taylor-Williams Cemetery”
Where there are multiple families in a cemetery name, they are separated by a “-“, as in “Hyland – Waller Cemetery”.
Where there are alternate spellings of a name, the second name is enclosed in parentheses, as in: “Stephenson (Stevenson) Family Cemetery”.
If the street address closest to the cemetery is known, it is displayed. If the cemetery has not been located, the Address contains the locality or best-known location. Note that the street address can be used for navigation to the cemetery, but it is only an approximate location. The GPS location is the precise location of the cemetery, unless otherwise stated in the Notes.
For consistency, most roads are identified by name rather than road number.
Town / Place
Town / Place is the postal location where the cemetery is located, based on the address of the cemetery. The Address filter above the listing can be used to filter the listing by city, town, or zip code.
County
There are 3 counties in Delaware: New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. The County filter above the listing can be used to filter the listing by county.
Hundred
A Hundred is an unincorporated area in each county that dates to colonial times. Hundreds today may appear in a county’s real estate records, but they are shown here as most historical Delaware cemetery surveys (see Sources) reference the hundred where the cemetery is located. The Hundred designation used in this listing is based on research into the historical boundaries of 1877 when the last changes were made to Hundred’s names and boundaries. See the Appendix, below, for a list of Hundreds by county.
The Hundred filter above the listing can be used to show all cemeteries is a Hundred.
This column contains the link to the Find a Grave entry for the cemetery. Some cemeteries have multiple entries in Find a Grave. The Notes column contains the Find a Grave cemetery numbers for these duplicate listings.
Map
If the location of the cemetery is known, is column contains a link to Google Maps that will show the location of the cemetery.
GPS Location
Although not shown on the main cemetery listing, the GPS coordinates of the cemetery is available on the pop-up by clicking on any data item. If the cemetery location is known precisely, these are the latitude and longitude coordinates. This same data is used in the Map link.
The Notes field contains valuable information on the cemetery. The items available include:
Comments on the Find a Grave listing, e.g., noting the history of the cemetery, and the Find a Grave cemetery number of duplicates. To access the duplicates, use the URL: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/xxxxxxx, where xxxxxxx is the cemetery number given in the Notes.
Directions to the cemetery. These are useful for cemeteries that have not been located precisely, i.e., they do not have a GPS coordinate.
Historically African American cemeteries are identified as such in the Notes.
If the GPS coordinates are approximate, it is stated in the Notes.
Attribution to Notes text:
FG: — located at the end of text this denotes that it is quote from the Find a Grave listing
Dill: — located at the beginning of text this denotes material quoted from Dill (see Source List)
TSC: — located at the beginning of text this denotes material quoted from the Tombstones of Sussex County (see Source List)
Source references. See Sources for a description of the material. The sources are coded as follows:
Dill, Souls in Heaven, Names in Stone: Kent County, Delaware, Cemetery Records recorded cemeteries by a map matrix, creating a unique identifier. All Dill references are shown as Dill cemetery id, e.g., Dill J-20.
Hudson, Cemetery Records of Sussex County, Delaware, identified cemeteries by a unique number. These cemeteries are identified by Hudson followed by the cemetery number, e.g., Hudson-351.
Tatnall, Tombstone Records, New Castle, Kent, and Sussex County, Delaware, are typically identified by the page number where the cemetery appeared in his manuscript. These cemeteries are identified by Tatnall followed by the page number, e.g., Tatnall-226.
TSC, Tombstones of Sussex County Delaware, a project of the Downstate Delaware Genealogical Society, recorded cemeteries by Hundred. See the Appendix, below, for the coding used for cemeteries listed in this source. TSC also references Hudson and Tatnall cemeteries.
Tombstones of Sussex County Delaware identifies the cemetery by a Hundred code, followed by a number, e.g., LC-004 identifies a cemetery in Little Creek Hundred.
