Research Guides: New Jersey Genealogy: Cemeteries

Tombstone Transcriptions

NOTE: The Genealogical Society of New Jersey's Cemetery Records have been temporarily relocated to the New Jersey State Archives. See: Accessing GSNJ Collections at the New Jersey State Archives.

Since the 1920s, members of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey have been involved in copying the inscriptions found on tombstones in New Jersey cemeteries. There is a large collection of these transcribed tombstone inscriptions in Rutgers Special Collections. The Genealogical Society of New Jersey maintains a list of cemeteries for which inscriptions are available.

Special Collections also has a Master File of New Jersey Gravestone Inscriptions consisting of 16 file drawers of transcribed inscriptions arranged alphabetically by surname. Only selected cemeteries are represented in this file.

If you wish to know if a name is listed in the Master File and are unable to use the collection onsite, please see the section on Genealogical Research (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/scua/genealogy/genealogy.shtml) on the SC/UA webpage.

The New Jersey Historical Society in Newark has 20 manuscript volumes, with indexes, of New Jersey cemetery inscriptions compiled in the early 1900s. All counties with the exceptions of Camden, Hudson, Hunterdon, Passaic, and Warren counties are represented.

The Gloucester County Historical Society has a database that allows you to search individual names across cemeteries for which it has inscriptions. Primary counties represented are: Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Gloucester, Monmouth, Ocean, and Salem.

There are also a number of transcription sites on the web, including:

New Jersey Tombstone Transcription Project Registry
Listing by county of cemetery transcriptions completed and in progress that have been registered with the rootsweb project.

Monmouth County, New Jersey Cemetery Transcriptions
Transcriptions plus nearly 40,000 headstone photographs.