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I have now completed adding all the available burial records (10,193 of them) for the Knottingley town cemetery on Womersley Road, to our burials database. The records span the years 1884 through to 2005. In addition we are currently adding basic details of a large number of burials recorded since the cemetery was first opened in 1859 up to the start of the first available remaining burial register for 1883/1884. Already, we have more than 1,200 burial records from the period 1859-1883 included on our database.

Scanned images of the burial registers have been available on the Wakefield MDC website for some time but some of the entries have been poorly transcribed, while others contain errors, and there is no way of searching the registers other than by the individuals name. Trying to discover which family members were laid to rest in the same grave has, until now, been an almost impossible task. That has now changed!

Once you have ascertained in which grave an individual was interred, the Yorkshire Ancestry website now allows you to simply enter the grave number and our database will immediately tell you which individuals are recorded in that same grave.

However, before we get carried away, our burials database is never going to be 100% accurate due to the fact that in parts, the burial registers are almost illegible and there’s every likelihood that some of the entries made in the registers are incorrect. In addition, I’m not entirely sure that every burial at the cemetery was officially recorded in the registers at the time, as there are some rather prolonged periods where no burials were actually recorded following immediately after a period where there were burials on a frequent daily basis. We have done our very best to ensure the information we have added to our burials database is as accurate as possible by checking the majority of the entries against the civil registration records available on FreeBMD and making note of the page and volume numbers. We have also tried to double check the grave numbers recorded alongside each individual using all the information available to us, including memorial stone inscriptions, but there is just no way of knowing for certain when we have got it right or when we have got it wrong.

In use the burials database is truly awesome and you’ll soon begin to wonder how you ever managed without it. It really does help your family history research when you can easily discover which people are interred together. It allows you to identify individuals, link families together, and locate spouses with greater accuracy.

As a project, the burials database has taken me more than 2 years but that’s just by adding a small number of records in my spare time. During that time however, I have had to spend many, many hours (far too many to recall) trying to make sense of some of the entries and verify the others as best I can. If you are a current registered member of Yorkshire Ancestry and the Knottingley Family History database, then you have complete access to the results of all that work already. If you are not already a registered member then you can access the burials database, along with all our other local family history records, including our 24,500 name Knottingley family tree, for a minimal registration fee. See the Yorkshire Ancestry home page for full details.

I’ve spent the past couple of days filling in the gaps and having added several hundred new records I’m pleased to say that I have now managed to record all the Knottingley cemetery burials from April 2005 right back to January 1928. This is in addition to those already recorded from 1859 through to 1906, so you’ll now find details of more than 8,700 Knottingley Cemetery burials on our database – all of them searchable by grave number. We also have approx 1,000 burials listed from other burial grounds making a total in excess of 9,700.

If you have ever searched any other online burials resource for Knottingley cemetery you’ll know how difficult it can sometimes be to find the individual you are looking for. I can’t promise that my database will be 100% accurate because from the information available to me it isn’t possible to ensure that it is, but in most cases I have double checked my burial records against the GRO index to ensure correct names and dates wherever possible. Similar resources available to you contain some rather unnecessary errors and omissions.

As for the grave numbers themselves it is pretty well hit and miss because there is no other information to compare them with. However, with so many records listed and by using the information contained on our family tree, it has been possible to work out any problems and I’m pretty confident that you’ll find this database extremely useful as a research tool.

All members can help to ensure that the database is as accurate as possible simply by searching for their own ancestors and by letting me know if they either find anything amiss, any individuals not shown who they feel should be, or any individuals shown who they feel shouldn’t be there.

Remember, all Knottingley Cemetery burials from 1907 through to 1927 have still to be added so please bear that in mind when searching the database.

Our burials database now comprises details of more than 9,000 burials with more than 7,800 entries from Knottingley cemetery alone. As I’ve already said, this is a useful resource to have available when compiling your family history. Find one member of a family, take note of the grave number, and then search for others interred in the same plot. It’s often a good way to locate a wife who had remarried after the death of her husband, as they were often interred along with their first husband.

Over the past few days I have entered all Knottingley cemetery burials from January 1928 through to May 1937 and I intend to keep adding additional records until I have completed right through to 1945. Our database already contains details of all burials at Knottingley cemetery from 1945 through to 2005 so that leaves me with just another 8 years worth to make the link between the 2 batches of records. Once that link is made it will leave only the period 1907-1927 in order to fully complete the entire cemetery from approx 1859 right through to 2005.

Our burials database has been overlooked recently but at times it proves so useful that it really does pay to keep adding to it. Being able to link family members together through their burial records is an asset, and even though our burials database is somewhat crude in design, (being ‘home made’) the ability to find family members interred together in the same plot by searching on the grave number is an extremely useful addition even though there are still many hundreds of records to add. This evening I have entered the whole of 1928 through to May 1929 and during the day another batch of pre 1884 burials have been included. It’s very time consuming because we are trying to cross reference all entries with the GRO index to make sure they are as correct as possible but there have been almost 200 new records added today.

We are now about two years into the Knottingley Family History Database project and I have just entered details of our first recorded centenarian. I have come across statistics from a number of family history websites over the past two years and almost every single one has had at least one instance of an individual attaining the age of 100 years. I have therefore been somewhat surprised that up to this time, and with more than 21,000 individuals already recorded on our family tree,  I had not yet come across anyone of that age from the Knottingley area that could be linked into our family tree.

Normally reaching a certain milepost is a cause for celebration but it’s an uneasy situation for us when that achievement is through the registered passing of an individual. However, I sincerely hope that the family descendants of Mr John Holman, 27th March 1902 – 13th November 2002, are proud of the fact that he was able to be the contributing factor in our marking of this event.