Cemetery & Death Records Database — Find A Grave Scraper

Scrape memorial and death records from Find A Grave, the largest cemetery directory on the web. Returns birth and death dates, birth and death places, cemetery location, plot info, grave photo status, and linked family memorials for a corpus that spans roughly 250 million memorials across some 600,000 cemeteries worldwide.

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Find A Grave Scraper Features

• Searches by first and/or last name and returns matching memorials directly.
• Walks the full worldwide cemetery directory — continent, country, state, county, cemetery — when you want the whole corpus instead of one name.
• Extracts birth and death dates and places, not just years. When the source has a full date, so do you.
• Captures plot location, grave photo status, and any inscription text left on the memorial page.
• Returns linked family members — parents, spouse, children, siblings — as structured records with their own memorial IDs, so one search opens onto a family tree instead of a single row.
• Resumes a stopped crawl from where it left off, at no extra charge for what it already delivered.

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Who Uses Find A Grave Data?

• Skip tracers and collections agencies — confirm someone is deceased before spending further effort on a locate. A death date closes a file.
• Genealogy researchers — build out a family tree using the linked parent, spouse, and child records instead of chasing each name by hand.
• Insurance SIU teams — cross-check a claimed death against a public burial record during claims validation.
• Probate and heir-location firms — use the family links to map who else might have a claim, starting from a single memorial.
• Funeral homes and memorial services — check whether a family member already has a memorial on record before creating a duplicate.

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How Find A Grave Scraper Works

1. Pick a mode: search by name, or browse the full cemetery directory for everything the source publishes.
2. The scraper finds matching memorials — either from your name query or by walking down through cemeteries — and opens each one.
3. Each memorial page is parsed into a full record: dates, places, cemetery, plot, photo status, family links, and any inscription.
4. Records land in your dataset as they're found. Set maxItems to cap the run, or leave it high and let it run.

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Input

{
  "searchMode": "name",
  "firstName": "John",
  "lastName": "Smith",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchMode	string	browse	browse walks the full cemetery directory worldwide (no filter — the entire corpus). name searches by first and/or last name instead.
firstName	string	—	First name to search for. Used only when searchMode is name.
lastName	string	—	Last name to search for. Used only when searchMode is name.
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum number of memorial records to return. Required.
resumeCursor	string	—	Cursor from a previous run's Output. Continues a stopped crawl instead of starting over.

To browse the whole directory instead of searching a name:

{
  "searchMode": "browse",
  "maxItems": 5000
}

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Find A Grave Scraper Output Fields

{
  "memorial_id": 20491559,
  "full_name": "John Smith",
  "maiden_name": null,
  "birth_date": "4 Aug 1823",
  "birth_place": "Germany",
  "death_date": "6 Oct 1867",
  "death_place": "Rome, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, USA",
  "age_at_death": 44,
  "cemetery_id": 88831,
  "cemetery_name": "Riverview Cemetery",
  "cemetery_city": "Rome",
  "cemetery_county": "Jefferson County",
  "cemetery_state": "Wisconsin",
  "cemetery_country": "USA",
  "plot_info": "W-293",
  "has_grave_photo": true,
  "family_links": [
    { "relation": "Spouse", "memorial_id": 20491560, "name": "Margaret Landgraf Smith" }
  ],
  "inscription": null,
  "memorial_url": "https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/20491559/john-smith",
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-28T19:42:41.151Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
memorial_id	integer	Find A Grave memorial ID
full_name	string	Name on the memorial
maiden_name	string	Birth surname, when shown separately from the married/display name
birth_date	string	Birth date as recorded — a full date or a bare year, whichever the memorial has
birth_place	string	Birth place as recorded
death_date	string	Death date as recorded
death_place	string	Death place as recorded
age_at_death	integer	Age at death in years
cemetery_id	integer	Find A Grave cemetery ID
cemetery_name	string	Cemetery name
cemetery_city	string	Cemetery city
cemetery_county	string	Cemetery county
cemetery_state	string	Cemetery state or province
cemetery_country	string	Cemetery country
plot_info	string	Plot or section location within the cemetery
has_grave_photo	boolean	Whether the memorial has a grave photo
family_links	array	Linked parent, spouse, child, and sibling memorials — each with relation, memorial_id, and name
inscription	string	Biography or inscription text on the memorial
memorial_url	string	Canonical memorial URL
scraped_at	string	Timestamp the record was scraped

Most memorials don't carry every field — a plot location or an inscription depends entirely on what the original contributor entered. The fields that exist, exist because the source has them.

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Resuming a large crawl

Every run emits a resumeCursor in its Output. If a large crawl stops before it finishes — because it hit maxItems, your spend cap (maxTotalChargeUsd), or was aborted — start a new run with the same input plus that resumeCursor to continue from where it left off. The crawl resumes from the queued work the previous run didn't reach.

• You are not re-charged for records the earlier run already delivered.
• Resume within your account's run-retention window — on the free tier, roughly your 10 most recent runs. Once the source run is pruned, its resumeCursor is no longer valid.
• resumeCursor is opaque — supply it unmodified.

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FAQ

How do I scrape Find A Grave?

Set searchMode to name with a first and/or last name, or set it to browse to walk the full directory without any filter. Either way, set maxItems and run it.

How much does Find A Grave Scraper cost to run?

Find A Grave Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing — you pay per record returned. Everything needed to reach the site is included in the price. A name search that returns a handful of matches costs a few cents; a full directory walk scales with however many records you ask for.

What data can I get from Find A Grave?

Birth and death dates and places, cemetery location down to city and plot, grave photo status, any inscription text, and linked family members with their own memorial IDs. It's a death record and a family tree in one row.

Can I search by name instead of browsing cemeteries?

Yes. Set searchMode to name and provide a first name, a last name, or both. Find A Grave Scraper returns every matching memorial it finds.

Do I need an account or API key for Find A Grave?

No. Find A Grave Scraper needs nothing from you beyond your search terms or a maxItems value.

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Need More Features?

Need custom fields, filters, or a different target site? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use Find A Grave Scraper?

• The largest cemetery corpus available — roughly 250 million memorials, about two orders of magnitude more than the next-largest genealogy scraper in the category.
• Family links, not just a name — parents, spouse, children, and siblings come back as structured records with their own memorial IDs, turning a flat death record into a relationship graph.
• Two ways in — search a name directly, or point it at the full worldwide directory and let it run.