Today's Genealogy Lesson

An ancestor's place of worship and burial location are not necessarily one in the same. Many places of worship in dense urban areas did not have room for large cemeteries, or any at all, so just because your ancestors worshiped there doesn't mean they are buried there. They may have even had a funeral service there but been buried at a different church cemetery. 

I was fooled by this recently when I found an obituary for my ancestor saying his funeral service was at First German Church on Juniata Street in Pittsburgh (a.k.a. First German United Evangelical Protestant Church and now known as Victory Baptist Church). I wrongly assumed that meant he was buried there, even though I know that today it's very common to have a funeral service in one location and the burial location in another, in my experience, this is usually done at a non-denominational funeral home, not two different churches. So when I got the ancestor's death certificate saying he was buried at "Spring Hill", I was kind of confused. For starters, I couldn't find any Spring Hill church or cemetery in Pittsburgh but then I recalled that the ancestor's in-laws were buried somewhere with "Spring Hill" in it. It was called Saint Johns Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery (now called Brighton Heights Lutheran Church Cemetery) in an area of Pittsburgh called Spring Hill, North Side (and to make matters more complicated, Brighton Heights Lutheran Church is not in the same location as the cemetery).

So the lesson learned is to not assume the place of worship and burial location are the same, even if the funeral service was held there.