How to search death information on our website:

When searching for a name you do not have to enter "Doe, John P." but you can enter "doe" and all records containing those three letters in that order will be in the report. That can be a blessing because it will show women with the maiden name of "Doe". It can be a curse because the search may include records such as "doehler" that you are not searching for.   When entering a name do not place quotes around the name as I did in the above illustrations.

Please use the "Print" button to print the particular file and use "Close" to return to the search list.

When "Newspaper Obituary" is present there will be an obituary, death notice or death certificate attached.  By clicking on "Newspaper Obituary" the document(s) will load in Adobe Acrobat (a free download from Adobe). 

The death certificates for the most part are gleaned from the Library of Michigan's website located at www.seekingmichigan.org.  If you are unable to read our copies you may be able to locate a better copy at their site.

Genealogical Research

If you are going to visit our cemetery or any other cemetery to obtain genealogical information let me make a few suggestions.

• Be prepared.  Have your paperwork and questions ready.
• Call ahead.  Before going to the cemetery give the employees time to gather your information or ask them to mail it to you.
• Offer to pay for the materials you are given.  At Greenwood we do not charge for normal requests but some cemeteries expect some type of remuneration.  We have had some researchers ask for thousands of pages of information to be mailed to them.  We must charge for this type of request. 
• It may be nice to call for an appointment at some cemeteries.  Many do not have a secretary or a full-time staff person dedicated to handling this type of request. At Greenwood we have regular hours but we do not have enough staff to have someone in the office every hour of the day.  If you call ahead we can make an appointment to be sure to meet you at a convenient time for both of us.

Corrections

The crew of Greenwood Cemetery has spent thousands of hours in an effort to compile the best records possible.  Our handwritten records go back to the early 1900's.  We have sought to compile better records by examining every lot in the Cemetery, by going through old funeral home records, by reading obituaries from old newspapers and by input from family members. 

There are many conflicts in the various sources of information.  We choose which information we believe to be most accurate based on the weight of evidence.  Obviously, there are times when we choose wrongly when dealing with records that are more than 100 years old.  We wish to make our records as correct as possible but you will need to give us some type of proof that your 'correction' is more correct than our record.

The records include burials in Greenwood Cemetery and also burials in other cemeteries as we have gathered information from obituaries and from funeral homes. 

There are currently more than 80,000 records in the report and more than 60,000 obituaries available.