Troy Burial Records
This page was last updated 22 Apr 2010
Completed - Thanks go to Gary Craver, who transcribed the entire Troy Burial Records for 1863; to Brad Miter, who very quickly completed 1841; to Stephanie Moore, who accomplished the mammoth task of transcribing the whole of 1881; to Dottie Kakule, who with lightning speed transcribed 1842; to Elizabeth Bauer, who started the ball rolling for us by transcribing June-December 1882; to Kathleen Nardone, who transcribed all the entries that exist for 1833; to Sharron Shepard, who transcribed 1839; and to John Haun, who has completed 1845. Many thanks to all for their hard work!

Work in progress - Our transcription team has grown to 22 in number, and as our transcribers complete various sections of their years, they are sending them on so that I can upload them for you. Volunteers have kindly offered to transcribe 1834, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1838, 1840, 1879, 1885, 1890 and other years.

Can you help? - If you would like to help, please email me, Debby Masterson, and choose a year. January-June 1882, for example, is still available, because it is at the end of microfilm 1434104, whereas Liz was working from microfilm 1434105. Later years offer more information and therefore constitute a larger task, so if some of you might like to take on half-year commitments for the post-1860 years, that would be most welcome.

To view the records so far transcribed, click on the years below.

1833 1835 1839 1841 1842 1845 1846 [fragment] 1863 1864 [fragment] 1881 1882 1883 [fragment] 1885 1889 [fragment] 1890

What are Troy Burial Records?

To give them their proper name, these are called "Book of Records, Names Interments &c. &c., Troy March 1st 1833, S. E. Gibbs Superintendent". In the LDS Church Family History Library Catalog, they are called "Burial records, 1833-1928, of Mt. Ida Cemetery", even though they are not limited to Mount Ida Cemetery. These Troy Burial Records are a log of burials kept in the City of Troy, Rensselaer County, NY. They contain tens of thousands of entries.

In addition to entries for all people who died and were buried in Troy between 1833 and 1891 and between 1919 and 1928, these records include burials of people who died in Troy but were buried elsewhere AND records of people who died elsewhere but were buried in Troy. They are not cemetery inscriptions. Many, MANY of the people listed in these records have no headstones now, and of those, quite a few probably never did have a headstone. Therefore, they never appear in cemetery databases compiled by recording inscriptions on headstones.

For people who died prior to 1881, when the state of New York began keeping death certificates, these records are often the ONLY source of death information.

The quantity of information recorded varies; in the earlier listings, just name, age, colour, gender, citizenship and date of death are recorded, whereas in later listings, in addition to all this information, the record gives place of death (even street address), usual place of residence, place of birth, parents, cause of death and name of informant. Sometimes children are listed not by name but as "John Smith's child" etc.

First, the bad news about these. They have not been digitally transcribed, so we are unable to offer them here for you to search with your search engines while seated in your own homes. If any of you are interested in joining a transcription team to bring these records online, please email me, Debby Masterson.

But the good news is very, very good! And that is that these Troy Burial Records exist at all and are available to search on microfilm through the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City and through the LDS Church's worldwide network of Family History Centers. As most of you know, you do not have to be a Mormon to use the LDS Church's excellent, unparallelled genealogical facilities; I am not a Mormon, and I would not know nearly as much about my ancestors as I do know were it not for that wonderful library in Salt Lake City. Although gradually more and more people are learning about these Troy Burial Records, they are still, in my view, one of the best-kept secrets in Rensselaer County, NY genealogy.

If your ancestors lived in or near Troy, it is very unlikely that you could search the entire Troy Burial Records database and fail to find any entries for your family. You will find that your ancestors had other babies who died at age six months from "teething", and you may well learn, from the column for names of decedent's parents, the long-unknown maiden surname of your great-great-great-grandmother.

Troy Burial Records
LDS Microfilm NumberDates Covered
1. Film 1434103March 1, 1833 to September 2, 1867
2. Film 1434104August 14, 1867 to June 27, 1882
3. Film 1434105 Item 1June 8, 1882 to February 27, 1891
4. Film 1434105 Item 31919-1928
5. Film 1434105 Item 2Index to Plots


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Debby Masterson

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