Where does one go if she wants to find a grave?  Well, a good place to start might be the website Find A Grave.

Doing research on individuals often involves trying to find out information about a person’s death and burial.  In the case of Loyd Sechrist, our archivist knew that he had fallen off of a cliff, but she had no idea where he was buried.  Records in correspondence files related to his work as a surveyor showed that his body was to be transported, but the letters and telegrams did not indicate where the body would go.

Luckily, researchers and genealogists have a great tool—Find a Grave.  Through this tool, we were able to find Loyd’s grave.  He is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery, just outside Los Angeles.

As part of our ongoing efforts to help the public conduct successful research, we at the National Archives at Riverside occasionally share the research methodologies of our staff, researchers, and citizen archivists.  This post is part of a series of posts related to the research of one of our former archivists, Monique, into the life of a man named Loyd Sechrist.  Sechrist conducted surveys of Arizona immediately after statehood for the Bureau of Land Management, and records related to his life (and death) caught Monique’s curiosity.   Follow the story of Monique’s research into the history of this man here on Tumblr with the tag #Loyd Sechrist, and on our archives’ Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/nationalarchivesriverside.