Cemetery plot map template

Most small cemeteries have a plat map on a wall and a register in a binder, and the two do not entirely agree. This template is the bridge: a single sheet with one row per grave space, which is the only arrangement that answers all three of the questions a cemetery actually gets asked.

What is in it

One sheet, Plots, with a row for every space and these columns:

• Section, Block, Row, Grave — however your cemetery already numbers itself.
• Status — Available, Sold, Occupied, Reserved, Unknown, Unusable. It is a drop-down, so the values stay consistent and the sheet can be filtered.
• Owner and Deed / certificate number and the date and price of the sale.
• Interred and the date of interment.
• Notes — for what you are not sure about.

Row one is frozen and filtered, so you can sort by section to walk the ground or search by surname to answer a family without losing the headings.

The one decision that makes or breaks it

One row per grave space, not per family and not per burial. A space is the thing you sell, the thing somebody is buried in, and the thing a family asks about, so the space has to be the row. Sheets built one-row-per-burial cannot tell you what is left to sell, and sheets built one-row-per-family cannot tell you who is in which space.

The second thing: owner and interred are two different people and both columns matter. A family can own spaces for eighty years before using them. An owner with no interment is normal, not a mistake, and a sheet that conflates the two loses the ability to answer either question properly.

How to fill it in

1. Photograph the paper first. Every page, on a phone, before a single cell is typed. An afternoon, and afterwards the originals can fall apart without costing you anything.
2. Do not renumber to tidy it up. Whatever numbering the cemetery has used, including the places where it changed, is what is written on deeds and stones. Record it as it is and note the oddities.
3. Type the map skeleton before the burials. Sections and rows first, so the shape exists; the names can be filled in over months.
4. Use “Unknown” freely. It is a legitimate answer and a far better record than a blank or a guess.
5. Walk the cemetery with a printout and mark where the sheet and the ground disagree.

What a spreadsheet will not do

Said plainly, because you will hit these: it will not draw a map that matches the ground, it cannot be sorted by plot and by surname at the same time, it does not stop two people editing two copies, and it holds no accounting for balances or perpetual care. Those are the four things that eventually break a spreadsheet, described in cemetery record keeping.

None of that is a reason not to start here. A filled-in spreadsheet is enormously better than a binder, it imports directly into Sexton later if you ever want the map and the books, and it costs nothing today.