Burr Oak Cemetery: Browse the headstones

By Ryan Mark, Joe Germuska and Brian Boyer
July 30, 2009

UPDATE, August 25, 2009 -- The Cook County sheriff's office has released nearly 44,000 new photos of headstones at Burr Oak Cemetery near south suburban Alsip, completing its effort to document the headstones there.

As many as 300 graves at the cemetery may have been dug up and the remains dumped so the plots could be resold. To help families search for their loved ones' graves, the sheriff's office has built a database so families can search for images of headstones.

Burr Oak has about 100,000 grave sites, but fewer than half have marked headstones. County officials have now documented those and they have been entered into the database.

This application allows you to search the database by name, and browse by decade and year. All headstones in this database have not been disturbed, according to the sheriff's office.

(Please note: Because of inconsistent data from the sheriff's office, the names and dates on the headstones may not always match the descriptions. Please try searching a few different ways.)

To learn more, read our stories about the tragedy at Burr Oak.