Understanding Online Searches in Depth -- Part Three wherein I learn the lesson

Now, it is time to continue the issues raised in Part One of this series; the search for Henry Victor Overson's burial information. Part Two was a digression into a very brief discussion about the differences between library cataloging and online searches. But now I will return to an investigation of the practical realities of making an online search when the immediately available resources do not seem to contain the information you are searching for.

As a short review, I found that my records did not contain any information about my Great-uncle's burial information. He died in Phoenix, Arizona in April of 1986. I checked FamilySearch.org's Family Tree and none of his descendants have added that piece of information. Searching in the obvious places is usually the best way to start a search for something as specific as a burial place and date. The next obvious place is Ancestry.com.

I have nine sources for Uncle Victor in Ancestry.com, but none of them give a burial location. The main issue here is that his death is relatively recent. You might expect it to be easier to find information about people who lived and died quite recently, but the opposite is actually true. One major contributing factor creating this obstacle is the existence of privacy considerations. I quickly added 15 more sources from Ancestry.com, but none of them gave burial information. Ancestry.com was a long shot due to the aforementioned privacy concerns.

By now, you are probably wondering why I didn't start with FindAGrave.com. You might note that I already searched FindAGrave.com, BillionGraves.com and Arizona obituaries in the Mesa FamilySearch Library. In each case, I looked for all of the "Overson" names and included "Oveson" in my search as well as "Ovesen." I also searched for Henry Overson and H. Victor Overson. I choose finding Uncle Victor's burial because I thought I could find it readily and then use additional searches to illustrate searching in depth. It turns out to be much more difficult than imagined.

After searching several additional cemetery indexes in Utah and Arizona, including the Utah State Archives and several other lists, this whole experiment started to get serious. In searching the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, I found an Arizona Republic newspaper account of Uncle Victor's Golden Wedding Anniversary on August 3, 1975.  I guess this is the way to learn humility, looking for something in public and not finding it. I found the Golden Wedding Announcement using the terms "overson burial 1986 arizona."

I finally found a death notice for his wife on AzCentral.com (the Arizona Republic Newspaper):

Jessie Frances Rice Overson, 96, of Phoenix, AZ, passed away December 15, 2003. Visitation will be held 6-8 PM, Friday, December 19, 2003, Greenwood Memory Lawn Mortuary, 719 N. 27th Ave., Phoenix, AZ. Services will be held 10:00 AM, Saturday, December 20, 2003, with a viewing at 9:00 AM, at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 3102 N. 18th Ave., Phoenix, AZ. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/azcentral/obituary.aspx?n=jessie-frances-rice-overson&pid=1711549#sthash.moLUtbdd.dpuf

Assuming, that Aunt Jessie Overson was buried next to her husband, I had now narrowed the search down to a probable location. However, a search of the Cemetery records from the Greenwood Memory Lawn Mortuary, did not even register an Overson at all. It did not look like the records went back further than 1999. but for some reason also failed to include the 2003 funeral for Jessie Overson. In going back to FindAGrave.com, it does not look like the over 100,000 people buried in Greenwood Cemetery are included in that website. BillionGraves.com turned out to have only 52 of the over 100,000 graves. Interesting. 

Well, this search is going to be continued. I suspect that the Oversons were both buried in the huge Greenwood Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery in Phoenix. The Cemetery apparently has no listing of the graves online, so I will have to call tomorrow or next week and find out when and where they are buried. I am not quite sure what I proved, but I do suspect that in the end, I did find what I was looking for although not entirely online.