Malaysia Cemeteries

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Malaysia

Cemeteries

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Background

Cemetery records (Kuburan)
Research use: Death information in other records is often meager. Used to distinguish adults and surviving children in parish registers, other family relationships. Chinese and other non-Christian cemeteries are particularly valuable due to a dearth of other records.
Record type: Lists of gravestone burial records, exhumations, sextons records, obituaries.
Time Period: 1600-present.
Content: Name, age, death and burial date and place, birth date and place, sometimes relatives.
Location: District and municipal archives, church archives, Chinese community associations, cemetery offices.
Population coverage: 10%.
Reliability: Good.^[1]

Chinese Cemeteries

Chinese gravestones can yield a host of genealogical data. The wording for most gravestones is written in Mandarin characters or Roman letters. Sometimes, the stone is for the husband or wife, but at other times, they occur together on the same stone. Often, the gravestones are separated in the cemetery by location as to whether they are single or double stones.

Consulting living relatives is recommended. Often someone may have been going to a gravestone every year during “Tomb Sweepings” (in the early part of April each year) since they were young. Descendants may know the location of the grave marker, but may not always know or read the name of their ancestor, other than a relationship.

The names on the gravestone, which may include spouse, children, and grand-children, are those who were still living at the time of the death of the deceased. It may not include all children, and certainly not all grandchildren if they were born after the date of death.

Columbarium Urns

Columbarium urns may contain the ashes of persons who were buried elsewhere, but have been dug up and re-interned in one of the columbariums in Penang. Private cemeteries have a secure life of 100 years, but beyond that on the island of Penang, the Government has the right to use the land for other building projects, in which case, remains of persons buried in the private cemetery are moved to a columbarium. When remains are transferred, not all of the pertinent genealogical data is always moved and documented with the remains.

Some of the urns in a columbarium are behind clear glass or plastic, which occasionally loses clarity or breaks down. This makes reading the columbarium or taking a photograph fairly difficult. During “Tomb Sweepings,” the boxes are opened and the glass cleaned, making it an ideal time to read the writing on the columbarium.

For more information, see Columbariums in Penang, Malaysia.

Donor Listings

Donor listings are often published on a wall mount in a temple, kongsi, or cemetery. They will occasionally contain information about when the donations were made, as well as by whom, leading to a possible written donor receipt.

Temples

The following information may be found in a temple:

Labeled Photos of Trustees, Scholars, or Other Important Persons— Some temples (the Ong Kongsi on Penang Road or a temple in Balik Pulau for example) may have photos lining their walls, occasionally associated with deceased persons whose urns are in a nearby pagoda or persons who were connected with the temple, as well as stand alone photos of the deceased standing in amongst their ancestral tablets.
Ancestral Tablets— Many temples have ancestral tablets, as they are a prized and main feature of the temples. They form a place where family members can pay homage to their ancestors. For more information, see The Ancestral Tablets of Penang, Malaysia.
Columbarium Boxes—Some temples have a section, a separate room, or a separate building in which to house columbarium niches for deceased persons, such as the Thai Buddhist Temple on Burma Lane in Georgetown, Penang, which has niches underneath the reclining buddha, on the back wall of the temple, and in an adjacent building on the same property.

For more information, see Columbariums in Penang, Malaysia.

Information About The Deceased Held by the Record Keeper of a Temple— Some temples have a record keeper who holds more information about deceased individuals, such as The Heong Giam Si Temple on Jalan Air Item. Their record keeper has digital information about the deceased whose remains are kept in columbarium niches in that temple. Inquiry at a temple about its records is recommended.
Donor Name Plaques and Information About the Donors— It is a common practice in Penang to recognize the contributions made by donors. Donor plaques will occasionally describe when donations were made or how much was donated, or will lead to valuable donor receipts, which may have important genealogical data.
Burial Records or Other Record Collections— Depending on the temple's importance to a community and the infrastructure for surrounding cemeteries, a temple may end up being the keeper of other valuable genealogical records, such as cemetery or burial records.

Memorial Plaques in Temples

When a Kongsi learns of some significant contribution that one of their subscribers has made, they may place a large memorial on the wall with their subscribers' name and contribution, such as a title or occupation.

List of Temples

Below is a list of several temples:

List of Cemeteries by States/Negeri

References

↑ The Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Family History Record Profile: Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei,” Word document, private files of the FamilySearch Content Strategy Team, 2000.

[profile-1] The Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Family History Record Profile: Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei,” Word document, private files of the FamilySearch Content Strategy Team, 2000.

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