Most church congregations throughout Old~Bedford County maintained their own cemeteries, where members of those congre-gations could be laid to rest when they passed away. For that reason, many of the churches maintained their own death records, apart from the legal death certificate which can be obtained from the Bureau Of Vital Statistics at New Castle, Pennsylvania.
Early church records may provide not only the death date but also informal information not normally found on legal death certificates. It is a good idea to check out both, the legal death certificate and a church’s death records when performing a death records search and attempting to determine death information.
Many, if not most, of the records of the church related cemeteries throughout Old~Bedford County have been transcribed and published by local genealogical and historical societies.
