BCGS is proud to announce a project like no other! To the best of our knowledge, there is no repository or collection of memorial cards cataloged and useful for genealogical purposes. We decided there should be one, and we would create it!

We all have “Prayer cards” or “Funeral cards” from funerals, memorial services, celebrations of life, and the like. They are an excellent primary-source document to the savvy genealogist.

How many of you have come across these cards while cleaning out a home or going through personal effects, or have cards from services you attended? How many of you have no idea who some of the people were? We thought, if we developed a database of the cards people have, other people might benefit from the information! Maybe new family members or friends could be reunited! Maybe you could learn more about the social networks of your ancestors. You could hold the key to breaking down a brick wall!

A Little History
Memorial cards, specifically being used for funeral purposes, originated from an ancient custom started by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1700’s in the Netherlands. A common practice at Roman Catholic funerals was to hand out prayer cards that depicted a saint or biblical episode on one side and a prayer on the other. The tradition was to put the cards in a Bible or prayer book so deceased family and friends would be remembered when the card was encountered. Sometimes memorial cards were stashed along the edges of picture frames and mirrors so the living would be reminded to think about their loved ones every day.

Today, technological advances have made printing easy and cheap, so producing customized cards is now the norm. Common practice is to print the photo of the deceased on the front of the card and choose a meaningful prayer for the reverse. But, memorial cards today depict anything the family wants—photos, original art, footprints, a favorite location, songs, poems—the sky is the limit!

Curiously, because of the growing interest in genealogy, memorial cards are becoming a highly sought-after commodity. People include them in scrapbooks, collect specific types (e.g., silver-leafed embellished cards), and collect them as part of their business card collections since funeral homes started to advertise their services on memorial cards in the 1950’s. Keep your eyes peeled for these resources at used book stores, flea markets, and estate sales! We could use them for our project!

Here is the list of memorial cards that have been submitted to our project so far. Click on any name in the list below to view the memorial card and details for that person:

Invitation to Participate
We invite all members of BCGS to gather up all the memorial cards you have and enter them into our database. You will find the project listed on the website with an easy to fill out form. In addition to providing content from the card, there are fields to upload images of the front and back of the cards. There is also space to include obituary, funeral, and cemetery information. You may choose to have your contact information included so that fellow researchers may contact you for more information. NOTE: Your contact information will only be made public with your permission.

If you are a BCGS member, before you can add your own memorial card or cards to this project, you will need to log in in to this website with your user name and password. You can then return to this page and click the link to add a memorial card.

If you are not a BCGS member, but want to add your memorial cards to this project, you can email their information and scanned files of the card images to our project directors by clicking the following link: Memorial Card Submission Page.

Just for the Record
To be fair, while doing research for this project, it was learned that the University of Dayton’s Marian Library, the Ireland Library of the University of St. Thomas, and a priest named Father Eugene Carrella from Staten Island, New York, have all amassed extensive “prayer card” collections. However, their collections consist of a mix of memorial cards, traditional prayer cards, postcards, and other miscellaneous memorabilia. They are not specifically focused on memorial cards nor are they in an easily accessible format for research purposes.

References
https://www.funeralwise.com/plan/funeral-products/prayer-cards
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/legacy-funeral-cards/459963/