01What is the VA National Cemetery Locator and how does it work?
The VA's National Cemetery Locator, accessible at gravelocator.cem.va.gov, is the authoritative starting point for any veteran buried in a national or state veterans cemetery. The system holds more than four million records from all VA-administered grounds, including the 155 national cemeteries the VA operates directly — Arlington, Fort Snelling, Jefferson Barracks, and grounds from Maine to Hawaii. Searching requires only the veteran's last name and first initial; the result returns the cemetery name, section, row, and grave number.
The database is free to access with no account required and is updated continuously as new interments are recorded. For any veteran who died in military service or was honorably discharged and chose burial in a national cemetery, this is the fastest and most reliable starting point. The record also indicates whether a government-issued headstone or flat grave marker was placed, which helps confirm you have found the right person when you reach the grounds.
02Where are veterans buried overseas, and how do I find those records?
Veterans who died in World War I or World War II and whose remains were not repatriated often rest in overseas American military cemeteries administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC). The ABMC operates 26 permanent American military cemeteries in 16 countries, and its database at abmc.gov is fully searchable by name. Each result includes the cemetery country and location, section, row, and grave number, along with a photograph of the marker when one has been submitted.
The ABMC's online registry also documents those listed as missing in action and memorialized at Walls of the Missing at each cemetery site, which helps families who were never certain of a final resting place. For veterans from later conflicts who were buried overseas and subsequently repatriated to a national or state cemetery in the United States, those final interment records appear in the VA's National Gravesite Locator.
03How do I find veterans buried in state veterans cemeteries?
State veterans cemeteries are funded and maintained by individual state governments, often with federal grants from the VA, and serve veterans who were residents of that state along with their spouses and dependents. Most state veterans cemetery records are included in the VA National Gravesite Locator, so a single search at va.gov covers both federal national cemeteries and most affiliated state cemeteries in a single query.
For state veterans cemeteries that do not appear in the VA system, the state department of veterans affairs is the right contact. Each state maintains its own interment database, and most will search records by phone or email given a name and approximate death year. Some states have also partnered with platforms like Memor to provide GPS-navigable access to their grounds, which means families can use the app to reach a specific grave without requiring staff guidance on the day of their visit.
04How do I find a veteran buried in a private or church cemetery?
The majority of American veterans rest not in national or state veterans cemeteries but in private, municipal, and church cemeteries chosen by their families. For these burials, start with the obituary and the death certificate — both documents name the specific cemetery. Funeral homes keep records of where every service concluded and will share that information with family members on request. Local newspaper obituary archives, accessible through the library or funeral home websites, often go back several decades.
Government-issued headstones and flat grave markers, provided by the VA free of charge to families of eligible veterans, identify veteran graves in private cemeteries. The marker carries the branch of service, rank, and war period, so a VA marble headstone stands apart from surrounding civilian stones. For cemeteries that have partnered with Memor, searching the veteran's name in the app returns the grave's location and navigates you directly to the plot without requiring any staff assistance.
05How does the Memor app navigate me to the exact headstone?
Finding the cemetery is the first problem; finding the specific grave within it is the second — and for large cemeteries, the second problem is often harder. National cemeteries cover hundreds of acres with identical white marble headstones in ordered rows. Arlington's 400,000 graves spread across 639 acres. Even with a section and grave number from the VA locator, converting that reference to a physical location requires counting rows and stones in conditions that can be disorienting, especially on crowded holiday weekends.
Memor solves this by combining official burial records with GPS-mapped plot positions. When Memor partners with a cemetery, each burial record is tied to a surveyed GPS coordinate. Search a name in the Memor app, and a live walking icon routes you from your current position to the headstone along the cemetery's paths — the same experience as road turn-by-turn navigation, scaled to cemetery footpaths. The icon updates in real time as you walk, and the app confirms arrival when you reach the correct plot.
06How can I honor a veteran's grave if I cannot be there in person?
Distance and age keep many families from visiting the graves of veterans they care about. Memor's care marketplace addresses this by connecting families with vetted local caretakers who place a flag, wreath, or flowers at a specific grave and send a photograph when the tribute is in place. Orders can be scheduled in advance for Memorial Day, Veterans Day, or any date the family chooses — a birthday, the anniversary of a passing, or a unit reunion date.
A veteran's memorial page on Memor holds what the headstone cannot carry: the unit, the campaigns, the decorations earned and the reasons they were awarded, the family stories that never make it into formal records. Adding a memorial page is free and takes minutes. Once created, it is searchable by the veteran's name and tied to the grave's GPS location — findable by a grandchild doing a school report, a surviving comrade tracing a unit roster, or a genealogist working many decades from now.