What Cemeteries and Counties Are Covered by the Illinois Gravestone Photo Project?

The Illinois Gravestone Photo Project (illinoisgravestones.org) covers Illinois cemeteries through a volunteer-contributed photo archive, organized so you can browse by cemetery, search by name, or look up surnames. Coverage is not uniform across the state: some counties have tens of thousands of approved photos, while others have few or none. The site reported 105,145 approved photos in total, with 0 pending, as of its last site statistics update. If a cemetery you need isn't represented, the practical next step is to check whether a volunteer has taken on that county, or to contribute photos yourself.

How Coverage Is Organized

The site structures its collection around three entry points, all reachable from the main navigation:

• Search Gravestones — look up a stone by name or location.
• Browse Cemeteries — explore the collection cemetery by cemetery.
• Surnames — browse by family name.

Because the archive is built from submitted photos rather than a complete statewide cemetery index, "coverage" means "cemeteries where someone has uploaded and had a photo approved." A cemetery with no submissions simply won't appear with photos, even if it exists.

Counties With the Most Photos

The site publishes a ranking of top counties measured by approved photos all-time. These figures show where volunteer activity has been concentrated:

Two things stand out. First, the top counties are heavily weighted toward northeastern Illinois (Cook, DuPage, Will), which is also the most populous part of the state. Second, the drop-off after the top few counties is steep, so a county not on this list may still have photos — just far fewer.

Total Volume and How Current the Data Is

The site's statistics page reports:

• 105,145 approved photos
• 0 pending
• 105,145 total
• Last updated: 9/23/2026, 3:03am

The "approved" versus "pending" split matters if you submit: a photo doesn't appear in search or cemetery browsing until it has been reviewed and approved. A pending count of 0 at the time of the snapshot means the review queue was empty then — it does not guarantee instant approval at any other moment.

What to Do When a Cemetery Isn't Covered

If your target cemetery or county has no photos, the site itself points to two paths:

1. Volunteer. The project states it is "currently seeking volunteers to help take and upload photos for many counties." Its Resources section includes "How Can I Volunteer?" and a Frequently Asked Questions page.
2. Submit a photo. The navigation includes a "Submit a Photo" link, and the homepage invites visitors to "Help Preserve History" by clicking through to submit.

The stated mission is the reason this matters: as decades pass, inscriptions become harder or impossible to read, so archiving images preserves records that may otherwise be lost. That also means coverage grows only as fast as volunteers add to it.

Deciding Whether to Use the Site

• Use it first if your research centers on Cook, DuPage, Will, Tazewell, Rock Island, or Hancock counties, where the archive is densest.
• Search by name and surname anyway if your county isn't in the top ten — small collections still exist, and a single stone may be all you need.
• Plan to contribute if you have photos of stones in an under-covered county; that is the mechanism by which the map fills in.
• Treat the totals as a snapshot, not a live guarantee — the statistics carry a specific "last updated" timestamp.

For anything beyond browsing and searching, start with the site's own FAQ and volunteer information rather than assuming a cemetery is absent from the project entirely.