Find A Grave

Things have been pretty busy around here for me this past month.  Between building our house, digital scrapbooking, genealogy research, kids and the hubby along with everything else I haven't had a lot of time to write.

A hobby of mine, among many, is transcribing cemeteries.  This started out just being part of our genealogy research.  We'd discover where an ancestor was buried and then photograph the headstones.  Often times we'd find other family members buried near by as well. 

While we're out cemetery stomping, we became very frustrated having missed a headstone of a daughter who had married and we didn't know her married name.  Once again we'd be back out to the cemetery.  Since many of the cemeteries we've visited were rather far from home we decided to photograph the entire section or an area of a cemetery.  Slowly over the course of time this little section grew bigger to the point where we decided to just photograph the entire cemetery.

This has proved to be extremely beneficial for us.  Often times having that database and pictures a discovery or link has been made a year or more later. 

After having collected thousands of headstone photographs and compiling databases with the information I tried contacting Ancestry to donate my finds and pictures to them in hopes of preserving the information for others and future researchers.  No luck, Ancestry never responded back.  I then turned to the Genweb sites that covered the areas where the cemeteries were located to send them my database, and found one that was actually interested and had the technological knowledge and skills to upload my information.

I was still left with thousands of people in my database that needed a home.  After a long but successful search I found a website that is devoted to preserving our family's burial location and information.  I found Find A Grave - FAG (http://www.findagrave.com/).  This site is remarkable!!  Think of it as a worldwide Cemetery.

Find A Grave has nearly every cemetery all across the United States and in many countries.  If by chance you find a cemetery not listed you can request it.  Unfortunately, not every burial for every cemetery is listed.  This is the responsibility of local volunteers, or "Contributors" as FAG calls us.

There are 2 types of Contributors.  Those that actually transcribe cemeteries and the other are people who simply create memorials for their loved ones and ancestors.

If you don't find your ancestor on Find A Grave, please add a memorial for them.  If you do find your ancestor, leave a note or flower or add them to a Virtual Cemetery so you can find them later and if you have additional information or there are errors that need correcting make a suggestion.

Once a memorial is created, you can add family links, Biography information, and upto 5 photos.  Family links are wonderful for connecting families, especially since they are often times buried at different cemeteries.  I have 3 direct lines all connected and I often times add photos of the person, headstone, obituary, important documents or anything else that is of special interest.  If the cemetery is too far for me to take the photo (eg. I live in a different state) I simply request a photo and a local volunteer will take it when they have time.  Sometimes it takes awhile (weeks, months and one time a year), but eventually I usually get a photo.

All of this is free!!!  This site is growing in popularity and hopefully someday we'll start seeing more photos and Biographies.  What better way to share your family history for generations to come.  Think of it as an Online Scrapbook!  :)

Here are some links to some of my ancestors.  Please take a look and see how wonderful this free service is.

Edward Hazard Sr. (1775-1863)
Bessie Elvira (Hicks) Myers (1886-1983)
Harley Edward Greene  (1861-1931)
My Grandpa (1932-2007)  I visit this memorial regularly, I miss my grandpa and I live too far from the cemetery to visit often.