Find A Grave

[Stevo]

Have you all used Find A Grave?

First off, it's FREE.

You can use Find A Grave to search for the graves of your ancestors and relatives. You can also enter burial information that you have that might not already be in their system. The first discovery I made via Find A Grave was where one of my gg-grandmothers is buried and a photo of her tombstone that gave me her exact date of birth (which I didn't have before). Since then, I have gotten all sorts of good information there.

You can also put in requests to have a local volunteer take a photo of your ancestor's or relative's gravestone, in case you don't live close enough to the cemetery to do it yourself.

It seems pretty cool to me. Of course, I have only used it for graves in the USA. I'm not sure how extensive a European database they have.

[Stevo]

Yesterday my wife, our nine year old daughter, and I hiked out into the woods to photograph and record the information from 12 tombstones in an old family farm graveyard so that I could enter them at Find A Grave. I created an entry for the little cemetery, entered the tombstone info, and uploaded the photos.

It was actually fun. These people are not relatives of mine (as far as I know), but I felt like I might be performing a service for someone researching his or her family tree in the future.

I should add, in case you got the impression that my wife made herself useful, that while I was taking photos and transcribing tombstone info, she was tapping me on the head and shoulder with an old tree branch, which she intended as a replica of a skeletal arm and hand. As she did so, she cried out in a ghostly voice, "Leave my grave alone! Go from here, Richard! Oooh-oooh-oooh!"

Yeah, she's a laugh riot.

[RondaMiller]

Stevo,

Thank you for doing that. As one who uses and has used Find A Grave - people like you who take the time to help record headstones are appreciated by those of us who are looking for records regarding their ancestors etc

-Ronda Miller

[Peacock100]

Have you all used Find A Grave?

First off, it's FREE.

You can use Find A Grave to search for the graves of your ancestors and relatives. You can also enter burial information that you have that might not already be in their system. The first discovery I made via Find A Grave was where one of my gg-grandmothers is buried and a photo of her tombstone that gave me her exact date of birth (which I didn't have before). Since then, I have gotten all sorts of good information there.

You can also put in requests to have a local volunteer take a photo of your ancestor's or relative's gravestone, in case you don't live close enough to the cemetery to do it yourself.

It seems pretty cool to me. Of course, I have only used it for graves in the USA. I'm not sure how extensive a European database they have.

Yes, I have and there is also a message site I have run into, connected with it. I have found some messages in googling.

[Stevo]

Stevo,

Thank you for doing that. As one who uses and has used Find A Grave - people like you who take the time to help record headstones are appreciated by those of us who are looking for records regarding their ancestors etc

-Ronda Miller

You're very welcome. I plan to do a lot more of it.

I'm a teacher, so I have July and most of August off. I figure I can photograph and transcribe tombstones during the summer.

[Brunetmj]

Walking through a very old cemetery there were several stones that were unreadable because of moss/ vegetation.
I wonder what the rules are for cleaning old stones?

[cjm95]

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=listFaqs#96

[thetick]

You need know about damage caused by cleaning tombstones since any cleaning will rub away stone or cause micro organisms to grow flaking the tombstone. For some non destructive ideas see http://www.ncgenweb.us/newhanover/cem1.html

[nathanm]

You need know about damage caused by cleaning tombstones since any cleaning will rub away stone or cause micro organisms to grow flaking the tombstone. For some non destructive ideas see http://www.ncgenweb.us/newhanover/cem1.html

That's a great link! I use Find A Grave all the time in my research. It's yielded lots of information, and even connections to previously unknown cousins. Any time I plan to visit a cemetery, I check to see if there are any photo requests there.

[CAM]

Find a Grave

That's a great link! I use Find A Grave all the time in my research. It's yielded lots of information, and even connections to previously unknown cousins. Any time I plan to visit a cemetery, I check to see if there are any photo requests there.

Thanks everyone I was going to look for a web site about cleaning tombstones. Find A Grave it is a great site I posted some info. on my family yesterday their.
I meet with someone today yes at a cemetery who I hope will turn out to be my fathers 1st half cousin she sent her Family Finder test in 20 Dec no word yet about the test getting their or it being batched. I hope to get the batch date next Thursday.
Praying that yes it will find a second cousin match between her and my father. Then I can be sure who my grandfathers biological mother was no clue to his biological father even the Y-DNA is not allowing us to know that.
The funny thing is our discussion between us for the last 2 days has been on Find A Grave and how to clean a tombstone.

[sjadelson]

There's also a lot of helpful people out there.... If you find a listing for a relative that does not yet have a photo of their stone, you can request one. Usually I've had results inside of a week. It's been very helpful to me in my search.

[mixedkid]

The trouble I can see with Find a Grave is this: It is very easy to confuse people with similar (more likely exact) names, as well as birth or death years. (I've found this with one branch of our family which moved across the Canadian-American border several times in one generation.) Also, although I enjoy studying cemeteries, gravestones are not always correct. Information for the stone was often provided by one relative who may have made a mistake. The error may have been noticed later but never corrected (examples: incorrect spelling of the given name, incorrect birth year). Burial records tend to be more reliable, but even there the information is only as reliable as the one relative who gave the information to the cemetery staff.

[Stevo]

You need know about damage caused by cleaning tombstones since any cleaning will rub away stone or cause micro organisms to grow flaking the tombstone. For some non destructive ideas see http://www.ncgenweb.us/newhanover/cem1.html

Wow! That aluminum foil method is amazing! I'll have to try that.

This past summer I found and photographed the tombstone of one of my 7th great-grandfathers, an immigrant from France who died and was buried in 1736. Needless to say, his tombstone is badly worn. I ground up some charcoal and sprinkled it lightly on his tombstone. It worked well and made the inscription stand out in the photographs.

I'm not sure now, after reading those articles, whether or not charcoal could have any negative effects on old tombstones. I tend to doubt it, but who knows?

[razyn]

Here are couple of things that have worked for me, without my having planned ahead:

Once I visited a cemetery shortly after a snowfall. I noticed that the side of the stone (monument, really) in the shade was much easier to read because the powdery snow on that side hadn't sublimated away. So I tossed handfuls of the snow onto the dry face, also, and photographed the lengthy inscription (a hymn verse). The optical effect was pretty similar to chalking, with greatly increased contrast, and the snow powder disappeared within half an hour. The photography was done with color slide film.

In the age of digital photography it's possible to play with the contrast, color temperature and other information that your camera has recorded, but you can't see if you don't tinker with it (in the software of your camera or, more simply, your computer -- where the image is much larger). The amount of invisible info recorded seems especially pronounced when the photo was taken in conditions of low light or low contrast, such as heavily overcast skies or twilight.

Btw I agree with Stevo about the usefulness of Find A Grave. It helped me track my mitochondrial line. Sometimes the headstone is about the only record of a wife's name. I haven't recorded any cemeteries for Find A Grave, but I've contributed photos, dates, etc. of some people whose graves were recorded by others.

[Jim Barrett]

D/2 Biological Solution

See attached photo!

Sprayed with D/2 Biological Solution Fall 2010.
Photographed Spring 2011. No scrubbing or
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the Veterans Administration, Texas Historical Commission,
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
Maine Old Cemetery Association, Georgia Municipal
Cemetery Association, the Association for Gravestone
Studies and many Veteran and Civil War Cemeteries:
Andrew Johnson National Cemetery TN
Antietam National Cemetery MD
Congressional Cemetery DC
Natchez National Cemetery MS
New Hampshire State Cemetery NH
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier VA
United States Naval Academy MD
Vicksburg National Cemetery MS

Have technical questions? Please contact me.
Ted Kinnari
President
D/2 Biological Solutions
917 693 7441

FYI - I have no connection to this company -