A Rabbit's Tale 6/2/2011

Find-A-Grave
A Research Tool

One rabbit’s experience that can help any community

By Russ Worthington

A while ago, I attended a local genealogy group meeting, where Find-A-Grave was the topic. The presentation was about some connections that the presenter had, by taking pictures and connecting to new family members. This was the first time I had attended a meeting with this group, but the way the talk was advertised was not what was presented. I thought it was to be more about how to use the Find-A-Grave website.

So, having completed a little research for a friend of mine, and posting pictures on Find-A-Grave from this research, I thought I would take a stab at creating a "How To" presentation for Find-A-Grave for another local Family History Interest Group. Little did I know where that would lead!

I was asked to give the presentation to another group, the one that I normally try to attend, and it was well received. Somehow, the word got around, and I have now presented this presentation two more times, with another one, 'on the books'!

The interesting thing about the most recent presentations was that it was not to a group of genealogists, but two local historical societies and a Rotary Club. To be asked by these two groups was a real surprise to me.

The purpose of my presentation is to show folks how to use Find-A-Grave, not as an expert, which I am not, but as to how it can be used as another research tool for genealogists or family historians.

So come with me on a journey to explore Find-A-Grave!

To better demonstrate Find-A-Grave to these community groups, I use a small project that I did for a friend of mine, who told me that he wanted to know more about his ancestors. All my friend knew was his grandfather’s name and where he was buried. I was already a 'not so active' contributor on Find-A-Grave, and so I went to the website to find this "grandfather". I found him, but also found a family plot that has a large monument for this gentleman and about 20 other family members. What a find.

But, in the same cemetery was a "Jr" with the same name, but in a different plot.

The presentation illustrated how by using www.findagrave.com, I could find the 'grandfather', starting with a search for the county, which I knew going in, but quickly found too may cemeteries in that county. Next, I looked at the results and refined the search down to one cemetery and the grandfather. The way the information was shown on the Find-A-Grave website, serves as a reminder that folks shouldn't jump to conclusions based on the information that is provided.

The Map feature, zoom, satellite, and hybrid views were illustrated next to show the usefulness when going to visit the cemetery.  I expressed that sometimes you end up going to the cemetery, but only find 4 or 5 names of the 21 names that were listed. Never fear, simply look around! By doing so, you may find more. In this case, another family plot was found with the rest of the family names.

Next in sticking with the example of my friend’s grandfather in the presentation, I show a couple of photographs of the information listed on the monument. However, it can just as easily be multiple headstones as opposed to one monument.  Then this information was put into a genealogy program, properly sourced, including the pictures to put all of information together. That was to see if there were any Census Records to help put the family groupings together.

How to request a photo of a headstone is next on the agenda of my presentation. I give a quick overview on how to request a photo through Find-A-Grave and what can be expected from that request.  You may encounter problems seasonally.  If it’s winter, I would normally send an email, without knowing the email address but using the Find-A-Grave contact link, to let the person know that we have snow on the ground so be patient for the picture.

At this point, I usually insert a little information about what a contributor has available, including the upload of a spreadsheet, the Profile, and Contributor Tools were shown.

Somehow, I wanted to make this presentation mean something to the Historical Society members. I wanted them to see that there are ways for them to get involved. So, I used a request that I had in a local cemetery very near where the historical society meets. Used it to, again, remind folks to "look around" the cemetery. This example was good, because the plot has another entire family in the plot where I mentioned that I just took the pictures, but took a picture of everyone in the plot so that the requester had enough information to put the families together, much the way I had done.

I used a couple of examples of interesting headstones, in the cemetery, of what you might find.

But, what can any historical society take away from this presentation? In this specific instance, I actually got connected with this first historical society while I was trying to find a small cemetery within this township. I knew where it should have been, but could not find it. So, I stopped at the historical society to see if they knew where it was. They weren't really sure, but they told me it was where I had been looking. So, I went to their website to see what they might have online. Luckily they had an 1890 Map, online and looking at the map was the cemetery. Again, right where I had been. Long story short, I pointed out that their website and some details that they had posted, helped me find that cemetery.

That brought up the second point, I wanted to make. That is, the condition of some of these historical, small cemeteries. I knew that this historical society had volunteers, such as Scout projects, who might want to take on the cleanup of these cemeteries.

The best that I can tell, they "got it". They have someone posting Cemetery records that they have on file and posting those records online.

From this feedback, it was really an awareness of how valuable the information is that they have 'in boxes' that folks are looking for. I did offer to help them to that, volunteering to do some scanning and/or transcribing of those files and getting them online.

Somehow, the neighboring Historical Society found out, and I will be presenting to them in a couple of months. After all, the Historical Society is interested in maintaining the history of the area, while there are Family Historians trying to maintain our Family History.

So, as I write this article, this Graveyard Rabbit is waiting for the snow to melt, because there are pictures to be taken.