I am a member of the Find A Grave community. If you have never heard of Find A Grave I encourage you to check it out. It's a free online digital grave search. You don't have to be a member or sign up to search for your ancestors, all you do is go to their site select Search grave records and type in a name; or you can search directly from the box below! When you select a search result and you are taken to the 'Memorial Page' for that individual and there you will find the contributed information about that person. Most commonly this is information about where that individual is buried and a picture of the headstone, as the mission of Find A Grave is to, "find, record and present final disposition information from around the world as a virtual cemetery experience." But there can be other information and pictures contributed as well; anything from obituaries to dates of life events to achievements and even personal stories. You can often find a lot out about an ancestor through find a grave.
However, sometimes when you do a search you don't find what you are looking for, or there is very little information provided about a person. This is where it pays to be a member- especially since membership is free.
As a member you can contribute and request photos of a grave that is out of your reach, whether that be across the country or across the world. The members are the contributors. That is the beauty of it- it is a great big ancestry coop. If I cant find the birthdate of my great-great-granduncle but I know he was buried in Marion Cemetery, Kentucky, I can submit a request for a picture of his headstone in hopes that the information I need might be on it. When the request is submitted a community member near that cemetery receives an email requesting the picture. It is only fair that you must sign up and be willing to do the same if someone else requests a photo from your neighborhood.
I think it is a great service. It is something you can get the whole family involved with. It is a great Sunday afternoon activity. I got online and noticed that there were two pending request (a husband and wife) at a missionary cemetery here in Seoul, so I wrote down the names and the location of the cemetery and after church one Sunday afternoon Bee and I headed over to hunt for their graves. It is like a treasure hunt, but the treasure at the end of the hunt is not some physical possession, it is the happiness and satisfaction of knowing that you helped someone else find something he was loorking for. That's the best kind of treasure.
It was a beautiful afternoon to be out and Bee and I did finally find the graves we were searching for. Just as we though we walked the whole cemetery and were about to throw in the towel we found a one of the names on a small plot map provided by the cemetery. So we went back over to the plot we had already wandered past and found the two graves, one next to the other. We took a few pictures of the graves and of the plot map and I was able to upload them once we got back home.
That is pretty cool!
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