I’ve been sidelined from visiting physical cemeteries due to knee issues, but I’ve been exploring online memorials as part of my PhD work, so I thought I would share some of what I’m learning.
Date Visited for Review: July 20, 2024
Address: FindaGrave.com
FindaGrave.com is unique in the online memorial space as it isn’t just a memorial site, it isn’t just an online site, and it isn’t just tied to one cemetery. Instead, it is a tool that allows you to find graves across the world, to contribute photos of graves and ancestors, and to memorialize the dead. Founded in 1995 by Jim Tipton to record his hobby of visiting the graves of famous people. It quickly became a place where people could share information about the graves of famous and non-famous (I hate the term ordinary) people. Even though the site was purchased by Ancestry.com in 2013, it is very much a crowdsourced site as contributors can post information about cemeteries, upload pictures of tombstones, and create memorials for loved ones. The site also makes it easy to find all this information.
Find a Grave
FindaGrave.com’s titular feature lets you search through the 238 records on the site to locate the grave site of a particular person by name, date born, date died, cemetery location, and other fields. It also provides a bunch of other filters such as memorials without pictures of gravestones, without plot information, and more. The page for each gravesite, or memorial in FindaGrave parlance, contains whatever information is known about the person including birthdate, death date, and photos. As the site is owned by Ancestry.com, it also includes information about relatives. However, I learned from exploring my grandfather’s page that family members are only included if there is a memorial for the person. When I visited his page, I was a little hurt to see that my father wasn’t included, but digging in, I realized that I could add my father’s grave information and quickly connect him.
In addition to the basic information, users can include additional information, such as an obituary. Users can also leave flowers with notes. However, unlike other online cemeteries or memorial sites, users cannot leave stories or messages for their loved ones. What is pretty cool about this site is the ability to add links to parents and spouses. Adding a memorial is super easy as I added my father’s information in a few minutes and once added, he showed up on the pages for his parents and siblings.
Cemeteries
In addition to being able to find graves (aka memorials), FindaGrave.com also lets you search for and get basic information about the 576,766 cemeteries in 249 listed on its site. You can search for cemeteries by name or by location. If you search by location, you can view cemeteries in a list view or on the map. The list view provides basic information about the cemetery including location, number of memorials, and other information.
The page for each cemetery includes available information. As the site is crowdsourced, the information varies by cemetery as for some it is just the basics such as address and number of burials, but for others it includes write ups on the cemetery and other information. The best feature on the cemetery pages is the ability to search for a grave on the page. While this is definitely useful for searching for loved ones, it can also help you find the graves of original settlers to an area or find the first folks buried in the cemetery.
Cool Features
I found the coolest features of the site by accident when I was searching for cemeteries. Next to the map are options to favorite cemeteries so you can easily find your way back to them and to create a virtual cemetery with graves you may want to revisit. For cemeteries, you can just click to favorite them from the cemetery page. For memorials, you want to save, you’ll first need to create a virtual cemetery, then from the memorial page, you can click to save.
Articles
Another buried feature of FindaGrave.com is the News and Announcements section. I often ignore news and announcements sections unless I’m looking for some corporate announcement or need help with a feature. However, as I was poking around the site, I clicked on News and Announcements and found that instead of just boring corporate stuff, there were some pretty cool articles including one on recipe tombstones, another about the ghost army of WWII, and others about cool gravestones or people. There were also volunteer spotlights and tips and tricks for finding people on the site.