Join the Find A Grave community

If you have not joined the Find A Grave community, you might think about becoming a member. It is absolutely free to join and you gain so many benefits. One of the main benefits to Find A Grave is people going out to find the gravestones of your ancestors. There are many cemeteries that I might want to visit, but will never get the chance to. It is amazing to know that we have options that many other genealogist never had. This is not the only benefit of Find A Grave. This community is very willing to help the fellow genealogist.

There has been many different occasions where this community has helped me beyond the picture of the gravestone. Here is just one example:

I received an email from a Find A Grave member questioning whether the individual I had added to a cemetery actually was buried there. I went back to the death certificate to see where they said she was buried. I emailed them back with the information that was on the death certificate and asked for clarification about whether or not there could possibly mean a different cemetery in their area. Information came back to me about the cemetery. It was a civil war cemetery and has been left to nature and is very overgrown. The last interment that the individual knew about was about 3 years before my relative said they were buried there. The map at the library did not have any information about them being buried in this cemetery either. Instead of just leaving it at that, this individual asked for the birth and death information and parents of this individual to help me find them. They emailed me back several times with information they had found about the person. They found a gravestone for the father years ago that was not in great shape, but had put that on the website. When she was searching for information about this family she found that the son had gotten a military headstone for his father in this cemetery. The gravestone they found was not this military headstone, so they have determined that they are going to continue the search for these two headstones. The mystery has not been solved, but they are working on it. This Find A Grave member has gone up and beyond the call of duty, and I am going to benefit from their amazing work.

Because of all the help that I have received from the Find A Grave community, I try very hard to be a great community member back. Some things you might want to think about as you fulfill requests from people would be to...

1. Check gravestones around the one they requested to see if there might be others with the same surname. There have been times that babies can be found near parents that individuals seeking this information did not know about.
2. Share as much information with others as you can - obituaries or pictures can add details to the individual that other might not have.
3. Be willing to dig or research the reason as to why you might not be able to find the gravestone they are seeking. Be as thorough as possible and then write back to the individual seeking this information with what you have found. Don't leave them to find the problem only to wonder what is happening.

This is one community inside of family history that I have enjoyed because people have been so kind to me. They have helped me overcome problems in my family tree that without them, I would still be stuck. Thank you to the Find A Grave community for the great help you are to each other. This truly is an incredible group of individuals.