Preserve Your Local Cemetery

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cemeteries, Find-A-Grave

Visiting cemeteries is enjoyable to me…any cemetery, anywhere! I’ve been known to walk out of a restaurant and across a parking lot to explore a cemetery. If I’m driving out in the country, and I see an interesting, especially older cemetery, I’ll pull over to check it out.

So if you love cemeteries too, you might want to participate in an upcoming event called “Preserve Your Local Cemetery.”

Find-A-Grave is having a Global Cemetery Meet-up on Saturday, October 18. They want you to “Do your part for history,” and “Preserve your local cemetery.”

Basically you just visit a cemetery, take some photos (or videos), fulfill a photo request from Find-A-Grave, participate in a meet-up at a cemetery, or plan your own cemetery meet-up by inviting friends and relatives to go with you.

For more details and ideas, visit Find-a-Grave Community Day.

Even if you can’t participate on Saturday, the 18th, download their app* so you’re ready when you do visit a cemetery. The tombstones you capture with your camera will thrill one of their relatives someday.

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*Currently only compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

 

Find-A-Grave Webinar

Tags

cemeteries, Find-A-Grave, webinar

Being a not very old family history hunter and genealogy searcher, I love learning. Webinars, seminars, and online help interest me very much. There isn’t a webinar or seminar where I haven’t picked up a point or two, even if I’m familiar with what they’re discussing.

‘Cousin Russ’ covered the topic of Find-A-Grave on Legacy Family Tree’s webinar this week. I’ve been using Find-A-Grave for quite a while. Thought I knew just about everything about it. I mean, really, how complicated is it?

You take photos, you upload and add info. At members’ profiles, you can leave messages. There’s a photo request service — used that many times for relatives’ graves are too far away to visit. Searches can be conducted on tombstones or cemeteries. What else is there?! 😉

One of the things I wasn’t aware of was what else was available in my Contributor Profile at Find-A-Grave. Call it myopia, or looking at things with a magnifying glass instead seeing the whole picture, but I’ve missed an important tab in my profile. Even though I’ve used all the other tabs, I totally missed this one:

After hearing this was available, before the webinar was even over, I checked my profile. Oops! Two requests for edits were in there. Luckily they were only added the day before, and I took care of them after the webinar. In grabbing screen shots for this post, I discovered another edit request today.

‘Cousin Russ’ had other tips and points about using Find-A-Grave. Some were not useful to me, like using an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of his photos. He had more columns than I could ever keep up with! But hey, it works for him, so that’s OK. I don’t take nearly as many photos as he does.

One of his tips was about visiting a relatives’ tombstone for the first time that you’ve found in Find-A-Grave. Before you go, study the photo(s) and look for clues, he advised. Are there trees, bushes near it? A building perhaps? Perhaps a larger monument in the background?

I’ve done this unconsciously twice with ancestors’ graves I was trying to locate in the cemetery after seeing their markers on Find-A-Grave. I recognized a red brick building that I’d seen in the background of my 3-g-grandfathers memorial on Find-A-Grave. It was a pretty large cemetery without a sexton’s office, so I would have been looking quite a while without my brain kicking that out for me. But it was good to be reminded of this helpful trick.

If you use Find-A-Grave, or are a tombstone lover (like me), view his webinar, “Find-A-Grave: A Research Tool.” [Free until August 27, 2014, then you need to be a member to view] Most of the time during it, he’s showing you real-time how he uses Find-A-Grave for various things and gives out very useful tips about each step. It was worth the hour for me because I learned new tips and techniques.

P.S. If you have Jewish or Italian ancestors, check out Legacy Family Tree’s next two webinars!

Billion Graves

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cemeteries

A few days ago I downloaded Billion Graves’ Android App. I was pretty sure I knew what their website was about, and how to do it, but I watched their video to make sure.

 

There were two reasons behind my decision. #1. I’ve never found a relative in Billion Graves, not one. Instead of moaning and complaining that none of my ancestors are in there, I thought, “Why not add what’s near me?” Someone else will be able to find their relatives, and hopefully someday that “pay-it-forward” philosophy will come back with my relatives!

#2. Recently Family Search announced they had partnered with Billion Graves. I like Family Search. I’ve been indexing there for a while, and thought helping with Billion Graves would help both sites.

Their “Get Started” page said, “Devices with standard GPS work well with BillionGraves…GPS Hardware is required to take and upload pictures…You do not need a live data connection however to take pictures with the BillionGraves app. Taking pictures in remote areas with no cell coverage works fine!”

I was really pumped to visit a cemetery and start snapping photos. Alas, after I arrived, I found my smart phone wasn’t so smart, at least not with the Billion Graves app. I couldn’t get the camera to work. When I clicked the button I got an error message, “Camera failed to open.”

So the phone was put away, and my Android tablet was brought out. Unfortunately that too, had it’s own problems. Every time I clicked the “take picture” button, it said it needed an internet connection, which really riled me, considering on Billion Graves website it said, “Taking photos with no cell coverage works fine.” If the app needs cell coverage, they’re going to miss a lot of cemeteries out in the boonies!

Speaking of cemeteries, I was really impressed how quickly the GPS located the four cemeteries I visited (yes, I actually went out twice, to two different cemeteries both times). That feature worked great on both devices.

That evening, I zipped off a message to their help desk, giving full details about both devices, the operating system, and anything else I thought would help them figure it out. Sadly four days have now passed, and I’ve heard nary a word. My enthusiasm for taking photos has deflated faster than a balloon.

I’ve uninstalled their app from both my phone and my tablet. For the time being, I am stuck at home, transcribing dusty photos others have taken. Ok, they’re not really dusty, but I feel like I’m stuck in an underground filing room far from the light of day. I’d much rather be outside, collecting photos.

Cemeteries

Tags

cemeteries

Perhaps my mind is still stuck in Memorial Day mode. I’ve been thinking about cemeteries this week. And who’s buried where. My immediate relatives are not buried nearby. The closest is my 2-g-grandparents, and then it goes sideways and back from there. Or so I thought.

But then I got to thinking about my post “Are You My Cousin” from last week, and realized I do have a cousin [1st cousin 2x removed. Yes, I had to use Ancestry’s ‘View Relationship to Me’ to figure it out!] buried not too far away. Since I was on my way home from a brief trip over the weekend, I varied my route to stop by this cemetery.

About three years ago I had emailed them to inquire if she was buried there. They sent back a nice reply, with her division #, section #, and her plot #, which I was positive I had added to her Ancestry profile. Ah, the best laid plans…except it wasn’t well laid plans. It was a simple spur of the moment change in a trip route!

When I got to the cemetery, and used my Ancestry App to look it up, I realized it was not in her profile. What to do – what to do? I racked my brain, trying to remember the map the cemetery had also sent with the email, which of course wasn’t scanned and added to her profile either!

And could I find it in my email box? Of course not!! This is where I’m thinking it doesn’t matter how many apps you have. “Smart phones are only as smart as their owners.” *lol* I wasn’t feeling so smart at that moment!

I was thinking it was near the back of the cemetery. Made sense, since she was buried near the beginning of last century. Seemed it was about 4-6 rows from the back, and near-ish the middle!

Rows 4-6 were walked first with no success. Then I walked the rows at the back, 1 – 3. Didn’t find her there either. So far I had stayed between the two roads surrounding this section. I was pretty sure I was in the right section, so I began to work my way from the back of the cemetery towards the front.

Did mention how very bad the mosquitoes were? I returned to my vehicle to put on a sweatshirt and a hat even tho the temps were warm. And continued to walk. And read. And peer and poke around. Made it through about row 13 or 14 — I’d lost count by then!

Finally I decided it simply wasn’t feasible because #1, the mosquitoes were really buzzing around me by that time. I was the only feast in the cemetery, and they must have sent signals to every mosquito within a 5 mile tadius. #2, the cemetery was closing in a half hour, so I figured I’d use the rest of my time taking photos that struck my eye.

Moral of story? If you’re going to do things on impulse, be prepared for possible disappointment. OK, it wasn’t really a disappointment for me, but things didn’t go like I expected. I still had a good time looking at all the markers, and now I know my way to the cemetery when I go back….Prepared.