{"id":376,"date":"2013-02-20T11:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/family-history-through-the-alphabet-find-a-grave\/"},"modified":"2013-07-02T23:43:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T04:43:13","slug":"family-history-through-the-alphabet-find-a-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/family-history-through-the-alphabet-find-a-grave\/","title":{"rendered":"Family History Through the Alphabet \u2013 Find A Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Family-History-Through-the-Alphabet\"<\/p>\n

For 26 weeks I will take you on a family history journey through the alphabet, one letter at a time.\u00a0 I have decided that each post will be educational in nature, focusing on topics related to resources, methodology, tools, etc.\u00a0 Although the challenge is complete, there are still some people who are finishing up and Alona, the host, is encouraging others to participate anyway.\u00a0 Additional information on the challenge, can be found at Take the \u2018Family History Through the Alphabet\u2019 Challenge<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"f\"This week, I thought I\u2019d talk about Find A Grave<\/a>, which is a community project where people can create memorials for those who are deceased.\u00a0 The memorials may contain birth date and place, death date and place, biographical information, and links to the memorials of their spouse, parents, or children.\u00a0 Many memorials also contain photographs of the person\u2019s headstone.<\/p>\n

We should all be using this resource in our genealogy research, so in this post, I\u2019ll discuss some tips and best practices for researchers.\u00a0 You should also consider becoming a contributor and \u201cgive back\u201d in some capacity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"FindAGrave\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember that this is a derivative source and there could be errors.<\/strong>\u00a0 Also remember that the stones themselves could contain errors.\u00a0 And while not common, there are some deceptive people out there who have placed fake or altered photos of stones.\u00a0 As with any derivative source, be careful and do your homework.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t take people\u2019s pictures without asking permission.<\/strong>\u00a0 When a person uploads a photo to Find A Grave, the person maintains their copyright.\u00a0 Downloading that photo and attaching it to your online tree, posting it on your blog, or simply saving it on your computer is a violation of that copyright.\u00a0 Contact the person and explain what you plan to do with the photo(s) and ask permission.\u00a0 But before you do that, check the person\u2019s profile\u2014they may freely grant permission through their profile.<\/p>\n

Follow the rules.<\/strong>\u00a0 There are a ton of FAQs<\/a> provided that you should review in order to understand the rules and how to use Find A Grave effectively.\u00a0 The one rule that is probably broken the most often is requesting a transfer of a memorial that does not fit the accepted criteria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Submit corrections.<\/strong>\u00a0 If you have information to add to a memorial or have corrections to a memorial, use the Suggest a Correction form (accessed from the Edit<\/em> tab) to submit them.\u00a0 This helps to build upon submissions and help other researchers.\u00a0 It\u2019s also one way to contribute and \u201cgive back\u201d to the community.<\/p>\n

\"Correction\"<\/p>\n

Most people will make the changes in a timely manner.\u00a0 Other times, the owner of the memorial won\u2019t make the changes for whatever reason, or has vanished from Find A Grave.\u00a0 This is of course unfortunate, but that\u2019s just the way it sometimes works with a community project like this.\u00a0 If you experience this issue, read this FAQ<\/a> for how to handle it.<\/p>\n

The other reason to send corrections is that sometimes, if the memorial owner is not related to the person, they may ask you if you want to take ownership, even if you don\u2019t necessarily fit the criteria (see above).\u00a0 As the owner, they can transfer it to anyone they like, for example, say someone is getting older and doesn\u2019t want to manage their memorials anymore, they could transfer them to a friend or another researcher.\u00a0 Most people who have added non-relatives would rather a family member take over the memorial.<\/p>\n

Add your own photos.<\/strong>\u00a0 Even if you are not the owner of the memorial, you do have the option to upload and share your own photos.\u00a0 You can share additional gravestone photos, photos of the person and\/or their family, and even upload images of documents (i.e., a death certificate).\u00a0 This is another way to \u201cgive back\u201d to the community.<\/p>\n

\"UploadPhoto\"<\/p>\n

Request a photo.<\/strong>\u00a0 If you do not live in the area of a particular cemetery, you can create a memorial (if one does not already exist) and then add a photo request to it.\u00a0 If there is a memorial already created, without a photo, you can still request a photo.\u00a0 Volunteers in the area will be notified of the request and may \u201cclaim\u201d the request and fulfill it.<\/p>\n

\"Request\"<\/p>\n

Create a Virtual Cemetery.<\/strong>\u00a0 You can create one or many Virtual Cemeteries, which are a collection of memorials.\u00a0 Many people create these for their family members, often by surname.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also seen people create Virtual Cemeteries for Revolutionary War soldiers, Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, unusual names, certain types of symbolism\u2014the possibilities are endless.\u00a0 Your Virtual Cemeteries can be public or private.<\/p>\n

The easiest way to set up a Virtual Cemetery is to visit your profile page and choose edit button for \u201cMy Virtual Cemeteries\u201d under the Customize<\/em> section.\u00a0 Then \u201cadd new,\u201d give it a name, a description if you like, and set the privacy settings to make the Virtual Cemetery public or private.<\/p>\n

\"Virtual\"<\/p>\n

I hope this post has given you some ideas for how you can use Find a Grave in your genealogy research.\u00a0 If you have other tips you\u2019d like to share, please leave a comment.\u00a0 I\u2019m always open to hear other people\u2019s ideas for using various tools in genealogy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For 26 weeks I will take you on a family history journey through the alphabet, one letter at a time.\u00a0 I have decided that each post will be educational in nature, focusing on topics related to resources, methodology, tools, etc.\u00a0 Although the challenge is complete, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25,300,29],"tags":[350,369],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","category-resources-genblog","category-technology-genblog","tag-family-history-through-the-alphabet","tag-tools-tech-find-a-grave","cat-27-id","cat-25-id","cat-300-id","cat-29-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-64","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2828,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}