Edgewood New Mexico FamilySearch Center/Class Notes: Difference between revisions

''Find A Grave'' is a service that lists information about people based on their tombstone/headstone information. ''Find A Grave'' was purchased by ''Ancestry'' and is completely free for viewing purposes. However, if you want to add or change something, you will have to register for a free account. You will then be assigned a contributor number which also allows you to add flowers, a memory, or request a headstone photo.

''Find A Grave'' is one of the largest services out there, and you get more for free. ''Billion Graves'' is a similar service, but it doesn't have as many free things.

Every entry in ''Find A Grave'' has a unique memorial ID. Note that a memorial headstone is not a burial headstone. For example, Turner's ancestor Luther Hatfield is actually buried in Tennessee, but most folks knew him in Virginia, so he has a memorial headstone in a Virginia cemetery.   

If you are ever taking photographs for inclusion on ''Find A Grave'', please take a brush with you to brush the dirt out of the engraved text, take some clippers to clip any overgrown vegetation, and don't let your shadow fall on the stone or anything else otherwise detract from the proper lighting of your image.

Turner said that he likes to include information that he finds on ''Find A Grave'' in an individual's entry on ''FamilySearch''. Just note that the source was from ''Find A Grave''. If you are working in ''Ancestry'', on the right side of an entry will be a link to add records from other ''Ancestry'' sites, like ''Find A Grave''.

If he finds discrepancies between ''FamilySearch'' and ''Find A Grave'', he notes that in the "Other" section of ''FamilySearch''.

Turner says you can use ''Find A Grave'' to help you find hints on finding more relatives. For example, in ''Find A Grave'', look for others with the same last name in the same cemetery, county, state, etc.

Contributors to an individual's ''Find A Grave'' page are usually not related to you. However, a direct relative can be set up as a manager of a page. This privilege expires within a year of the individual's death.

Turner recommends you examine every piece of information on an individual in ''Find A Grave''. Obituaries may list children and spouses that you may not have been aware of. Obituaries frequently list burial dates as a day of the week, so to get the actual date, use a day-of-the-week calculator, such as [https://www.dayoftheweek.org/ dayoftheweek.org].

Also pay attention to people who have left flowers. Turner found a granddaughter and a great grandniece who had both left flowers on a relative's ''Find A Grave'' entry.

Fred Turner continued his class on ''Find A Grave'' with some more advanced topics. He told a story about someone who was a prisoner at a Confederate POW camp. This person noticed that some prisoners were getting fed better than the rest of the prisoners. When he mentioned this to someone, this guy took him aside and said, "We don't care who you fought for--Masons take care of Masons." So finding a masonic symbol on someone's headstone is another piece of information that should be noted in your ''FamilySearch'' entry on an individual.

Finding an unusual headstone is something worthy of mention in an individual's ''FamilySearch'' entry. Turner says to check all the sources mentioned in Find A Grave as this can lead to more information to put into FamilySearch. Be sure to cite these sources.

The handout for this class has many links to interesting examples in ''Find A Grave'' as well as links explaining many different symbols.