108 Macabre? obsession

I Love Find A Grave!

It is such a great tool for researching family history and other history that I thought it is a good topic to share. Maybe most of you readers already know about it, but I'll take the risk.

The site was launched in 1995 by a Salt Lake City man, Jim Tifton, who wanted to support his habit of visiting the graves of famous people. It became a commercial site and then added nonfamous people sometime after 2000. Ancestry.com purchased the company in 2014. I hope they maintain it as a free site.

What I find most nifty about the site is that volunteers go out and document the location of graves and photograph tombstones and grave markers. The site lists the 50 top contributors to Find A Grave. All of them have contributed at least 100,000 records. A few were in the millions! To quote Wikipedia, "As of April 2016, the site contained over 143 million burial records and 75 million photos worldwide."

I have used the site for years and never ventured into the other fun things it offers, until today.

Teddy Roosevelt, Captain James Cook, Paganini, Emily Post, Dylan Thomas, and Sylvia Plath are among the 123 famous people that Find A Grave says were born on the same day and month as I was. The Posthumous Reunions go from the  Signers of the Declaration of Independence to the members of the Rat Pack and include many TV series and movie cast members.

Just a few of the Interesting Epitaphs:

"It Happens"
Under Rodney Dangerfield's name on his stone, "There Goes The Neighborhood"
A dentist's epitaph, "I'm filling my last cavity"
His brother's epitaph, "I'm filling my last cavity...me too."

A couple Interesting Monuments:

When you follow these links to Interesting Epitaphs, Interesting Monuments, etc., it lists only names and dates and provides a link to the full record. You can, however, follow the Find A Grave Facebook page, and these types of interesting ones show up there as well.

I became a member when I realized I had photographs of several of the Civil War officers, whom I had been researching for the Old Court House Civil War Museum graffiti. For instance, I provided a photograph (Isn't he handsome?) and additional information, including his obituary, for James Kellogg. The person who originally supplied the information on Kellogg's grave had to approve the information before it would appear on the site, which she did within a few hours:

Then I was hooked. I added photos and text for other courthouse prisoners, added my parents' wedding picture to their Find A Grave records at Arlington National Cemetery, updated information for my husband Harry's grandmother and great grandfather, updated my Civil War great grandfather's records as well as adding him to the Find A Grave virtual cemetery for the 12th Indiana Infantry, and a few more additions as well. 

Whew, and I have a lot more family history pictures to add!

Check out Find A Grave. One thing to remember is that many different people are entering the data and names on tombstones can be carved in a variety of ways so search for an individual with full name, just initials, just first initial, county and state, just state, etc. I hope you are not looking for John Smith!

Savvy Researcher Trish