Using Find-A-Grave

The right tool for the right job

When I was putting together the Callin Family History, I spent about seven years doing research to augment the work I had inherited from George W. Callin, my 2nd-great uncle. Along the way, I submitted dozens of photo requests to Find-a-Grave.

By the time the CFH was ready to publish, volunteers had supplied many headstone photos in response to my requests - but many of my requests came back without a response. Either there was no marker, or that person turned out not to be buried in the cemetery in question. And some requests have simply lingered, waiting for a volunteer to notice them.

I haven’t submitted many new requests since finishing the CFH project, so I was surprised to see this in my inbox last month:

Example notification from Findagrave.com

There are many men named “William Callin” in my ancestry, but it turned out to be William Jefferson Callin (1885-1949), the third-great grandson of our Revolutionary War ancestor, James Callin.

My fulfilled request - for William Callin

At first, it was disappointing to see the “No Tombstone” photo. The one thing that Find A Grave is most useful for is providing some physical evidence to support what you know about your target family. But I quickly moved past that disappointment to realize that “Anonymous” had provided the plot - Section 2, Lot 362 - which does confirm that William was buried in that cemetery.

What You Can Trust

I have seen a lot of discussions over the years about which tool or platform is or is not reliable for family history research. Find A Grave usually comes under fire for a couple of reasons:

• They do not require source citations for information submitted by users.

• There is a sub-culture of Find A Grave users who comb through obituaries and create memorials without respect for the families of the recently deceased.

• The site does not have a lot of resources for moderating disputes between a memorial’s manager(s) and other contributors.

I’m not here to re-litigate any of those discussions - if you spend time on any Genealogy forum or #genealogy thread on social media, you will find people angry about a run-in they had with someone on Find A Grave.

But I am here to point to the most useful aspect of this resource: you can (mostly) count on what is set in stone.

Virtual Cemeteries

One of the more useful features is the ability to create and curate “Virtual Cemeteries” - which is a collection of memorials that you can use to keep track of your ancestors. Here is my only Virtual Cemetery, for example:

My Virtual Cemetery - collecting the memorials I have located.

I used this to organize my search for the gravesites of all 28 of my grand/great-grand/and 2nd-great-grandparents. You may have noticed I only have 26 out of the 28 here - I am still missing Emil Frey and his wife Emily Amelia Opp.

Collaboration that works

For all of the frustrating stories about poorly sourced information or uncommunicative memorial managers, there are some examples of good collaboration on Find A Grave. For instance, the memorial for my great-grandfather, David Ulysses Clark.

If you follow that link, you can see the photo of the headstone (Added by P. V. Hays), but also some respectful discussion of the discrepancies in David’s recorded birth date. There is also a portrait of David and his obituary (added by Eric) which may or may not be strictly permitted by the site’s Terms of Use.

With the help of several unknown and unattributed cousins (a downside of the site - no one can tell who made which edits), we have a very thorough collection of memorials for David’s family. His parents (Joel and Sarah (Bellamy) Clark), his wife, Vicie, their 12 children (including my grandpa Russ Clark), and David’s 11 siblings are all in one place.

If I Were the King of the Forest…

I realize this isn’t going to happen at this point, but there are a couple of things I would change about Find A Grave.

First: the branding. “Find A Grave” is easy to remember and does tell you instantly what the site is for… but the initials are problematic. I have seen a few discussions where the site was being referred to by its initial in all caps… and it just ends up looking like the participants are angrily shouting a slur at each other.

I think I would call it “Grave Markers” or “The Virtual Cemetery” instead.

Second: build in a mechanism for tracking edits.

Even if you can’t do much to remove incorrect or poorly sourced information from a memorial once it’s there, at least an attribution system would give you an idea of where bad information is coming from.

But even if they never fix any of my pet issues with the site, Find A Grave is an incredible resource. It is worth getting to know, especially if you plan on doing an extended project with a lot of potential rabbit holes and gaps that can only be filled in by getting voluntary help from strangers across the country.