Oh og, don’t even get me started on the trees that are on Ancestry. I don’t really use those at all. Actually I don’t even us Ancestry right now, they got to be a bit too expensive. Plus I can get almost the same stuff from Family Search.
It’s hard to know what to do in those situations. That’s way too early and someone must have screwed up. When I put up info, which is almost always based upon the stone, I put up the photo too. I can think of only a few times where I went back to older transcriptions when the stone wasn’t that readable. There’s also a family cemetery that I know one of the stones is missing.
I do put up in the notes section any additional information I have. My own great grandmother’s stone says she was born in 1909, but she was born in 1904, but I saw the original stone order and the 4 really looks like a 9.
I think my uncle’s name, Jewel is misspelled Jewell on his headstone. I need to lookup his marriage certificate to confirm the correct spelling.
I lived with him and my aunt two years while my mom was in school. I just can’t recall 1 L or 2. I’m almost certain he used one L. We lost track of his sister after he died (my blood relative is my aunt). We weren’t sure if his sister was in a nursing home or not. Find a Grave confirmed she died 2003 and was 93.
What a great tool … and so often so completely off base and good luck getting the “owner” of the listing to correct their information.
For instance, I happened to run across a relatives grave, linked to his parents. Only problem is, my relative is alive and well. Although he does have a headstone pre-purchased, it is not in that cemetery. He also did not die over 60 years ago, and the family members his mother is linked to as her parents are not her parents. I do some research and find and e-mail the obituary of the person the grave actually belongs to to the “owner” and ask them to please disconnect this listing from my relatives parents because it makes it appear as if the grave belongs to a living relative of mine and ask them to correct the other information as well. Nope, he won’t do it. These people had a son named blah blah he tells me. Yes, I know. I tell him that having a very common name and being one plot over doesn’t make you related.
Of course people are copying this information as if it were Gospel, and it’s completely incorrect.
They’ve changed this recently, at least for some information, if it’s not changed in 30 days it can get corrected automatically. Not sure if it keeps both or what though. The few that I’ve had asked to be changed were correct as far as I knew.
Ugh, this has happened to me. I know my father’s side of the family quite well, someone decided to take my grandmother and attach her to a second husband, at the same time she was with her first husband, and give her a second set of kids around when my father was born. Because this person had like 10 tress on Ancestry people started taking it as fact. My grandmother’s name was Mary, one would think people would actually check that first. I told the person and they never said a word back and left the work.
People are so eager to be related to someone famous (or infamous), that they will take anything as fact, regardless of evidence to the contrary. One woman that I helped out was thrilled to find out that we both are related to Aaron Burr (it’s an ancillary line, so a a 6th great-grand uncle or some such). She told me that she couldn’t wait to put it on line and let everyone know that she was descended from Aaron Burr. I quickly wrote back and said “No, you’re not descended from Burr, you’re just distantly related to him through ancestral marriage.” Her answer was “Well, I’m going to post it anyway.” :smack:
I use the family trees as guides and try to verify what I find there through through other sources. A really good source is Google Books, a free online resource. Just go to the site and type in the name of an ancestor and see what pops up. A good free site is Wikitree.com, although it’s more family trees. It seems like a lot of the users provide decent citations, however.
If you’re not familiar with Cyndi’s List, it’s a great resource and is free. It provides over 300,000 links to genealogy sites, including family name message boards, online resources, federal and state resources, etc.
Washington is one of the few states that has digitized their records and allows free searches by name, so if you have ancestors that lived there, it’s a good starting point.
Don’t know how many of you take photos for Find a Grave, but here’s a nice technique for using a flash and getting really nice shots with good details. Here’s an example I took the other evening. And an entire grave yard I did last night.
I’ve found the best for me is taking the photos in the evening, so far photos taken during the daylight haven’t worked out as well.
Basically you use an off camera flash and aim it from the side to make shadows in the carvings. Close the f-stop and go with a shutter speed around 1/200. They say to use a shutter speed around 1/500, but I haven’t gotten that too work well at all really. I do have a cheaper flash though.
I used to do photos for people requesting same, but a couple of things put me off of it. First, I got too busy to give it good service, but secondly I began to run into people who considered certain cemeteries to be their personal domain and who got irate if you “poached” their territory. :rolleyes:
Wow, I’ve never run in to that, but then again I wouldn’t say anything to anyone while I’m doing it anyway. I did get asked the other day if I was counting the graves, but at the time I was just making a general outline of the cemetery.
I think if anyone were to approach me and give me problems I would tell them I’m working with the historical society, which isn’t too far off. Then go home and post the stuff right away.
Another problem with Find A Grave is when there are two cemeteries with the same name in the same general area and the memorials from one end up in the other. It’s really hard to get them to separate them out.
It’s always in the form of an email through the FaG (unfortunate acronym, I agree) site, along the lines of “Why are you posting photos from xxx cemetery, when I’m already cataloging them?” Guess I didn’t get the telegram?
While we’re here, why would a listing disappear from FaG? I had a bookmark to a very minor historical figure, and I just clicked it and it came up broken. A direct search by name and a direct scan of the listing for that cemetery no longer show that name or grave.
I had that happen once. Their was a memorial for my grandmother and I sent a request to the person who put it up to link her to her parents. Never heard back from them and when I checked to see if they’d made the connection, her memorial was gone. I don’t know why they just took it down instead of making the link. I put up a new memorial page for her though. Maybe you could put up a new one for this person?
Really? That’s strange, I guess I’m a bit luckier in that I’ve been taking photos of smaller, harder to find cemeteries. I need to get back out this weekend and redo two of them that I took photos of, especially now that I have a flash. Plus I know one of the cemeteries isn’t listed so I need to get the coordinates of the place.
The best thing I can think of is that one cemetery had two entries on FAG and they were merged. Then, if there were two entries for the same person they were also merged.
What I’d like to know is why do people put up cemeteries that they can’t prove ever existed? I’ve been trying to find some of these cemeteries from FAG and some seem to be made up. Same goes for my own family cemetery that I try and keep up, there are people listed as being buried there that couldn’t have been. There are now 30 people listed as being buried there, when it was cataloged in the 1950s there were 12.
I like findagrave, I can see family burials that I never would have known about. But I question everything, so I am here because lately I am finding some things in my family tree that I am questioning, and others who have family trees on ancestry.com won’t talk, and lock up their trees. That’s why my name here is realstory. I am still working on trying to find my family roots; and then I find people in my family that are hard to account for. They were all in Alabama, then some went up into MS. and then some went over into OK. There are 3 people tacked on to my family that I found with another family on the 1850 census before the Civil War. I asked one family member and she said, I don’t know about them, but maybe their family couldn’t take care of them. I have Native American Ancestry, but these 3 look like they are African American. If I guess at it, I would think when the war hit, they came along with my family out of Alabama, and were written in as family. The thing is, I have no family pictures of the ancestors of these people. They do have some descendants I have found, but everybody is shuffling it under the rug. I have two distant cousins who are registered with the Cherokee Nation in OK. But they won’t tell me anything about that either. I have contacted someone on this board who does research and maybe together we can find out more about these families.
Find-a-Grave is a good source, but as mentioned above it can be inaccurate. Aside from wrong names and dates, many people for one reason or another were moved to other cemeteries after burial. Also, many graves are unmarked or the headstones have become unreadable, damaged or vandalized.
I’m registered to take photos for Find_a_Grave, but almost as soon as I get the request someone else claims it. I have requested several images and they have been filled. Most were within a few weeks but one probably took several months.
As with most non primary sources, it can be a good clue or starting place.
Also, Ancestry has said that they intend to keep the site free, so hopefully they will.
Dang… I’m really sorry some of you have run into some idiots on Find A Grave. I guess I was lucky with the two people who catalogued several of my family members graves. I asked that they pass the management of them over to me and they very graciously did so.
You would think that the emotional ties we have to our family on Find A Grave would be respected and understood by others. You’d also think they’d recognize that WE would know more about our immediate family lineage than some stranger!
For those experiencing problems, have you contacted Find A Grave or you can post your problem on the Forum there. There are sections on the Forum to deal with difficult FAG members.
I don’t understand the people who post the memorials of hundreds of people they do not know then get all pissy when you want them to add links or correct info. Here’s a excerpt from the profile of a guy who had posted memorials for one of my aunts and her son (unlinked, of course):
Eventually he got sick of hearing from me and finally transferred her memorial to me so I could add ALL of the information (parents, maiden name, link to her son and her other husband). WTF? She was my dad’s sister, and nothing to him. Why are they so possessive? Sometimes people confound me.
I think I may have contacted this same person! The people I wanted linked weren’t related to me, but I always like to try to get families linked whenever I can. I think it’s somewhat sad when all a memorial has on it is the name and the date, and it can also aid family members with their searches. Anyway, I never followed up with this one, but I thought the message in the profile about repeat messages and attitudes was rather rude.
What I find annoying about these people is that they’re in it for the numbers as if there is a huge prize to win. Also, when someone famous dies several memorials will immediately spring up.
Another incident that stuck me as tacky at best was after one of the recent school shootings. They hadn’t even had the first memorial service for the victims and several memorial pages were put up.
Wow, that’s really strange what some people do. For the most part I’ve only had one semi bad person to deal with. I’ve been mapping out cemeteries in my local county, been trying to find the smaller family ones. Someone had all the photos taken, done some bios and even a layout of the cemetery. When I told the person what I was doing and asked where it was located she told me that it was on private property and she wasn’t going to tell me where it was located. Every cemetery is on private property.
The other people there have been great. One person put up a lot of info, but no photos for the most part. I took photos and corrected some info and he did it right away. He even asked me if I wanted to manage the memorials since they were distantly related to me.
I have had some interesting experiences looking for cemeteries. Last weekend I went out with a local genealogist who knows where some of the cemeteries are. One was located way in the back of some farm, we crossed the farm and had to go over an electric fence, yeah I got shocked, hurt like hell too, I haven’t been zapped in years. There was a vault at the cemetery, something I’ve never seen before in the area so that was kind of cool.
