Find a Grave website

The website FindaGrave.com is a great place to search for your cemetery records, in part because there may already be a biography on your ancestor on that page, possibly placed there by a relative you can now connect with (and might not have known you had). You can add people, ask for photos to be taken, upload photographs you have taken, and share information with other researchers. It has a cooperative spirit, which is a big plus.

One feature which I particularly like is the ability to edit the links to other persons in other cemeteries, so that families who have migrated from one state to another can be linked.

For example, I can search for the surname McReynolds in the states of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas, where our family tradition states that they lived over a 200+ year period. Our research has given us the names of family burying grounds and a cemetery or two. Various genealogical societies have transcribed some of these records over time.

Now I can enter all this data on FindaGrave.com and link to other persons in the same or other cemeteries, and ask for volunteers to photograph the cemetery sites and tombstones.

I can then add biographical material, and using the Edit Feature I can enter the Memorial i.d. number of Person A who was already in the database on the new memorial page I'm creating for Person B, thereby linking them. Once they are linked, I can show parents, spouse(s) and children, and connect people from our family in every state where they lived ... a very fine service, indeed.