If you’re looking for cemetery records, you’re in luck! This week there have been massive updates to Find A Grave’s global databases at Ancestry.com. But why search Find A Grave at Ancestry.com? We can think of 3 good reasons.
Find A Grave at Ancestry.com: Updated Collections
Did you know you can use Google Earth to find cemeteries? Click here to learn how.
The following Find A Grave collections have all been updated to Ancestry.com, where they can be linked directly to your tree:
Global, Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s-Current
You’ll also find these records updated at FamilySearch.com as well.
If there’s a specific grave you’re looking for, ask Find a Grave to help! Click here to learn how to submit a photo request to both Find a Grave and Billion Graves.
Why Use Find A Grave at Ancestry.com?
Sunny Morton, Genealogy Giants Guru
Find A Grave is a free website with crowd-sourced tombstone images and transcriptions from cemeteries all over the world. Last we checked, they boast 162 million grave records! Their catalog of cemeteries tops 400,000, spread out over 200 different countries, and they have at least a partial listing of graves for well over half of these (over 250,000).
So why would you go to Ancestry.com to search records that are already free at Find A Grave? Genealogy Gems Contributing Editor Sunny Morton, our resident expert on the giant genealogy websites, says:
“If you’re already an Ancestry.com subscriber, searching Find A Grave from within Ancestry.com may be a good choice for these three reasons:
1. One-stop searching. You’re already searching in Ancestry.com: you don’t need to remember to switch over to search Find A Grave separately for each ancestor.
2. Ancestry.com’s search tool. Find A Grave has a nice but basic search tool. It’s pickier about the search results it returns: does the spelling match? And is a potential result in the exact place you requested? (If you search a specific county, Find A Grave will only return results from that county–not in an adjacent county, across the state line, or even across the country where an ancestor may have been interred.) Lacey has a great example below.
From Lacey: Here’s a search of my 3X great grandfather at Find A Grave:
Unfortunately, no results:
I then hopped over to Ancestry, went to the card catalog, and searched the U.S. Find A Grave Index:
Turns out there was an extra “t” on his surname (see results below). I didn’t search on a partial name because I’ve never come across a different spelling of his before, and I certainly didn’t expect to see one on his tombstone! But sure enough, the name is not spelled as it had been throughout his life. It’s awfully nice that Ancestry could find it:
Ancestry.com is much more forgiving and flexible about spelling and places. It will return search result possibilities that don’t have to match exactly. As you can see from the screenshots above, Ancestry offers more fields to enter, including relatives’ names (and people are often buried with relatives), a more detailed place field, and keywords.
3. Tree-building ease. If you build your tree on Ancestry.com, it’s easy to attach Find A Grave search results to your ancestor’s tree profiles. If you search separately at Find A Grave, you have to create a separate source citation to attach to your tree.” (Note: hopefully, if you’re building your tree on Ancestry.com, you’re syncing it to your own software. RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker will both sync to your Ancestry tree–click here to see why Lisa Louise Cooke prefers RootsMagic.)
More Cemetery Resources
Get detailed step-by-steps for using Find A Grave and Billion Graves, plus guides for understanding tombstone epitaphs and symbol meanings in this brand new book: The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide. Discover tools for locating tombstones, tips for traipsing through cemeteries, an at-a-glance guide to frequently used gravestone icons, and practical strategies for on-the-ground research.Use coupon code GEMS17 for an extra 10% off! *Coupon valid through 12/31/17.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
Have you ever brought back a favorite family tradition from your childhood? I did that with a favorite Memorial Day tradition–revived with a little help from YouTube.
Deep in the hollows of Virginia lived ‘Big Grandma’ with her nine children. She was a mountain woman, schooled only in the herbs she could sell for money. Celebrations were few, but Decoration Day was special. She would gather her children together to make crepe paper flowers and then hike up the mountain to lay them on the graves of loved ones.
This year, I revived this tradition by teaching her great-grandchildren the art of making crepe paper flowers for Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day.) It wasn’t easy. My mother hadn’t made crepe paper flowers with us since I was 10 years old!
First, we had to find the crepe paper. I tried using crepe paper streamers, but the paper was too delicate and not stretchy enough. Crepe paper is unique. It is strong and very stretchy which lends to the realistic shape of petals and leaves. With a little help from Google, I found PaperMart, an online store that sells rolls of colorful crepe paper for $1.93 a roll. Each roll is 8 feet long and 19 inches wide. A roll this big will create bouquets of lovely flowers!
I ordered a variety of colors for petals, some green for the leaves, and yellow for the middles. Floral stem wire, floral stem tape, paddle wire in 24 gauge, and tacky glue are other must-haves.
Without Grandma around, it was left to me and Mom to remember how to make each type of petal. YouTube to the rescue! With videos like the one below, we were able to re-teach ourselves the techniques for creating beautiful roses, peonies, morning glory, and mums. (Click here to read more ideas on using YouTube for family history research.)
After family dinner, we gathered together as mothers, sisters, and cousins to laugh and giggle as we tried to create each piece. I was able to share with the next generation the story of Decoration Day in the “holler.” Many of the young ones asked, “Why can’t we just buy the flowers?” I am sure it would have been easier and quite a bit quicker to buy flowers, but I wouldn’t trade the opportunity to share this tradition with them for the world.
This week, we gathered as an extended family to place our crepe paper flowers on the graves of our ancestors. You know what? When we came to Big Grandma’s grave, all the children wanted their flowers to be placed there. They remembered! My heart was full and I could imagine Grandma looking down at all these little children as they were following in her footsteps.
A Memorial Day tradition like this is a wonderful way to teach family history to our children. Other ideas include learning a hobby that our ancestor enjoyed. Several years back, I decided I wanted to learn to play the guitar like my uncles did. It was their favorite past time to get out the guitars for an old-fashioned singin’ after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. The family would gather in the living room to sing favorites like “Amazing Grace,” “When the Roll is Called up Yonder,” and “Jesus is Coming Soon.” A new guitar and YouTube practice tutorials and I was strumming along with them at the family reunion.
With today’s easy access to online tutorials and videos, you can learn and share your ancestors’ lives in this unique and personal way. Pick something today and share your favorite family traditions and past times with your loved ones.
If there’s a theme forGenealogy Gems Premium Podcast Episode 124, it’s travel! (Which works for us here in the U.S., where we are enjoying summer vacations.) Our ancestors sure traveled, and sometimes a paper trail followed them. In this episode you’ll hear Contributing Editor Sunny Morton’s interview with Phil Goldfarb, author of two volumes on U.S. passport applications. More episode highlights include:
Another tip for photographing headstones on your trips to the cemetery, whether your own relatives’ or for sites like BillionGraves;
Follow-up tips on saving your data at Ancestry and navigating the remodeled Ancestry website;
An easy, inexpensive family history craft that would be perfect for a family reunion this summer.
Here’s a teaser from our conversation on passport applications: People lied on them, including those who became famous.Clara Barton lied about her age and Harry Houdini said he was born in the U.S., when he was actually born in Austria-Hungary. Also, passport applications can be an excellent place to learn an immigrant’s date of arrival in the U.S., the ship they arrived on and the court and date of naturalization.
Did you know that Genealogy Gems Premium members have access to our full archive of Premium podcast episodes, as well as hours’ worth of exclusive video tutorials on genealogy research skills, using online records and harnessing powerful technology tools like Google searching, Google Earth and Evernote for genealogy? Click here to learn more about Premium membership for yourselfor for your genealogy society or library.
As always, our Genealogy Gems flagship podcastremains free, thanks to your support and purchases you make through the links we provide (like for the books we recommend on this page).
Using BillionGraves for genealogy research has never been easier.
BillionGraves aims to document and preserve the world’s cemeteries. They provide a platform for volunteers around the world (and their smartphones!) to capture headstone images and their GPS locations. The images are transcribed and the index is searchable on the BillionGraves website and other leading genealogy sites.
Learn more on using BillionGraves for genealogy, what it offers now and its hopes for the future in this video interview by Lisa Louise Cooke with Hudson Gunn. Then keep reading below to learn a few more tips from us here at Genealogy Gems on using Billiongraves for genealogy.
Ready to learn more about using BillionGraves for genealogy?
Do you ever wish there was a master map of all the cemeteries in the world? While there isn’t one map that includes every single public and private cemetery around the world, the free software program Google earth offers up something close. Here’s what you need to know about how to find cemeteries in Google Earth.
Lisa Louise Cooke: teaching Google Earth for Genealogy since 2007.
These days Google Earth is a free software program, a web-based program and a mobile app. Each form of the application has it’s own merits, and today we’re going to explore one of the software’s best features: the ability to map out cemeteries around the world, and gather valuable information about them. This feature is particularly useful for the family historian who wants to learn more about their ancestors, including where they are buried.
But before we get started, you need to check to see if you have the latest version of Google Earth downloaded to your desktop or laptop computer. On your desktop, look for a grey and white globe. If you see a blue and white globe, you have the older original free version of Google Earth. However, a few years ago, Google made their Google Earth Pro version free to everyone, and it is now the standard.
If you do have Google Earth Pro (the grey globe software) then you’re ready to go.
The grey Google Earth globe on the desktop.
If you don’t have it, then you will need to download it.
If you agree to them, click the Agree and Download button
Follow the installation guide
When complete click Run Google Earth
Now that you have Google Earth on your computer, launch it and look on the lower left side of the screen. There you will find the Layers panel.
The Layers Panel in Google Earth.
Google Earth Layers are collections of points of geographic interest that have been curated by Google Earth or its content partners. When you click on a Layer, it brings up all those points of interest on your current view of Google Earth.
You’ll find the Layers panel on the bottom left side of your screen. To display all points of interest within a Layer, click the box next to the Layer title. To open a Layer category, click the plus sign next to the label to open the Layer folder, and the minus sign to close it.
There are lots of genealogically-interesting Layers, including Cemeteries. You will find Cemeteries in the More > Place Categories > Places of Worship layer. Make sure the box next to Cemeteries is checked. You’ll see the little buy hiv medication online icon showing a tree with a little headstone next to it.
Next, search for a location in the Search box to “fly” to a neighborhood in Google Earth where you’d like to find nearby cemeteries. Look for those Cemetery icons. You may need to zoom in or out for them to appear. While not every cemetery is shown, it’s an excellent start!
Click on a cemetery icon. This will open a dialog box containing relevant information about the cemetery, often including the address and telephone number. If the cemetery title is hyperlinked, click it for even more useful information.
I hope you enjoyed learning how to find cemeteries in Google Earth. You can learn more about using Google Earth for genealogy in my book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Second Edition, fully-revised and brand new for 2015. It’s got five chapters devoted to how to use Google Earth for genealogy that are filled with more tips like this one.
And one more thing: did you know that Google Earth Pro is now available for free? Click here to read my post with all the details.
Get detailed step-by-steps for using Find A Grave and Billion Graves, plus guides for understanding tombstone epitaphs and symbol meanings in this brand new book: The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide. Discover tools for locating tombstones, tips for traipsing through cemeteries, an at-a-glance guide to frequently used gravestone icons, and practical strategies for on-the-ground research.Use coupon code GEMS17 for an extra 10% off! *Coupon valid through 12/31/17.
This week, we gathered as an extended family to place our crepe paper flowers on the graves of our ancestors. You know what? When we came to Big Grandma’s grave, all the children wanted their flowers to be placed there. They remembered! My heart was full and I could imagine Grandma looking down at all these little children as they were following in her footsteps.
Here’s a teaser from our conversation on passport applications: 
