Strategies for Searching Cemeteries Online

If you are looking for cemetery records, you should remember that a cemetery is a physical location and that cemeteries can be both publicly and privately created and maintained (or not maintained, as the case may be). They can also be abandoned and be destroyed. Cemeteries may also be located in rather strange or unexpected places. For example, there is a cemetery called the Neptune Memorial Reef, an under water cemetery that is located off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida.

Finding the burial records and locating the cemetery of an ancestor can be a challenge. I have an uncle, Henry Victor Overson, (b. 1899, d. 1986) whose death is well documented but for whom I have yet to find a burial record. In fact, I have not found an obituary or any other mention of his funeral or burial. The reason is likely that the largest cemetery in Phoenix, Arizona with tens of thousands of graves, where he is likely buried, has only been 77% photographed for FindAGrave.com and barely photographed by BillionGraves.com.

Of course, you can always begin a cemetery search using both FindAGrave.com and BillionGraves.com and an additional large online source, Interment.net. But you will soon discover, as my own example shows, that not all burials are listed in these large online cemetery database websites. In addition, searching online can be frustrating if you do not know the exact name of the cemetery. The words "grove," "garden," "memorial," and many other similar words are used repeatedly. As an example, there are approximately 490 cemeteries listed in FindAGrave.com that use the word "memorial" as part of their name and the same search on BillionGraves.com also produces a long list of results.

Some of the other online sources for cemetery searches include the USGenWeb and you can also search in local cemetery lists that may appear online in a Google search. There is also the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration, Nationwide Gravesite Locator. If you live in country other than the United States, such as the U.K., you may wish to search for your own local cemetery lists online. By the way, one large website in the U.K. is deceasedonline.com. Another resource in New Zealand is a list made by the Christchurch City Libraries, Cemeteries and Cemetery Records. There are also online lists such as the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry. In short, online searches for cemeteries can be productive if you are persistent.

Rather than repeatedly searching for the burial location, it is better to begin by researching other records that will more likely indicate where the individual died. However, many people are buried far from their place of death. For example, military personnel may die in a country other than the one where they were born, but their remains may be shipped "home" for burial. But even then, the remains may be buried in a military cemetery, far from the place where they lived or where the funeral was conducted. It is also common for people, even outside the military, to be buried far from their final residence. My Grandfather died in Pasadena, California and was buried in the family plot in Salt Lake City, Utah. This also suggests that searching for a burial may involve searching for an entire family rather than just one individual.

It may seem obvious to search for an obituary. However, if you search directly for an online obituary, you will soon find that most of the existing obituary searches include listings for currently published obituaries or for only a few very recent years. Some of the earliest listings on the obituary websites only have listings that date back into the 1970s and 1960s. Large websites such as Ancestry.com have indexed records of older obituaries, but the coverage of the United States is very spotty. It is a good practice to search the larger websites for death information, but don't necessarily expect to find an obituary. At the same time, there are probably billions of pages of digitized newspapers available across the United States on hundreds of digital newspaper websites. Of course these online website include the obituaries. So rather than specifically focus on obituary indexes, expand your search to include all newspapers available in any given area. To see a list of available newspapers in the United States, you can refer to the Library of Congress' U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present.

Finding an obituary that mentions the burial location in an online digital newspaper website is a good example of how all types of records work together to provide valuable genealogical information. Another example is of a way to find burial information and thereby locate the cemetery where an ancestor is buried using an online database such as Ancestry.com is searching for U.S. veterans gravesites or veterans' headstone applications. Usually, the burial information in these indexes identify the cemetery. Because of these interrelated records, it is impossible to list all of the online sources that could identify a cemetery.

It should be obvious that locating and searching a cemetery is facilitated by knowing the deceased's last residence. In may parts of the world, if you know where your ancestor died and his or her religious preference, you can begin to guess where that person was buried. In the older and more settled parts of the United States, burial grounds are commonly associated with a particular church. This is particularly true along the East Coast in states such as Pennsylvania. In these cases, locating the church online will give you an idea of where the cemetery may be located and who to contact for information about the burials. Both churches and cemeteries are shown on a variety of maps including the United States Geologic Survey's huge online collection in the Historical Topographic Map Explorer. Here is an example of a portion of a map showing a church and a cemetery near Harleysville, Pennsylvania.

The church and cemetery are near the middle of the map where you can see a red crosshair and it says Salford Ch. Once located on a topographical map, you can use Google Maps to see the exact location in a street view. Here is a screenshot of the Google Maps view of the same location.

Here is a screenshot of the satellite view of the Church and cemetery.

Before driving to any suspected location, it is a very good idea to do extensive online investigation of the roads and the possible access to the cemetery. You may also wish to contact the church or other responsible parties to determine any access restrictions. The records you are seeking for the cemetery, as in this example, may be maintained by the church. You might note that neither of the Google Maps identify the area as a cemetery, unlike the information contained on the topographical map.

To summarize some of the strategies for locating and searching a cemetery online, I suggest the following:

1. Search the online cemetery indexing programs such as BillionGraves.com and FindAGrave.com
2. Make a concerted effort to locate the death place and circumstances of the target person and investigate all associated records
3. Do an extensive newspaper search for an online obituary
4. Identify the religious preference of the deceased
5. Search topographical maps for cemeteries in the area where the ancestor died

This is an area where the search can seem endless. There are so many types of records that could contain the crucial information from diaries and letters to large online database programs. The key here is to keep searching. 

BYU Family History Library hits the news

The Provo Daily Herald for Friday, March 11, 2016 ran this article on the Brigham Young University Family History Library and the series of webinars that are being posted online on the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel. That article was followed up by one today, March 25, 2016 in the BYU Daily Universe, the on-campus newspaper.

This past week, we have posted 18 new videos to the BYU Family History Library Channel. We have had a few technical difficulties in uploading the videos but we are getting all of them straightened out.

You might want to take time to subscribe to the YouTube Channel so you get notification of the newly uploaded videos. As of the date of this post we have 1091 subscribers and over 50,000 views. The schedule for the upcoming webinars is posted on the BYU Family History Library Webpage where there is a link to the schedule of all the classes in the upper right hand corner. I currently have five more webinars scheduled in April, 2016. As I have noted on my other blog, because of the time I am spending doing webinars and my teaching schedule at the Library, I may not be as regular in my blog posting,

Using FindAGrave for Family History Research

According to GenealogyInTime.com's calculation of the number of online visits, FindAGrave.com has become the second most visited genealogy-related website in the world after Ancestry.com. With 143 million grave records, in my opinion, it is likely visited by many people outside the genealogical community who are simply interested in finding a grave of a friend or family member, but it also an important tool for genealogical research. FindAGrave.com was purchased by Ancestry.com in September of 2013. It is presently a free website. The content of the website comes from individual and organizational volunteer contributors.

Information about the graves is contained primarily on a "Memorial" page. The information concerning the deceased is provided by the program's registered users. Here is a typical Memorial page:

The page may contain as little as the name of the deceased and the name of the cemetery or as much as an entire biography with links to other family members who are registered in FindAGrave.com. Here is a screenshot of the links for Henry Martin Tanner.

Normally, the program will contain a photo of the deceased's grave marker. In this case the photo of the grave is on the Photos page.

As you may be able to tell from some of the screenshots, because of its popularity, the website makes money by advertising products and services. Since the information is user contributed and usually lacks any source citations. any information that appears on the Memorial page will be verified by careful researchers. You should always be aware that because grave markers are usually fabricated some time after the death date, the information on grave markers including birth and death dates, may or may not be accurate. But in some cases, the grave marker inscription may be the only record available containing information about the date of birth and/or death. Generally, information supplied by users of any online genealogy program without source citations, including the information on the grave marker itself, should be considered unreliable until it is further substantiated by other sources. If the FindAGrave.com program contributors have supplied source citations, even then, those sources should be checked to verify that the information was extracted correctly.

If you look at the list of family members above from the screenshot of the Memorial Page, you can see that it reports that Henry Martin Tanner had two wives. There is also a list of 13 children, but other genealogical records show that he actually had 17 children. In the FindAGrave.com Memorial the children belonging to each wife are not identified and the list contains some of the children from one of the wives and some from the other. There is also a list of siblings. His father, reported correctly as Sidney Tanner had 23 children. Of those, Henry had 7 full-siblings and 16 half-siblings. The program only lists a total of 14 siblings. The information in the program indicates that 6 of the siblings are half-siblings and the remaining ones are assumed to be those of the listed wife, Julia Ann Shepherd Tanner which turns out to be correct according to other sources. Some of the full names of the listed family members is not provided, even though that information is easily obtained. In short, the information supplied is helpful, but should not be assumed to be either complete or entirely accurate.

Carefully done genealogical research requires a source or sources for every asserted piece of information. For example, the details of the story related by the FindAGrave.com contributor may be found in the following book, available in PDF format for free from the FamilySearch.org Books section.

Tanner, George S. 1964. Henry Martin Tanner; Joseph City, Arizona Pioneer, Born June 11, 1852, San Bernardino, California, Died March 21, 1935, Gilbert, Arizona. [Place of publication not identified.

The information given by the FindAGrave.com program may be informative, but details, dates, places and names need to be further documented.

The location of the individual graves listed for other family members may give some idea of the places where the family lived thus providing clues to additional documents. Unfortunately, the only way to see the location of each of the family member graves is to visit each linked Memorial Page. For example, here is a screenshot of a part of the Memorial Page for Sidney Tanner, Henry Martin Tanner's father.

Some of the same comments I made about the Memorial Page for Henry Martin Tanner apply to this page for his father, Sidney Tanner. As shown on Sidney's Detail Page on FamilySearch.org, he had four wives and 23 children. The information on FindAGrave.com is incomplete.

These observations apply to all unsupported user contributed online websites, including the vast majority of the online family trees. Information is copied and passed around the web without users either questioning its accuracy or completeness. As valuable as FindAGrave.com can be, genealogical researchers need to view it as a starting point for further research.

New Look with FamilySearch Research Wiki Upgrade

The FamilySearch.org Research Wiki has undergone a major facelift. Changes to the Research Wiki have been pending for years and the makeover will add a lot of on-screen territory to the pages. When it was first introduced back in 2008, the Research Wiki was unknown and almost impossible to find. Slowly over years, it has moved to its place of prominence in the FamilySearch.org Search tools. This vast genealogical reference work recently passed the 83,000 page mark and continue to accumulate valuable data about the entire process of genealogical research.

The changes to the Research Wiki include the following as taken from a recent email announcement from FamilySearch.

• All articles will be retained in the new upgraded version of the Wiki.
• Navigation has changed from the right side of the screen to the left.
• Country and State pages are being redesigned for easier use. This redesign will take place as close to the time of the new release as possible, but may not be completed when the upgrade takes place.
• The URL for the Wiki has been changed for better usability to https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Main_Page.
• The Rich Text editor will be replaced with an easy-to-use Visual Editor.
• The upgraded version of the Wiki will be editable in all browsers, including Chrome.

The changes will be ongoing, but should not interfere with the use of the Research Wiki's content. With its expanded browser user base, I suggest that more users may wish to become involved in editing and adding content to the Research Wiki. If you are unfamiliar with the content, I further suggest this is a good time to become acquainted or reacquainted with the most valuable tool on the Internet for genealogical information. 

Reflections on the Findmypast/Mocavo announcement

[Note: This post contains information gleaned from the Internet and my own personal opinions, observations and speculations.]

At one time, Mocavo.com was an upcoming competitor to the "Big 4" online genealogical database programs. They were acquiring new collections of records at such an astounding rate and I predicted back in 2014, that they would soon create the "Big 5." In June of 2014, Mocavo.com was purchased by Findmypast.com. The new announcement indicates that the present content of Mocavo.com will be "merged" into Findmypast.com. This move greatly expands the Findmypast.com database and helps it become a major supplier of unique U.S. resources in additions to its impressive records from England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

The termination of operation the Mocavo.com website is another incident in the ongoing evolution of resources on the Internet. It also highlights the economies of scale experienced by very large, online database programs. As shown in the following Google Trends graph, Findmypast.com has been running very close to Ancestry.com in the frequency of searches. The addition of substantial collections of primarily U.S. based resources should assist Findmypast.com to increase its market position even though Mocavo.com has a comparably lower level of online presence.

This type of change should forewarn genealogists of the need to backup all of their data. Keeping all your genealogical eggs in one genealogical program can be hazardous and even the larger companies may discontinue their databases at any time.

In the past, such acquisitions, such as Ancestry.com's acquisition of Footnote.com that became Fold3.com, have been used by the companies to create separate "profit centers" in the form of individually subscribed database websites. I hope the reference to a merger of the information as shown in the notice on the Mocavo.com website is accurate. I think the existence of a separate fee-based website is not nearly as useful to those of us in the genealogical research community as are the larger consolidated websites. Of course, another fee-based website may be more monetarily profitable to the larger companies.

I note that a now, old news story from 2015 indicated that Ancestry.com was up for sale by its owner, Permira Advisers LLC. It would seem to be a possibility that Findmypast.com (owned by D.C. Thomson and Co. Ltd) would be in a good position to acquire Ancestry.com. If that were to happen, the consolidated company would easily be the largest online genealogy company in the world. Although Ancestry.com claims that position now, I suggest that MyHeritage.com may be larger or in a good position to become the largest online genealogical database company in the near future. Then again, maybe Ancestry.com has become so profitable that Permira no longer wants to sell?

Mocavo.com moves to Findmypast.com

The Mocavo.com website is being deactivated as of midnight, 23 March 2016. The announcement does not indicate the time zone, so I suspect it is GMT. Mocavo.com was purchased by Findmypast.com in June of 2014. As indicated by the announcement, all of the resources now available on Mocavo.com will be moved to Findmypast.com. This is a major addition to the resources of Findmypast.com and puts them in a much stronger position with regard to resources in the United States.

More about this later.

Who are we? A Genealogical Perspective

Who are we? Along with the difficulty in defining genealogy at all, this is one of most interesting questions about being a genealogical researcher. The Mesa FamilySearch Library recently held a conference in Peoria, Arizona, on the westside of Phoenix, Arizona and gathered some interesting statistics on those who attended.

73% of the attendees were female and only 27% of the attendees were male. These numbers roughly correspond to my own observations. I could speculate as to the reason that the make up of the genealogical community is heavily populated with females, but my opinions would be dismissed as biased and unscientific. But in any gathering of genealogists, you are more likely to see a predominance of women over men.

The age statistics also reflect a heavy bias. Here are the numbers:

UNDER 20		6	2%
21-30		7	3%
31-40		12	5%
41-50		18	7%
51-65		62	25%
OVER 65		147	58%
		252

One obvious conclusion about the male/female relationship is likely the age factor. More women live to old age than men. According to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study, "Life Expectancy at Birth (in years) by Gender," on the average women live 5 years longer than men in the United States. I would think you would have to discount the attendance numbers by the number of men who came to the conference simply because their wives required them to tag along. It is also interesting to note that the percentage of the total population of the U.S. over 65 is only about 14% so the number of women over 65 involved in very disproportionate. See The World Bank, Population ages 65 and above (% of total).

My own observations of the number of younger people involved directly in genealogy would place the number far lower than these attendance figures might imply.