Saturday, October 16, 2021

Try This Cousin Bait Trick on Find a Grave

FindaGrave.com has valuable features that can function as cousin bait. 

The site, owned by Ancestry, has 190 million+ memorial pages spanning the globe. 

To take advantage of the features, just register for free and sign in.

This is Family History Month, a good time to memorialize our ancestors' final resting places and improve their memorial pages...

One trick: Have you ever noticed the flowers or flags left at the bottom of a memorial page? 

Flowers as cousin bait

Above is a flower with a brief message that I left on one ancestor's memorial page,  identifying how I'm related to this man. Free cousin bait for anyone who looks at the bottom of that page! 

If you notice a flower or flag on a memorial page of your ancestor, read the message and click to see who left it. Maybe a relative left that flower. 

Any text shown in blue is clickable--such as the name of the user who is the source of the flower. Clicking to see the source of a flower or flag lets you learn more about that user. Did I mention this is all free for registered users?

Go to the source: user profile

If you click on M Wood as the source of the flower shown at top, you'll see my user profile page on Find a Grave. Similarly, if you click on W. Wood as the source of the flag posted at bottom of a memorial page for my husband's distant cousin, you'll be taken to my user profile page (since I left it in his name). 

On my user profile page, I list some of the surnames/locations that I'm researching. 

More than once, a possible cousin has clicked to see my profile, noticed a family-tree connection, and sent a message.

Similarly, if I find the memorial of an ancestor on Find a Grave, I look to see who's left a flower and click on the source. 

This trick has worked for me, putting me in touch with relatives and other people researching my ancestors. Maybe it will work for you? Try it during Family History Month!

This trick and others are explained in my new presentation, "Genealogical Clues and Cousin Bait on Find a Grave." 

-- My blog post for the October Genealogy Blog Party!

2 comments:

  1. I will have to try this; I haven't hooked any new cousins in a while!

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  2. I once found an obituary for an ancestor who had recently died so I left a message on the online guest book. I didn’t necessarily do it as cousin bait but it work out that way.

    ReplyDelete