Find a Grave Member for 12 Years

Today is my 12th anniversary of joining Find a Grave to add ancestor memorials, link ancestors to parents/siblings/children, post photos, post bite-sized bios, indicate which ancestors were veterans, offer suggested edits to improve memorials others have created, and use the site for cousin bait. All for free!

Above, my member profile page. Initially, I added a photo to personalize the page, then later added a "bio" listing the main ancestor branches I'm researching. Note that the profile offers the option of listing a "home page" - which, for me, is this genealogy blog. This makes it easy (and free) for cousins and surname researchers to contact me.

Another advantage of Find a Grave (owned by Ancestry) is that its memorials are included in search results on a number of major genealogy platforms, extending the reach of my ancestor memorial pages.

For convenience, I've created a number of virtual cemeteries in which I grouped listings of memorials for my paternal ancestors, my maternal ancestors, hubby's paternal ancestors, hubby's maternal ancestors, and related families. I can share the URL of these virtual cemeteries with relatives who are interested in knowing where family members were buried.

Over the years, several cousins and FAN club members (friends, associates, neighbors of my ancestors) have gotten in touch with me via Find a Grave's messaging feature. And I've connected with a couple of distant cousins because I discovered memorials they had made for our mutual ancestors and I sent them a message.

As I conduct research, I really appreciate when I find a memorial for one of my ancestors and see that someone has carefully photographed the grave, transcribed the info, and maybe even added a couple of extra pieces of info. I've also requested grave photos a few times, and had most of these requests fulfilled. I've thanked these volunteers privately, but this is my public thank-you to the many thousands of volunteers who add memorials and photos on Find a Grave.

Let me say that I entirely agree with the criticisms of Find a Grave for not preventing memorial pages from being created immediately after reports of peopling being killed in a terrible crime or disaster. There must be technical fixes to stop this, and by now, after years of criticism and outrage, it should be a top priority.

For myself, even after a dozen years, I continue to use Find a Grave every week, sometimes every day, to search for clues on memorial pages or add details to improve my ancestors' memorial pages for the sake of future generations.