Find A Grave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| URL | http://www.findagrave.com<tr><th>Commercial?</th><td>Yes</td></tr> |
|---|---|
| Type of site | Online database<tr><th>Registration</th><td>Required only to contribute</td></tr> |
| Owner | Jim Tipton |
| Created by | Jim Tipton |
Find A Grave (or findagrave.com) is an on-line database of cemeteries and burial records.
Contents |
[edit] History
The website was founded in 1995 by Jim Tipton. He could not find an existing site that catered to his hobby of visiting the graves of famous people and in the beginning the site only listed celebrities, be they famous or infamous.
Over time, as thousands of visitors wished to use the template to list others of equal personal, if not universal, importance, the site was expanded to include all persons deceased or with pre-need burial sites marked and in place. There is no charge to add a listing. To offset operating costs, each memorial page contains advertisements that can be permanently removed via sponsorship of the memorial.
The heart of Find A Grave, however, is the 200,000+ contributors who submit thousands of new listings, updates, corrections, photographs and virtual flowers every day. As of October 2006 more than 13 million unique "famous" and "non-famous" grave records have been catalogued by Find A Grave contributors.
[edit] Features
The web site contains listings of cemeteries and graves from all around the world. American cemeteries are organized by state and county; and, many cemetery records contain Google Maps (with GPS coordinates supplied by contributors and the U.S. Geological Survey) and photographs of the cemeteries. Individual grave records contain some or all of the following data fields: Dates and places of birth and death, biographical information, cemetery and plot information, photographs (grave marker, the individual, etc.), and contributor information.
Visitors have the ability to take a stroll in an online cemetery as well as leave token offerings on memorial pages. These offerings, known as "virtual flowers" are often an image of a flower or other object and visitors can choose to leave a brief note with them. The latest 3 offerings are visible on the main page of the entry. Selecting "Click here to view all notes..." enables a user to view all offerings left. As infamous people - including criminals, dictators, and other generally disliked people are also included on Find A Grave, administrators keep what they consider inappropriate messages from being posted in the virtual flowers section. In cases of extensive abuse, administrators can disable the virtual flowers feature for a person's memorial.
In addition to flowers, registered users have the option to request photographs of the gravestones. Photo requests are fulfilled by contributors who have volunteered for a particular U.S. Zip Code.
[edit] Forums
Find A Grave Forums is a message board for contributors to the main Find A Grave website and many persons that are interested in genealogy and/or cemeteries. There are many persons active in the Forums that may have made few entries on the main site, while others that contribute extensively to the main site have never registered for the Forums. 
There are sections for a variety of posts by subject
- Cemeteries and Genealogy - for discussions of cemeteries and burial data.
- Finding Famous Graves - for discussing aspects of visiting and researching the graves of notable people.
- Help With Find A Grave - one of the most useful areas for getting prompt answers to problems with the site and/or to list changes that require a Find A Grave Administrator's action.
- The Civil War - Civil War graves questions and information.
- Cemetery Preservation - discussions of issues and techniques for cemetery preservation.
- Mourning, Grief and Emotional Support - 'support group' to receive and offer support to others over the loss of loved ones.
- The Lounge - social 'anything goes' forum which just about says it all.
- Surnames - for discussion on issues of genealogy related to a specific surname.
- There is a section for each state of the United States for discussions of graves by geographic region.
- Sections for Canada and Europe have been added as well.
