Dear Madame LN,
I read in Aunt
Louise's blog about the graveyard photos. Can you please tell me more about this?
How
does this help people who are doing their genealogy? How can I help with
it?"
Sincerely,
Want to Help
Dear Volunteer,
Have you ever wondered where your loved one was buried, and
what their gravesite looks like, and wished you could go visit their grave and
pay your respects in person? The cost of visiting all the graves of your
grandparents and great-grandparents and anyone else that you care about could
get pretty expensive--depending, of course, on where you live and where they
are buried. If the thought is exciting but daunting to you, rest assured that
you’re not the only one who has felt that way, and there are people who are
helping each other do something about it.
The principle is quite simple: you take pictures of graves in
your neighborhood cemetery and upload them to a website for others to view, and
other people take pictures of graves near them and do the same for you, thus
making it possible for you to vicariously visit your loved ones’ graves. One of
the websites that offers this service, FindaGrave (mentioned in Aunt Louise’s
blog post, above), allows you to create memorials and leave electronic flowers
in memory of your loved one. FindaGrave has been around for more than 10 years
and is used by genealogists and others to collect names and dates to add to
their records. Here is a link to their FAQ page where you can learn more about
their service: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=listFaqs#97
Billiongraves.com is similar to FindaGrave, but it has not
been around for nearly as long. Pictures for Billion Graves are uploaded by
volunteers using their smart phones or electronic note pads and utilizing GPS
so that the exact location of each grave is mapped out in each cemetery.
Volunteers visit cemeteries in their own neighborhoods and go systematically
from one headstone to another, taking pictures with their smart phones and
uploading them directly to the website. All you have to do is go to their
website and register, then download the app to your smart phone or other
electronic device, and start visiting cemeteries and taking pictures.
Wait! What if you don’t have a smart phone or other means of
taking GPS-enabled pictures? You can still help! People are needed to not only
take the pictures, but also extract the information from those pictures of the
headstones, and enter them into the searchable index.
It’s a lot like the indexing that we talked about before. In
fact, BillionGraves is affiliated with FamilySearch.org, the same organization
that does the indexing. Yet it’s also independent from Family Search. In other
words, even if you don’t want to sign up with Family Search, you can still just
do the Billion Graves. And if you don’t want to upload photos or extract
information from the photos, it’s okay. The information that has already been
extracted is still available for you to search at no charge. Anyone with
computer access can do it.
So what are you waiting for? Download the app, get
registered, and start searching. I bet you’ll have fun doing it!
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