It’s Follow Friday and today I recommend three online databases (FindAGrave, BillionGraves, and Interment) of cemetery records that should be very helpful with your family research; enjoy!
FindAGrave.com, developed in 1995, founded in 1998, and incorporated in 2000, is a website that contains a massive list of cemeteries and graves from all over the world. As of July 27, 2012, it has been reported that this website has over 84 million records — all provided by individuals or genealogical societies. As of today, I’ve been an active Find A Grave Member for 1 year, 2 months, and 10 days! One of the features I enjoy most about this database/website is the ability to create Virtual Cemeteries grouping collateral & lineal family members together regardless of where they’re actually buried in the world (A VIRTUAL CEMETERY HAS NO RELATION TO A REAL CEMETERY!). I released my first virtual cemetery Memorial Day Weekend 2012. I will launch an official Claiming Kin Virtual Cemetery next year!
BillionGraves.com, consist of a website and a smart phone app developed by App Time, LLC. Their goal is ” . . . to provide an expansive family history database for records and images from the world’s cemeteries, all tagged with GPS locations.” So how does this site work? “Volunteers use smartphones to take GPS-tagged pictures of headstones in local cemeteries, which are then uploaded to the Internet and transcribed for easy searching. The phone’s GPS helps to organize cemeteries correctly which makes it easy for researchers to accurately locate their ancestors’ burial locations. I’ve been a registered member of the site since the fall of 2011. But I’m sad to say that I’m not an active member — just yet! One of the reasons for that is that their smart phone app is only available for iPhones and select Androids. I have a Windows phone — ARGH! Still, I plan to help out by transcribing many of the photos that have been uploaded to the website very soon!
Interment.net, is a free archive of grave transcriptions from thousands of cemeteries around the world. This site began as a personal website called Cemetery Interment List on the Internet in 1997 that only provided links to other websites with cemetery records. But in just one year (1998) it was transformed into Interment.net as it began to host cemetery transcriptions too. So what makes Internment.net different from FindAGrave and BillionGraves? Well for starters, there’s no biographical information and photos on the website. They purposely limit their information to what is actually inscribed on the headstone. And lastly, many of the inscriptions are from cemeteries that no longer exist . . . which according to their website is “providing a place where cemeteries can be preserved in documentation for generations to come!”
Claiming Kin Genealogy 