Recently I was working with the youth at the Granite FamilySearch Center. The weekly activity was to find ancestors using burial sources such as “Find a Grave” and “Billion Graves.” The teens enjoyed learning how to use the sites and discovered interesting information about their relatives.
Find a Grave is an important resource because it provides cemetery and grave listings from around the world. Many of the cemetery records contain Google Maps with GPS coordinates supplied by contributors as well as photographs of the cemeteries and grave sites. Individual grave records may contain dates and places of birth and death, biographical information, photographs of the headstone and/or the person, and other information contributed by the family.
One of the excellent features of “Find a Grave” is that it sometimes links to the additional pages of graves of parents, children and siblings of the person. As I was preparing to teach, I noticed that there was a Find a Grave hint for John Frost, the first cousin of my 3rd great grandfather, Henry Frost. Our family knew that John and his family had immigrated to Australia about 1840. Besides discovering that John’s burial was “Buried or Lost at Sea,” the Find a Grave website also provided links to the graves of his mother, his wife and his ten children!
On John Frost’s page, the contributor had added a photo of the church where John was baptized, two newspaper articles chronicling the family’s arrival in Australia, details of John’s death, and a biography. I learned that the family traveled to Australia with nine children, that John was unsuccessful as a farmer and tried his luck in the gold fields in Victoria, and died in an accident at the age of 56. Although there was no photo of John, the webpage included photos of his mother, his wife, and eight of his children. I also found a sweet epitaph inscribed on the tombstone of Ellen Martha Frost Longmire (John’s daughter) and her husband, Henry: “Oh, loved one dear, we miss you near. From the home you loved so well; we pray that God has found you rest, with the angels of the blest.”
I noticed that the Find a Grave source was not connected to some of John’s family members on FamilySearch, and that no FamilySearch Hints for the website were on their page. In cases like this, you can still add this source by doing the following:
- On the Find a Grave page of the person, copy the Memorial ID number found under the vital information
- Go to FamilySearch, click on the Search tab, and select Records.
- In Records, search for Find a Grave Index in the “Search for Collections” field.
- In the Find a Grave collection, select More Options.
- Under “Add Record Options,” select “Affiliate Record Identifier” and put in the Memorial ID number which will bring up your ancestor’s Find a Grave source.
- When the source comes up, you can attach it by placing your ancestor’s Personal Identification Number in the Search panel and clicking Select.
I am still adding people and information about John and his descendants to the FamilySearch family tree from the information I have found on Find a Grave. For this family it has been a valuable resource!
President Nelson has taught, “When our hearts turn to our ancestors, something changes inside us. We feel part of something greater than ourselves.” Learn more about your ancestors and feel this yourself by trying out the “Find a Grave Index!”
– Marianne Bates, Consultant, Granite FamilySearch Center
(Photo of grave of Ellen Martha Frost Longmire and her husband Henry Longmire)
Source:
Find a Grave. Ancestry.com
“John Frost,” URL: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/264980619/john_frost
“Ellen Martha Frost Longmire,” URL: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/193826439/ellen_martha_longmire
“What is a Memorial?” URL: https://support.findagrave.com/s/article/What-is-a-Memorial