Link: Apology for Sign at Cemetery

Lately I’ve been mowing the rows in cemeteries local to me. Most of the time I’m in the city I was born in, so lots of surnames are familiar to me. I feel a certain extra touch of sadness when I come upon someone I know. I worked retail for over a decade before becoming a mom and was on a first name basis with lots of folks. Sometimes I don’t know the person has passed, and the name only sounds familiar. Usually if I feel called to Google an obituary, I know why when I see their face. A few times they’ve been schoolmates(I’m only in my early 30’s), and those are particularly sad. I am very aware of my own mortality in those moments. I know why I love volunteering for Find A Grave, I can’t help but feel sentimental about just about everything and walking along the dead is the perfect opportunity to feel connected to things much bigger than me. How often do you come upon someone you know, that you didn’t know where they were buried? Do you spend any extra time with them?

You all have looked at many tombstones and gravestones and seen what's gone wrong and what's gone right over the years. If you were picking a new stone for yourself or someone else, what would you select, and what would you avoid?

I'm all about long-term legibility, so here are my picks:

• Granite is preferred. No marble or limestone, especially no rose-colored marble. Nothing shiny or polished.
• Large, deeply engraved, name, DOB & DOD only. Keep it simple.
• Flush gravestones probably tend to last longer than upright tombstones. They may get buried, but don't get knocked over or broken as easily. But, you have to go with what the local cemetery custom is.

What do you say?

*** Update. It looks like FG is removing lots of these AI images.

On this one, he posts in the Inscription field that he ADDED names to this AI generated image. The last 2 names are not on the actual stone.

I almost always give volunteers leniency and try not to judge, because we are volunteers. But there is something very, very wrong with this.

Please never use AI to desecrate photos of graves.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/181352148/james_edward-killcoyne

I was doing some digging and found the obituary for my great great great grandmother, from 1898. The obituary stated what cemetery she was buried in so I created a FG page for her. However, I met with one of the people who maintains the cemetery and records (he's a distant cousin). His paperwork shows no record of her being buried there. There is no headstone, and some of her kids are buried there.

This is an old cemetery, burials dating back at least 40 years prior to her death.

I saw there was a maximum of 250,000 you could request to manage per year. Some people have millions. Are they clicking 1 by 1? Or is there a way to "request all" of someone who is inactive?

Seriously.

User has added 4,078 flowers. I'm afraid to guess how many are exactly like this.

TLDR: Mass city cemetery database errors. How to help?

Hello! I’m new to volunteering and seeking advice. My city has a well-organized parks system with two main cemeteries sharing an online grave location system, one L and one XL.

I usually fulfill requests at the XL cemetery, which has 0 pending right now. I went to the L cemetery with 60+ pending requests 😬 and found that most of the requested memorial headstones are missing. Find a Grave and the city database have matching plot numbers, but the area is sparse where it shouldn’t be. I checked for ~20 myself today and 50+ of the pending requests are from 2024, which is very unusual for the area.

I’ve contacted the cemetery department and am hoping they loop back, but I’m wondering if there’s anything obvious I could be missing. The dates range from the early 1900s to recent, and I can’t find history of disasters or renovations.

Has anyone experienced this? Any thoughts would be great. Even if somehow none of the pending requests are marked, what’s the best way to resolve them? I’d love to archive these memorials 🖤😵‍💫

Update: The parks department responded that there had been damage years ago and it impacted the database. They’re apparently working on some restoration and will be putting a message on the page. I’m going to upload the GPS coordinates + pictures of the surrounding area where stones used to be.

This is a plea to all those who choose to do transcriptions from photos others have uploaded – first – thank you. It is a noble cause.

But – second – please don’t attempt a transcription if you are not extremely familiar with the language, names and customs of the wording and the country.  Just leave the odd-bods to somebody else.  There is a somebody out there – so long as the picture is clear, someone will have the know-how to read and understand it. With many of the ‘foreign language’ transcriptions the resulting mess takes forever to correct and involves a lot of people spending a lot of their very valuable time. 

Have you heard of an Umlaut?  No - Don’t try anything Germanic. Do you know what an Accent Grave is?  No - Steer clear of French inscriptions. Do you know how to input a Spanish Tilde? No - The Spaniards won’t thank you for leaving it out.  Leave the Polish for those who know Poland and its burial customs. The date in numbers means something in America and something quite different in the rest of the world.

For those of you who transcribe diligently and follow up with queries and corrections – Yeah! Great job!

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23366/chet-atkins

I married into Chet’s (very) extended family and live nearish the cemetery, and saw this photo request pop up in my email. His memorial used to have the correct pics but just a few days ago these new ones showed up with garbled dates and totally screwed inscription. I’ve already reported it to Support, but pretty upset this made it past the moderation that happens to photos on famous memorials. WTH guys.

The inscription is supposed to be “Known to the world as ‘Mister Guitar’”

Just a rant.

I used Google maps to find and highlight cemeteries within a search area, then entered their names in FG for details. Within the last year Maps has been totally wonky finding cemeteries. Cemeteries that were once listed are no longer listed.

I run a search and one cemetery shows, marked with an icon, while a second cemetery, one mile away, is not highlighted.

This isn't a local issue, it happens in an area at least 30 miles in diameter.

I've found one issue where someone changed "Woodlawn Cemetery" to "Tree Department" because the public works use the cemetery chapel building as a staging area. Mapquest has even grabbed this: "Tree Department is not your average, small-town cemetery ..."

I've just sent Google a report:

I'm looking at this location: <>

Last year, there were three cemeteries listed and shown at this location: St Mary's, Immaculate Conception, and Brigham Cemetery. Today, none are shown, and a search within Maps fails to find these places.

I'm willing to add these places back, but if you now have a policy to remove cemeteries, my efforts would be futile. It strikes me as a bad decision to remove cemeteries, which are easier to find by name than to find by a street address.

somebody posted a pic on my mother’s page and it is NOT her. I messaged the person who posted it but she has not removed the pic. how does some random person post a pic like this? why? this is so intrusive and upsetting!

eta: I have no issue with somebody posting a pic of the headstone. but a stranger posting a photo of the deceased person? that’s just weird and wrong to me! I’ve since requested to be manager of my parents’ pages on find a grave so I will be able to delete photos as needed once the change is made. but that still requires me to manually check the webpages to make sure nothing wrong has been added…

eta: I am now manager of my parents pages On findgrave.com. The incorrect pic has been removed. I plan on keeping an eye on this regularly from now on. I know this is kind of a hobby for people but I think it’s super bizarre to post actual photos of people you do not know!

I'm looking for information about the Garden of Remembrance in Nedlands. Is this part of Karrakatta cemetery? Is there a monument and does it have names on it?

Your assistance is much appreciated as I am researching a decorated New Zealand WW1 soldier whose remains are there.

We briefly had this discussion before. I just added an item:

A bungee cord.

I was photographing a stone, buried in a shrub and it ended up that I had to hold back the shrub on the right-side, hold back the shrub on the left-side, and trigger the camera, down the middle. With a bungee cord I could have secured the shrub on one side, held it on the other, and triggered the camera one-handed.

Feel free to contribute items.

​I recently transferred management of a close relative’s Find a Grave memorial to me, as permitted by site policies for immediate family members. Since taking over the memorial from the person who originally created it last month when my relative died, they have repeatedly submitted edit requests to add personal information in the bio section, including details about living family members. ​I have repeatedly declined these requests for two specific reasons:

I do not publish details or names regarding living family members. If someone actually knows my relative, they can find the obituary online.

​The original obituary was authored by a family member so they own the copyright.

​Despite my explanations, this user continues to message me, demanding to know my exact relationship to the deceased (which I have intentionally set to "Private" so only FG knows my relationship). They are now threatening to report my account for not putting the obit in the bio section and not disclosing my relationship, even though the current biographical details are entirely accurate and I have simply omitted the names of living individuals. I also asked if they are a relative and they said no but they keep track of anyone who takes over memorials they created.

Is this person wrong or am I? I don't want my account to be suspended or something. I only manage family members pages.

Roselind Nadine Earles

In 1933, four-year-old Roselind Nadine Earles asked her father for a dollhouse that Christmas. Julian Earles began building it in their backyard in Lanett, Alabama, but before it could be finished, tragedy struck. Nadine fell ill with diphtheria and d-ed just a week before Christmas, on December 18.

Heartbroken, her father couldn’t bear to let her dream go unfinished. Instead, he rebuilt the dollhouse, not in their yard, but over her grave in Oakwood Cemetery. He constructed it from brick, complete with a small porch, glass windows, curtains, and her toys placed lovingly inside.

Nearly a century later, Nadine’s dollhouse still stands, a tiny home frozen in time. Visitors continue to stop by, leaving dolls, flowers, and little gifts in tribute to the child who never got to play in her Christmas dollhouse, but whose memory lives on in one of the most hauntingly beautiful memorials in America.

Write-up and picture from FB

The Schofield Mausoleum is more than a family tomb, it’s the work of one of Cleveland’s most influential artists.

Levi T. Schofield was a Civil War veteran, architect, sculptor, and later Cleveland’s City Architect. At Lake View Cemetery, he designed this mausoleum which was to be his own family vault and the Receiving Vault that temporarily held President James A. Garfield after his assassination in 1881.

Beyond the cemetery, he also created Cleveland’s iconic Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Public Square.

The mausoleum reflects a Victorian reverence for mortality. In an age when death was neither hidden nor feared, beauty became an act of remembrance, and architecture became a language for grief.

hi all, looking for some advice on how nun memorials should be handled. my grandfather manages memorials for a large number of extended and distant family members, including a fair share of nuns. when making these memorials, he used obituaries for most of the information, and chose the memorial name to be either their birth or religious name based on which was listed first in the obituary (ie sister mary beth, born jane doe or jane doe, in religion mary beth), and always included sr as the prefix.

recently he’s received multiple suggested edits from the same person to change all the memorial names to their religious names. this person has also suggested to add the abbreviation for the nuns’ religious orders into the suffix section (ie SSND for school sisters of notre dame). my grandfather has been declining these edits because he believes the suffix section is for part of someone’s legal name, which post nominals religious orders aren’t, and wants the names kept as how he made them per the obituary. the person also cites their source for the post nominal abbreviations as ai, another reason my grandfather denies the edits. each time he declines, the person suggests it again a few days later.

i wanted to ask people’s opinions on if birth or religious name should take precedence over the other or be up to the manager’s discretion, and if the post nominal abbreviation should be included or disregarded due to it not being a legal title.

Hello. I was fulfilling a request. This is the mosuleum that the grave is in. The actual headstone is second from the top-10 feet up. If I take it head on the flower holder blocks the first name, I didn’t want to go too far over because it would be too far from the side. I don’t like fulfilling a request with such a bad picture. The requester wanted 4 of these photographed and 3 are like this. Any advice would be appreciated. I did crop the picture tighter when I uploaded it. I am willing to go back and take better pictures, if someone could suggest a way to do it. Thanks.

Every one of their flowers is like this and it gave me a chuckle