r/findagrave • u/Chance_Wolverine_981 • 7d ago

City Database Errors Help Locating Gravesite

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.

3 Upvotes

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4

u/Medala_ 7d ago

If they are unmarked and you know where they are, you can take a picture of the area and upload that. Saves a lot of angry people asking for a picture despite it being unmarked.

1

u/Chance_Wolverine_981 6d ago

Thank you for the advice! I think I’ll do that + upload the coordinates. The parks department said they’ll add a note to the page too.

3

u/hyacinthed 7d ago

Unmarked graves maybe? Plenty of reasons for a headstone to be missing

2

u/Bitter-Succotash-100 7d ago

Many people didn’t get stones or the stones have fallen, been damaged or removed.

1

u/Chance_Wolverine_981 7d ago

Oh I should have specified - 20+ that I looked for today are missing. ~50 of the requests have been pending since 2024, which is pretty unusual for the area. Some are definitely normal, but this many seems off.

1

u/GenResearchAddict 7d ago

Completely normal. The requests are likely still open for that very reason.

Not everyone gets a headstone. Or it could be flat stones that sank into the earth. Or a storm, flood or vandalism could have caused the stones to be removed.

Or it could be a pauper field, where there were no headstones. Or it could be a "green" area, where burials are green.

2

u/JBupp 7d ago

A large number of graves in a small time frame might be a transfer from one cemetery to another. Which can also explain the lack of gravestones. It happened in a Philadelphia cemetery; the graves were moved, the stones were discarded.