Carol Darrow
Ancestry.com publishes a list of ‘New Records’ on its front page and this week the news is all about Find-A-Grave (www.findagrave.com). Find-A-Grave is a free website that has been the godsend for family researchers trying to find the final resting place of ancestors long gone. Before Find-A-Grave, we depended on volunteers who canvassed cemeteries writing down the information on tombstones and posting those lists on Rootsweb pages. The information still comes from volunteers as well as family members but it is now located on an organized Internet site.
The ‘What’s New’ on Ancestry (which links to Find-A-Grave) are six new international Find-A-Grave databases including from Mexico, the U.K. and Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Germany and Brazil – most dating from the 1800s. Now before you get too excited, this is just an initial effort to extend Find-A-Grave beyond American borders. Not every person buried in these countries is listed and there may be just a scattering of early graves dating back to the 1800s. It depends on whether those people have tombstones that are engraved, accessible, and readable. Some U.S. cemeteries have been desecrated and those tombstones are lost. The same happens all over the world.
You might want to brush up on burial rituals in those countries as well. In France, for example, you actually are renting a final burial place for 50 years – not for eternity! After the time has expired, your bones may be removed to make room for someone else.
One more thing. The engravings on tombstones are in the native language. So if your Swedish or Portuguese (Brazil) is not fluent, you may not be able to pick out some of the information posted. So brush up on “born,” “died,” and months of the year in that language. You don’t want to overlook a significant bit of information that might get lost in translation.
~ Carol Cooke Darrow, CG, volunteers at DPL on Tuesday mornings and at the National Archives branch in Broomfield all day on Thursdays.