Thankful Thursday

This may seem a bit obscure, but today I am thankful for all of the volunteers and organizers behind the website Find A Grave.  This website's purpose is to allow people to search for graves of their family members/friends/ancestors/celebrites/etc. no matter where the grave is located in the world.

According to their website:

What is Find A Grave?
Find A Grave is a resource for finding the final resting place of family, friends, and 'famous' individuals.

With millions of names and photos, it is an invaluable tool for the genealogist and family history buff. Find A Grave memorials can contain rich content including photos, biographies and dates. Visitors can leave 'virtual flowers' on the memorials they visit, completing the online cemetery experience.

Find A Grave's primary purpose is a graves registration website.

Find A Grave's secondary purpose is a memorialization/remembrance site.

Find A Grave's tertiary purpose is a genealogical resource.

Memorial contributions to Find A Grave should at the least fulfill the primary purpose, registration of the final resting place. If a memorial contribution corresponds with only the primary purpose, it has fulfilled its part of Find A Grave's mission and is not required to correspond with the secondary and tertiary purposes. Fulfilling the other two is welcomed, encouraged and deeply appreciated, but as far as Find A Grave's mission goes, a memorial page isn't lacking if it does not.

Find A Grave has grown to be a wonderful and valuable resource for genealogy and genealogists, but that is adjunct to its main purpose.

As I stated back in June, I have been working feverishly on my family history and this website has been very helpful in locating grave stones of my ancestors which have in turn assisted me in filling in the missing pieces such as dates of birth, death, and sometimes even marriage dates.  However, this site would not be possible without the volunteers who sign up to help with photographing and documents grave sites. 

Since using the site I have signed up as a volunteer at my local cemetery.  How it works is when someone requests a photo of a particular person's grave at the cemetery I am registered with, I get an email notification and can claim it if it has not already been claimed by another volunteer in the area.  I would then go to the cemetery, locate the particular grave, clean it and photograph it, then upload the photos and any other notes from the grave such as an inscription to the website. 

This is such a great service and relies on the kind-heartedness of all of the people. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart!