Find A Grave can shorten the search

Nothing can take the place of visiting the final resting places of our ancestors, where we might feel some spiritual connection with them.

In previous generations, people often were buried on their own farms or in cemeteries near their homes, so it makes good research sense to visit cemeteries first and then to explore the countryside.

But what about those times when expense, health and everyday living get in the way of traveling to commune with an ancestor's spirit? Wouldn't it be nice if there were a Web site where researchers could view photographs of their ancestors' graves?

There is one, but Find A Grave - www.findagrave .com - doesn't make a good first impression. I'm a little put off every time I log on and am greeted with photographs of the late Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, and large type telling me I can "Find Famous Graves."

Jim Tipton started the site in 1995, not because he had an interest in genealogy but because he liked visiting graves of the rich and famous. So, I suppose we have to be tolerant of the celebrities here; if not for them, the site wouldn't exist.

Researching on Find A Grave is free; no subscription or membership is necessary. If visitors decide to become contributors to the site, however, they have to register, but that's free, too.

Search among 40 million graves

To search the site, from the home page, look to the right side: click on "Search 40 million graves records." A search form will appear. It allows for a variety of search parameters. A trial run with the Whiddon surname revealed the following:

•Entering only the surname Whiddon, leaving birth and death years blank, directing a search for "The United States" and "All States" netted 708 graves. I first told the search engine to sort the returns by cemetery name. Then I did the search again with directions to sort by individual names. Sorting by cemetery allows the searcher to see groupings of a given surname in a specific location.

•Entering "Whiddon" but narrowing the search to "the United States" and then "Alabama" decreased the results to 122 graves. I narrowed the results to 40 graves by adding the county "Houston."

•A search of an entire cemetery is possible from the home page by selecting "Search for a Cemetery." Results vary greatly. Some cemeteries have only a single grave listed while others have hundreds.

The interment listings and photographs are the work of individuals or genealogical societies who have entered the data. For example, members of the Florida Genealogical Society-Tampa are entering all the identified graves in the eight-volume publication "Hillsborough County, Florida Cemeteries, 1840-1985." As of a few weeks ago, they had completed the first two volumes.

Once a grave is entered, visitors can request more information or can contribute their own. By clicking on "Add a photo for this person" individuals can add a photograph of a grave or a person.

A few days ago, I discovered someone had entered the grave information for my Great-Grandpa Blankenship and his second wife. Their entries included two photographs of him that I had never seen. I didn't recognize the name of the person who posted the information, but I contacted her and we've since shared many family photographs and tidbits of family history. That's another plus to this site: finding heretofore unknown cousins who obviously have genealogical interests - and old family photographs.

Seeing the entry prompted me to add my own photographs, including one of Grandpa Blankenship's tombstone.

You can request a photo

Another button on the site allows visitors to request a photo of the grave. This service is provided by a bevy of volunteers scattered across the country. I recently joined the cadre and encourage readers to do so. Volunteers get their assignments by ZIP code. A requestor gives a name of an individual and a cemetery; the volunteer photographer takes the shot and uploads it to the requestor.

That calls for one caution when using this site. The entries with tombstone photographs obviously are reliable, but if the entry is based only on a paper record of the interment (without a photograph), it's easy to mistype the date, so you're bound to find errors.

Don't take any such birth and death dates as final proof of the events: Ask for the photographs. Better yet, this site can help you confirm your ancestor is there, so put the cemetery on your list to visit and photograph for yourself.

After all, although we love support and assistance of such Web sites, nothing can replace the thrill of walking the cemetery and touching the stone.