Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That was one of the coolest markers i've seen. At least, one of the most memorable.
I would ask all of you.. Volunteer with findagrave. Just.. Pick a local cemetery, go out there with the app loaded on your phone and walk the rows, checking, photographing, adding and validating.
Too many of the volunteers are people who sit on their butts and enter things from obits. Obits are fairly commonly wrong so far as spellings of names, dates of death, etc. Listen, i'm not TOTALLY knocking them, there's a place for them.. But that doesn't get everyone. It barely gets 50%.
A ~2300 interment cemetery I started on 2 weekends ago.. i've added over 112 new memorials that weren't documented, taken over 600 photographs and corrected about 150 incorrect memorials.
Noting correct names by comparing one obituary to another.
Good advice. I ran into this situation only this morning while working on my tree. I have a distant cousin who died 3 days ago. This relative was married twice. His first wife died nearly 45 years ago. He then remarried about 5 or 6 years later.
Long story short: The obituary printed this week has the wrong maiden name for his first wife. When I looked up the first wife's obit from 1972, her maiden name was completely different from the obit that ran this week.
Obviously, the current wife who supplied the information to the funeral home is having some memory problems. Was her maiden name "West" or "Bond"?
In this case, I am trusting the 1972 obit. The info was probably supplied 45 years ago by the distant cousin. He would obviously know his first wife's correct maiden name.
There are definitely "spiteful" omissions in obituaries.
About 40 years ago, I took obits for a large metropolitan newspaper. One morning, I got a call from (names changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike) an individual to place an obit for his father. The obit ran thusly (condensed, of course): "John Jones, 84, died Sunday. Beloved husband of the late Mary, father of John Jr., Martha, Eleanor and Thomas. Grandfather of blah-blah-blah. Funeral to be held at ABC Funeral Home on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. Yada, yada, yada."
Shortly afterward, I received a call from ABC Funeral Home with an obit: "John Jones, 84, died Sunday. Beloved husband of Elizabeth. Father of Matthew, Karen, and Susan. Grandfather of yikity-yikity... Funeral to be held at ABC Funeral Home on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. Interment to follow at The Blessed Garden of Endless Graves."
I commented that it was unusual to have two decedents by the same name in there at the same time and the funeral director said, "Oh, no. It's the same man. The "first family" and the "second family" couldn't be in the same room long enough together to have a joint funeral without starting WWIII, so they're having two!" Of course, the "second family" had "custody" of the body, so they got to have the graveside service. I guess that was a lot easier than burying him in the morning and then digging him up in time to get him back to the funeral home for the second service, huh?
So, anybody fifty years later researching John Jones could get hold of the wrong obit and figure they got the wrong person. All because the "first family" hates the "second family".....
Funny story! However, once you knew the truth, did you write an obit mentioning both the "first family" and the "second family"?
That was one of the coolest markers i've seen. At least, one of the most memorable.
I would ask all of you.. Volunteer with findagrave. Just.. Pick a local cemetery, go out there with the app loaded on your phone and walk the rows, checking, photographing, adding and validating.
Too many of the volunteers are people who sit on their butts and enter things from obits. Obits are fairly commonly wrong so far as spellings of names, dates of death, etc. Listen, i'm not TOTALLY knocking them, there's a place for them.. But that doesn't get everyone. It barely gets 50%.
A ~2300 interment cemetery I started on 2 weekends ago.. i've added over 112 new memorials that weren't documented, taken over 600 photographs and corrected about 150 incorrect memorials.
Thank you for taking the time to photograph cemetery markers & submit to find a grave. That is a very generous thing to do.
I only wanted to say that I have found memorial monuments carved & placed in cemeteries which had incorrect dates on them.
That was one of the coolest markers i've seen. At least, one of the most memorable.
I would ask all of you.. Volunteer with findagrave. Just.. Pick a local cemetery, go out there with the app loaded on your phone and walk the rows, checking, photographing, adding and validating.
Too many of the volunteers are people who sit on their butts and enter things from obits. Obits are fairly commonly wrong so far as spellings of names, dates of death, etc. Listen, i'm not TOTALLY knocking them, there's a place for them.. But that doesn't get everyone. It barely gets 50%.
A ~2300 interment cemetery I started on 2 weekends ago.. i've added over 112 new memorials that weren't documented, taken over 600 photographs and corrected about 150 incorrect memorials.
Good for you and the others who invest their time.
Read an obit where an angry step child was left out by request of deceased, so step child called paper and had obit written leaving out all natural children. How hurtful and spiteful.
I know this family personally, the step children (in their older adult years) had not been step children for over twelve years due to death of their natural parent. The current deceased had specifically asked that only the natural children be listed. Look at how the news on line just did a redo after family thretened lawsuit. (Vivian M. Woods Hutchinson News Hutchinson, Ks).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
