A few weeks back at the Accredited Genealogists Ireland annual shindig, I buttonholed a couple of colleagues and started to rant about findagrave.com. Until I noticed eyes starting to glaze and saw one person surreptitiously checking for an exit, So I stopped.
But now it’s your turn.
Findagrave was set up in 1995 by Jim Tipton as a way of sharing his hobby of visiting the graves of famous people, recording locations and inscriptions. He later expanded the site to allow visitors to the site to add what they’d found. It was quickly evident that hordes of people wanted to contribute. So in 2010, the focus changed to allow uploads for non-celebrities. At that point, it became clear the world was full of people obsessed with recording headstones, and the site rapidly became a free online way for users to share their transcripts publicly.
The genealogical connection is obvious, and in 2013 the site was bought by Ancestry.com. Expanded geographic coverage and foreign language support followed, but the basic crowd-sourcing model was retained. All the names in the transcripts were extracted and made searchable via the main Ancestry site, in its familiar pile-’em-high, sell-’em-dear formula.
Findagrave itself has since expanded hugely, but it remains plagued by its virtues. Crowd-sourcing means that individual uploaders are entirely responsible for what appears: non-existent locations, pet cemeteries, cemeteries with no, or one, or two transcripts, multiple copies of the same cemetery under slightly different names … Higgledy-piggledy isn’t the half of it.
So is the site actually useful for research? Emphatically, yes. The standing army of volunteers means that all sorts of half-forgotten graveyards have been visited and transcribed, as well as the standard collections of thousands of transcripts from large ones. For Ireland there is a particular problem, however. Below county level, the links are organised with no geographical consistency: county towns are confused with the counties themselves, townlands contain parishes, parishes contain other parishes, market towns include areas on the other side of the county… It’s a godawful mess, and a serious obstacle to the site’s usefulness.
So I’ve been doing something about it, identifying the civil parishes of the worthwhile transcripts and linking from our site to the transcript. Have a look at what they have for Kerry. That also neatly demonstrates something else new, the ability to filter the county listing of transcripts by transcriber, giving a good idea of who has done how much (and giving me a way of checking that I’m not duplicating things).
My favourite graveyard so far? The transcripts of the Irish National Stud. Someone out there is wondering if they’re related to Arkle. It takes all sorts.
Thank you for all your hard work.
I claim no kinship to Arkle
Eye roll not eye glaze?
Happy new year
It’s first the roll then the glaze!!
Hello John! Thanks for your Blog. A wee story about an experience I had with Findagrave. For several years I was bothered at being unable, after a long search process, to verify my suspicion that my Boylan (nee Barclay) great (x2) Grandmother died (1855) in Illinois, in or shortly after the birth of her only child, a girl. In Sep 1921, I entered her name into a search engine; immediately a Findagrave record appeared. I straight-away contacted the contributor. An almost immediate reply arrived. She was that very day in Marshall, Illinois, at a meeting, and with some friends went to the Cemetery. Her finding was that there was never a tombstone. That is an example of the wonderful community we have. It also enhanced my opinion of Findagrave. That site has presented me with a multitude of results over the past few years. Cheers! Cormac
Re my previous – 1921should be 2021! Sorry.
i claim kinship with Arkle as my wife says i am hung like a stallion (joke)
Thank you so much for your hard work. How about Londonderry, Meath and Westmeath next?:)
this is awesome john
i’m now fantasising about you also linking cantwell’s memorial inscriptions for wexford and wicklow, the entries in the journal for the preservation of the memorials of the dead, the transcriptions and photos hosted by the irish genealogical project…
Would’nt that be magical for us “yellowbellies”.
Thank you for the hard work you do, John.
Still looking for a Grandmother ——–Barnes She was married to James Barnes born 1826 She was his first wife. Haven’t been able to find her name nor the marriage. She died around 1854 or 55 and he lived near Cornwall Ontario He was Scotch she was Irish. She died in childbirth, her child James Roderick Barnes was her only child. James Barnes went on to marry two more times and I’ve found both those marriages, both in the same area, Glengarry, Cornwall, Ontario
I am not sure it has been noted yet…but many years ago the body of Man O War was shifted from Faraway Farm in Lexington, Kentucky to the Kentucky Horse Park…
Many people still visit him today…but it would be a useful listing for his fans…
For 3 generations he was a more revered member of our family than many of our human cousins..
Just thanks, John.
I love this rant!
It’s wonderful when you teach us something new and make us laugh to boot!
Looking forward to the next installment.
Since childhood I’ve been besotted with thoroughbreds and racing. An early hero was “Colonel” Edward Reilly Bradley, a wizard at both gambling and equine breeding. I knew my mother’s father was a Bradley from Ireland and fantasized that E.R. and I were related. Much later I morphed into a genealogy nerd and learned that the Colonel’s Bradleys and mine emigrated from the Sperrins to Pennsylvania around the same time. Fast forward, and the evidence for our relationship has piled up. In my 70’s now, it’s unlikely I’ll ever have a conclusive answer, yet gut feeling has taken me on a wonderful adventure. How does this relate to findagrave? I agree with you and have an urge to ensure that E.R., his foundational horses and their progeny are accurately included. All hail, La Troienne!
Find a Grave has totally overstepped the mark by displaying the headstones of the recently deceased. The site is a “go to” for the criminal class, have ever wondered why you might have been subjected to scams or how somebody got your information, or even identity theft, could be, that you information has been taken from your loved ones headstone. Whilst the deceased may not be entitled to privacy after they have past the winning post, the living relatives of the deceased certainly are.
Ancestry.com claim that they have a privacy policy about displaying information about living people which is pretty laughable considering that they have no qualms about providing links to Find a Grave.
Something for you all to think about between races.
I have been in a constant battle with Find a Grave to have my late Father’s memorial removed off their website. Sure, they remove the memorial but a couple of weeks later they put it back on again, I think that speaks volumes to the morales or lack of for that organisation.