Many of our holidays are not geneajourneys but, because of my interest in dead people and cemeteries, I often take photos of cemeteries we pass. When we are cruising some of the organised tours on offer take us to historic cemeteries, I take many images including some headstone pictures during these visits.
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| Headstone in Broken Hill |
I find these images so useful to illustrate my blog and social media posts but recently I have found another use for my pictures that may help other genies and researchers.
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| Monument in Old Drift Cemetery, Zambia |
Ever since a presentation by Marion Burk Wood at the last THE Genealogy Show event I have taken a renewed interest in FindaGrave. As my photo collection is indexed with lots of keywords I can easily access images of cemeteries and headstones using those terms.
It has given me great pleasure to add to FindaGrave headstone images not related to my close family from cemeteries in Australia, France, Ireland, The Phillipines, UK, US and Zambia and I have yet more to add. Hopefully some of the relatives of these people will benefit from seeing images of their loved ones final resting places.
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| Headstone from Tyne Cot, Belgium |
I've also been able to add general photos of several cemeteries to the Cemetery Entries on FindaGrave.
Perhaps you have been doing this already but I only recently thought of it. It's another way we genies can "Pay it Forward" for all the value we have received from the work of other volunteers.
4 comments:
What a great idea Jill. I've taken headstone photos for Billion Graves with their app but I never thought of adding holiday cemetery photos to Find A Grave or Billion Graves too. Kylie :-)
Great thinking 99. It's always a great feeling to have contributed to recording monuments. They look pretty solid but they don't always stick around forever as we all know.
Yep - A couple of the older images I uploaded are easier to read than the newer ones on the site.
Back in mid 2018 we visited Lemnos and some of its CWGC Military Cemeteries - subsequently I found that there were so many people seeking photos of graves there on Findagrave. Later in 2018 we travelled to Myanmar on a Scenic Cruise which included a stop at the CWGC Cemetery in Yangon. I prepared a list of requests for grave photos at the CWGC Cemetery in Yangon (Rangoon) in advance - there were at least 80 requests and some of these went back 6 to 7 years. Along with my husband I recruited another 2 couples to assist us - I had prepared diagrams of the cemetery and locations of requested names of the graves in the cemeteries. We achieved about 80% of the requests. I posted these to Findagrave and also emailed to many of those who made requests. The thank you's and responses were truly heartfelt - bringing closure to many families and they were also so pleased to see that the cemetery was so well cared for.
If you are travelling near a CWGC it can be worthwhile to check with Findagrave to see what requests have been made and to work out in advance if you can photograph some of these requested graves.
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