It looks surreal. I love it!

Ominous sky!

Congrats on posting the 2000th photo to FindAGrave! I'd never heard of it before now... how cool! My Dad would have LOVED it! He ran the local cemeteries and was always contacted by individuals seeking information on their ancestors.

Thanks, guys! It's a great site, with lots of members. I'm not the only volunteer gravestone photographer at the KT . . . maybe you'd like to think about taking some pictures in your area, PartyMusic?

Congrats Susan. That's an accomplishment and you're photo is stunning - very moody.

I've thought of volunteering to take photos but not until I get a new phone. Apparently you can upload to a web site directly from the phone which would make it much easier - I think - not positive about that. But my cell phone is over 3 years old and the photos are OK as long as the light is perfect.

I still haven't signed up for a photo sharing web site to that limits me.

alisande, this is interesting.... I just searched FindAGrave for the village cemetery and found 7 photo requests. Years ago I wrote some custom database software for my Dad so that he could catalog all the info on burials and plots at the cemetery. He could then use the software to search the repository whenever people contacted him for info. I wonder if I can find an old backup of that database... if so I could find the exact plot locations for those 7 photo requests.

Susan, I was unable to find a copy of the cemetery plots database I had created for my Dad. My sister runs the cemetery now and when I asked her about plot/burial info, she just pointed me toward the oldest part of the cemetery. I've tried to look around a couple times to see if I could find the headstones for people who have made photo requests, but no luck yet. Some headstones are so old and weathered that I don't have a clue what they even say. :p Maybe I'll find some time in the autumn to take a better look around.

Good for you for trying, PM! It's a shame the database you created for your dad isn't still in use.

Yeah, some old headstones are impossible to read. Or they've fallen over. Or sunk into the ground. And then you'll see others that are very old but don't look it at all. Depends on the kind of stone, I guess, and the type of carving.

Alisande, congratulations on your 2,000th!! That is a real accomplishment. I know you've made many people happy by filling their requests!

I was doing it, too, a few years back but haven't found the time to continue. You provide a wonderful service.

Your picture is really cool. It looks like a hand tinted picture.

Party, the cemeteries generally have caretakers like your sister and they often have ledgers with the info even if they aren't computerized. I have enjoyed some nice relationships with those people from the cemeteries I usually frequented. I guess the requests you saw were for really, really old plots and they don't have the records?

At one cemetery I filled requests, if the caretaker didn't have the info and I found the grave, I would report back so they could add the information to their records. It was a lot of fun. I wish I had the time to do it again.

Filling a request would be nice, finding the stone can be a challenge. I check our county message board, and sometimes look up stuff.
A group here has put together a database from every cemetery in the county. Names, dates, burial locations. I once had the ambition to work with them, using the ancient worn maps. The maps were painstakingly redrawn, sometimes taking months, eventually identifying every burial site in that cemetery.
Put on-line, people could now find the grave location, and print a copy for their records. Cemeteries wanted copies for hand outs. Another option to consider, if your talents are so inclined.

Thanks, Murraysmom! I hope you'll be able to get back to it one of these days.

Oldfixer, I don't know if my talents are so inclined, but my energy levels certainly aren't! Plus I am maxed out on projects . . . if I even think about starting a new one I should have my knuckles rapped with a ruler. Hard.

I would think a project like that would be quite overwhelming!! There are a lot of graves in a graveyard! And usually, hopefully, there are municipal records.

Of course, I guess small family plots in rural areas would be a different story.

I do miss it. I've seen, as I'm sure you have, Alisande, some mighty interesting headstones! And the history lessons abound. Fascinating stuff. I do hope I'll be able to join in again sometime. Time is just so precious.

Spooky is the right word, I almost expect vampires or zombies to lurk in the background. :o)
You always take such awesome photos.

I recently took photos of the last 4 stones at a family cemetery located in the middle of a farm field. Between the Iowa Gen Web volunteer for my county and I, we found the name of the cemetery and later I found some Xeroxed copies of old newspaper stories. It's supposed to have 8 graves. So anyway, I put them on findagrave and on ancestry.com so if anyone would happen to look for Gerritson, Van Duren (SO many ways to spell it) or Noteboom, they're out there in the field in Franklin County, Iowa between Meservey and Alexander. I wish someone was looking.

Since ancestry.com has bought findagrave it has turned into a free genealogy web site. People are posting census info and linking parents and children. You can get quite a ways there sometimes. I think it is changing the site into something else and I'm not so sure I like it. On the other hand, maybe it will get more people interested in genealogy since it's still free.

I too have found relatives on that site to add and correct information on history of my husbands family. It is too bad we cant get a 'genealogy forum started. Maybe if we all contacted GW, it would work. There are some forums that get very little activity.
Marie

Maybe if we used this forum and put in the subject line GENEALOGY: and then the names we're looking for, we could just post here. Let me do a test run and see what happens.

I don't know about the census info, but I've been linking parents and children (and spouses) on FindAGrave for years. I sometimes encounter people who don't do that (they'll just write "Husband of Myrtle Cramer, father of Enoch and Jerusha" in the bio section), and I wonder why.

I love that new feature and especially now that anyone can suggest it instead of contacting the owner. I have one owner that I suspect has passed on, lots of public messages on his profile page and no answer for 2 years. Those memorials can't be updated :-(

I should start this up again, spending way too much time playing stupid computer games.