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Find A Grave Postings

 
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roger.pape
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Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 5:05 pm    Post subject: Find A Grave Postings Reply with quote

The Find A Grave website has become a very useful tool for researching family histories. Using it, one can often locate information about relatives for whom you may not have other information, such as birth and death dates/locations. The postings for individuals may also include names of the spouse and parents with links to their pages. It all depends on the amount of information included by the person who created the posting. Note that this is a secondary source of information and may not be completely reliable, but it usually is a good starting point in your search for more data.

You can find a link to the St. Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery on the ‘Sources’ page of this website or simply go to http://www.findagrave.com and click on ‘Search xxx million grave records’ on the right side of the page. [Note that the website was original created to provide information about “famous” people but was eventually made available for anyone.] On-line help is available from the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ and ‘Discussion Forums’ links at the bottom of the home page or the ‘Help with Find A Grave’ link on the left side of the Search page.

Searching for a particular name is relatively straight forward. The more you know about an individual the more you can filter the search to limit the number of names that are returned. If you are looking for a female relative and don’t know whom she married, be sure to click on the ‘Include maiden name(s) in my search’ box below the name. (This may not help if the person who posted the information didn’t know her maiden name.) After using the website for a while, you will develop techniques to zero in on the person you are looking for.

I would encourage everyone to post cemetery information about their ancestors if it does not already exist on this website. To do this, you should first register on the site (for free). This will indicate who posted the information and provide a contact for possible additions or corrections. You then post information by clicking on the ‘Add Burial Records’ link. Include as much information as you have, such as the place of birth and death. There is a ‘Bio’ section below the dates to enter any interesting facts you might wish to include. I recommend that you include a good photo of the tombstone with each posting and as many links as you can to the parents and spouse that are already posted. Note that to provide a link to another person, you must use the ‘Find A Grave Memorial#’ that can be found at the bottom of the page for the person you are linking to.

I have a problem with people who bulk upload names of people they grab from various sources, such as church death records, and use the Excel spreadsheet upload approach. The spreadsheet template used in this technique does not include birth/death location and has no mechanism for creating links. These people then control large numbers of postings and are unlikely to include the additional information.

Give this website a try and consider posting some information to help others researching your ancestors.


Last edited by roger.pape on Wed Nov 27, 2013 10:28 am; edited 3 times in total
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roger.pape
Site Admin


Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 6:05 pm    Post subject: Adding Link to Death Certificate Reply with quote

When you post information on Find A Grave and want to include the death certificate, instead of adding a photo of the certificate or typing in the data manually you can save time and space if the certificate is already posted on-line. One example of is the Missouri death certificates for 1910-1962. (That site can be found listed in the 'Source' page of this website.) There you search for and click on the name of a person to bring up a page with an image of the certificate.

You simply add a link to the page where the certificate is posted as described below.

To add a link to an individual's birth certificate into the Bio section of a Find A Grave posting, insert the following HTML code (with appropriate changes) using the Edit function i.e. select the 'Memorial' and 'Edit' tabs in the upper portion of the Find A Grave window and then select 'Bio'. Edit the following line by replacing the text between the quotes (including the brackets) with the URL at the top of the window that displays the certificate and paste this HTML string into the Edit box.

<br>&nbsp;<a href="[paste url from death certificate web page here]">Death Certificate</a><br>

Example:
For my grandfather Jacob Pape, the HTML code is

<br>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sos.mo.gov/images/archives/deathcerts/1956/1956_00001815.PDF">Death Certificate</a><br>

It is best to add this at the top of the bio section, above any other information you may include. This will put the link directly below the birth/death information on the page.

If you use this technique, be sure that the website you point to will remain online, such as the Missouri Digital Heritage site.
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roger.pape
Site Admin


Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 10:12 am    Post subject: Links to Children in Find A Grave Postings Reply with quote

As noted above, Find A Grave Postings are particularly helpful if they include links to other members of the family group. So the more links one provides, the more useful the posting will be.

There are several restrictions in the tools provided by Find A Grave to create these links. First of all, the editing function only allows one to specify links to the parents and spouse, not any of the children. However when one creates a link to a parent of an individual, Find A Grave automatically places a link on the parent’s page in a list of children, just as it will create a link on the spouse’s page when the link to a spouse is created. So a list of children links is created on a person’s page only when the parent links are added on the children pages.

The second restriction is that links can only be created on a given page if you are the manager of the page. Normally, the manager is the person who first created the posting; however, management responsibility can be transferred from one person to another. If you want to create these links on the page of one of your ancestors that was already posted and currently managed by someone else, you have two options. First of all, you can send an e-mail to the person currently controlling the page asking him/her to add the links. Otherwise, you can request that the current manager of the page transfer management responsibility to you. (You should only request this transfer if you are a direct descendent within a few generations.)

On the other hand, there is a simple workaround to have children posted on a given individual’s page. This involves adding HTML code in the posting, similar to the technique for adding a link to a death certificate as described above.

To add links to children into the Bio section of a Find A Grave posting, insert the following HTML code (with appropriate changes) using the Edit function i.e. select the 'Memorial' and 'Edit' tabs in the upper portion of the window and then select 'Bio'. Edit the following line(s) by replacing the bracketed text (including the brackets) with the FindAGrave ID number and the person's name (with birth and death years) and paste the HTML string into the Edit box.

<br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;Children:<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a class='NoUnderline12point' href="fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=[insert FindAGrave ID here]">[insert name (b.- d.) here]]</a><br>

Add the following for each additional child on Find A Grave.

&nbsp;&nbsp;<a class='NoUnderline12point' href="fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=[insert FindAGrave ID here]">[insert name(b.- d.) here]</a><br>

[Note. You may wish to add the following if some children are not on Find A Grave.]

<br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;Children (not listed on Find A Grave):<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;[insert name (b.- d.) here]]<br>

For each additional child in this list, add the following:

>&nbsp;&nbsp;[insert name (b.- d.) here]]<br>


It is best to add this at the bottom of the bio section, after any other information you may include. This will put the link directly above any other family links that may be on the page.

Even if links from some children have already been created, this technique is useful for adding information about other children whose gravesites are not posted on Find A Grave. (If they are posted later, duplicate names will show up on the parent’s page unless you edit this code but by including the birth/death years, any duplication should be obvious.) Adding the names of these children will provide a more complete picture of the family group. Just use the last part of the HTML code (after the note) shown above.
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