Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

[AlPrunty]

Does anyone have a good strategy for sourcing find a grave memorials. What is the best for the Evidence style source?

[Laurie M]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Does anyone have a good strategy for sourcing find a grave memorials. What is the best for the Evidence style source?

This is a template I have saved using the EE citation model:

FindAGrave, digital images (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 15 May 2010), photograph, gravestone for Susan Simpson (1885-1936), Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

FindAGrave, digital images (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 15 May 2010), photograph, gravestone for Susan Simpson (1885-1936), Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Apologies to those who feel otherwise, but I confess that I don't quite understand the devotion the EE model seems to inspire. It seems to me the most important information in a citation to a findagrave memorial would be the url of the actual web page of the memorial, and the memorial number.

The closest match I can find for the above citation on findagrave died in 1946, not 1936. If that's it, then I suppose the citation gets the job done. But her grave could have been identified without a search if the web page and/or memorial # (46518149) were specified.

And if I were using only the digital image there as a source, it seems to me I'd rather have the actual image on my hard drive and linked to my family file rather than rely on FindaGrave to survive and not change its url.

[Laurie M]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Apologies to those who feel otherwise, but I confess that I don't quite understand the devotion the EE model seems to inspire. It seems to me the most important information in a citation to a findagrave memorial would be the url of the actual web page of the memorial, and the memorial number.

The closest match I can find for the above citation on findagrave died in 1946, not 1936. If that's it, then I suppose the citation gets the job done. But her grave could have been identified without a search if the web page and/or memorial # (46518149) were specified.

Just to clarify, I did NOT use that citation in my database, since I myself visited the cemetery and photographed the stone. This the citation for her burial/gravestone:

Crystal Lake Cemetery (Hennepin, Minnesota; Penn Ave N & 40 Ave N), Ernest L. and Susan B. Simpson gravemarker, photograph by Lauren Rogers Mahieu, October, 1989.

The example I gave was one I keep saved in my sample text that I use to modify when obtaining burial info from Find A Grave, but you do bring up some good points about additional information one can add to ensure that the exact entry can be located.

[AlPrunty]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

EE Is more of an academic way of sourcing that basically cites a source and proves it's provenance (authority) of the information. I treat my Genealogy research as an academic endeavor and want to show that my information is as true as possible.

[Laurie M]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

EE Is more of an academic way of sourcing that basically cites a source and proves it's provenance (authority) of the information. I treat my Genealogy research as an academic endeavor and want to show that my information is as true as possible.

Exactly! When I share with others, I'd like them to have confidence in my work. By adhering to the standard, it will be obvious that I've done my homework. I've just made the switch from RootsMagic to Reunion, and in the process I am rewriting all of my sources so they are standardized and conform to EE. I think I will start on gravestones next. :-) Back to the FindAGrave question, I just checked the Evidence Explained web site where the following example is given for Find-A-Grave:

Find-A-Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 14 March 2011), memorial page for Claudia J. Esselstyn (1861–1862), Find A Grave Memorial no. 7,487,109, citing Aztalan Cemetery, Milford, Jefferson County, Wisconsin; the accompanying photographs by Mike [--?--] and Kari Waterbury are materially informative, but do not provide a legible image of the inscribed data.

The full post can be found here for anyone interested:

https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/find-grave

[Bob White]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

I do not post the URL for a couple of reasons. One is that they have a tendency to change over time. The other is simply that the URL may not be anything more than "garbage" years down the line. Who knows what technology is in store for us? Or whether or not Find A Grave will still be around or owned by a corporation that changes it in ways we can't predict.

I start off by entering "Posted on Find A Grave:" That alerts me and should alert anyone else looking at my work that this data may or may not be verified information.

Following that I will, in narrative style, indicate the name and location of the cemetery and whatever data the post is showing. I never thought to have a template because there is lots of variation in what one finds in these postings.

[AlPrunty]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Find-A-Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 14 March 2011), memorial page for Claudia J. Esselstyn (1861–1862), Find A Grave Memorial no. 7,487,109, citing Aztalan Cemetery, Milford, Jefferson County, Wisconsin; the accompanying photographs by Mike [--?--] and Kari Waterbury are materially informative, but do not provide a legible image of the inscribed data.

Lauri,

I can almost mimic that, but the memo field on the side of the detail field is severely lacking in space... it only allows space for 256 characters all that would not fit... half that doesn't as that's similar to how I cite mine.

I like to use the sources like I have on all the PC Based systems and even the web based program I use called TNG.

Have all the pertiqenents on the master source and the record details in the detail area.

If only Reunion's Details had the tempting capabilities of the master source... the master source gives me all the flexibility needed on the master source... if only I could make the templates work the same on the detail source and have a [field-tag] style sentence syntax to make the reports write the way we want like Roots Magic or Legacy works.

Reunion does have some awesome features most PC software does not, but it has the MOST capable sourcing of any mac software I've used... but in my opinion it still needs to up the ante on it... it's not as capable for us "academic" types. I have a degree in family history from BYU and I source everything.

It would also be nice to cut and paste sources and facts in between people.

Allen

[AlPrunty]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

I do not post the URL for a couple of reasons. One is that they have a tendency to change over time. The other is simply that the URL may not be anything more than "garbage" years down the line. Who knows what technology is in store for us? Or whether or not Find A Grave will still be around or owned by a corporation that changes it in ways we can't predict.

That's why you preserve as much of the data in the source as possible.

Considering that Ancestry is part owned by the LDS church and Find a Grave is owned by Ancestry doubt it's going anywhere.

Unfortunately Geocities and AOL Hometown has fell... but all of Geocities was archived by a third party if you had a URL pointing to geocities just replace geocities.com with http://www.oocities.org and it will go through.

All of AOL is archived at archive.org

Allen

[Laurie M]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Lauri,

I can almost mimic that, but the memo field on the side of the detail field is severely lacking in space... it only allows space for 256 characters all that would not fit... half that doesn't as that's similar to how I cite mine.

Hi Allen - is there a reason you aren't using the free-text field under the source instead? I was able to fit the entire source and then some into the free text field without issue.

[AlPrunty]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Hi Allen - is there a reason you aren't using the free-text field under the source instead? I was able to fit the entire source and then some into the free text field without issue.

I like a two-stage source for better data organization.

I put as much of the common find-a-grave source into the main source and have only one source for find-a-grave.

Then I put the free text information for the individual in the details box. I have done this for years with Legacy until I moved to Rootsmagic on the PC. (Both have sources like this with ESM EE Templates)

This way when I choose my find-a-grave source it is the same source for each and every person with their details recorded in the detail. It is far better than having hundreds of individual sources for each and every find a grave entry.

My main tree has over 20,000 people in it... I started back in my high school days on an old commodore 64 and kept moving gedcoms to computer to computer... I am going through and re-entering everything fresh. I've already got a good start in Reunion, and have been going through and re-sourcing better.

I'm now having problems with notes jumping from person to person.

I'm also having trouble with random pop ups when adding children and it's popping up with this is before parent's birthdate and it has a totally unrelated person.

Allen

[theKiwi]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

I'm also having trouble with random pop ups when adding children and it's popping up with this is before parent's birthdate and it has a totally unrelated person.

This is disappointing to hear - this has been an issue that I've seen in several previous Reunion versions, but so far at least hadn't seen in Reunion 11 - but apparently it still exists :-(

Roger

[fjvanbodegom]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Have never experienced problem with random popups and unrelated persons.
Perhaps take a closer look at the message if it is correct what you see.
But perhaps it is an idea to check your whole file for feasibility ? ?
Sometimes looking closer (and reading the message and looking at the persons) you find the reason for this popups.

[theKiwi]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

Frans

I've dug back through old eMails to Leister Productions and found a couple of examples - here's one - note that the parents referenced aren't even present in the family file.

I have a few others too that show similar irrelevance.

Roger

[ByronSpoon]

Re: Sourcing Find a Grave Memorials

...My main tree has over 20,000 people in it...
...I'm also having trouble with random pop ups when adding children and it's popping up with this is before parent's birthdate and it has a totally unrelated person.

Allen, is this “random”? Or repeatable?

If repeatable then you can do yourself a favor (and all of us too) by taking some time to try to isolate the occurrence further by attempting to capture this on a pruned version of your 20,000 person family file. And then forward the file directly to Leister Productions tech support with explanation.

As for me, like Frans, I’ve never seen this. But then FWIW I have always avoided importing gedcoms like the plague, respecting that the gedcom conventions are subject to differing interpretations by various exporting and importing software, and potential data corruption (my conjecture).