Written in Stone

Find A Grave is a wonderful and free site of burials.  You can look up a person of interest and you can create and contribute death and burial information and pictures to a person's memorial page.  Contributing information and pictures on the go is easy with the Find A Grave app for the phone introduced last year.

I have been creating memorials for over eleven years.  Most memorials I create are not for my family; instead, they are random selections from a cemetery I was in, with the hope that someone could use the information.

A few times each week, I am contacted by someone regarding a memorial I created.  The correspondence centers around a few themes:

• The inquirer is unable to visit the grave of a loved one in person.  By creating an online memorial, especially with a picture of the grave, the inquirer is able to virtually visit the grave.
• The memorial provided the missing link in someone's family history research.
• The inquirer requests that the memorial be amended with different and/or additional information.

I take issue with requests to amend information in the memorial.  I'm a stickler for proof and crediting the correct source.  Find A Grave serves a dual purpose:  providing an online memorial for deceased loved ones AND recording gravestones.

If you personally knew someone, you have knowledge of many facts that will not appear on the gravestone but can appear on the memorial page.  For example, the memorial for my grandmother, Beulah Cook Lutter (1921-2003), created by my aunt, contains many details that are personally known to her, but will not appear on the gravestone.  She doesn't even have a gravestone yet.

An online memorial page of someone's life serves a beautiful purpose and will naturally include sentiments and goes beyond a simple recording of the stone.

This is different from the other purpose of Find A Grave:  recording information found on gravestones.  If you are documenting a cemetery, you don't personally know the people for whom you are creating memorial pages.  You are limited to the information contained on the stone.

If you research the person who has a memorial on Find A Grave, differentiate between the information that is and isn't on the stone.  The stone itself is a tertiary source.  Think of the gravestone as a stepping stone to help you locate additional records, such as full dates of birth and death, locations, other names used.  This information may contradict or enhance the information on the stone.

A gravestone is the only source I have for the death of Mary Neal (1830-1898), widow of Calvin Cook.  I have not found a death certificate, obituary, or will for her.  She appeared in the 1895 New Jersey census, but not in the 1900 federal census.  Finding the gravestone was great, but we need to question its reliability when we don't find supporting documentation.

When viewing a memorial page, you need to compare the information entered by the contributor to the information on the stone.  Additional or different information must have arisen from a source other than the gravestone.  The contributor should be able to tell you, either in a note on the memorial page or in correspondence, the source of the information not on the stone.

Sourcing is why I handle requests to edit in three ways:

• I check the stone and any notes I may have to ascertain if I made a transcription error and then edit if indicated.
• I offer to transfer the memorial to the inquirer and they may add whatever they wish because their name will appear as the person managing the page.  But don't edit the page and then transfer it back to me.  We will have a problem with the source of your additional information that I cannot explain to future inquirers.
• I add a note to the page with the additional information and the source, like a disclaimer.

Find A Grave allows you to link parents and spouses, if you are the manager of the page.  The links enable people to easily visit the pages of multiple family members and are great for researchers- if the links are accurate.

Someone attached an incorrect spouse to a page I created for a marker at Woodland Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey.  The stone is indecipherable except for a first name- Elizabeth.  I became aware of this problem when someone questioned why I did not provide a surname for Elizabeth when her spouse and child were known.

The asterisks next to the linked spouse and child indicate that the connection was not made through this memorial page.

I requested a search of records at Woodland Cemetery to determine whose stone this is.  The stone is likely for Elizabeth Guenther, widow of Charles Vill.  She died in 1894 at the age of 24.

Let's hope the contributor who linked the wrong spouse and child to Elizabeth heeds my request to unlink them.

When you use Find A Grave, be mindful of what information is on the stone and what information appeared from nowhere.

Views on MyHeritage

MyHeritage partnered with 23andMe to provide family tree making services and records to consumers of DNA tests.  A profile page at 23andMe can display a direct link to a tree at MyHeritage.

23andMe provided an inefficient family tree making tool.  You could not upload a gedcom file; instead, you had to manually enter every person.  Trees often crashed.  A better system was necessary.  By aligning with MyHeritage, DNA customers new to genealogy were introduced to a genealogy service, to try for free or to buy.

Good plan.  Except that the family tree service at MyHeritage is not so good.

A Pedigree View is what I need to get an overall view of someone's ancestors.  Here is an example at Ancestry:

At MyHeritage, you cannot view the tree as Pedigree.  You need to click on an individual to see back a generation, which drops the generations below while expanding to include siblings, spouses, and their descendants.  You become lost quickly.

I emailed MyHeritage, asking if it was possible to view a tree on their site in Pedigree.  No answer.

Message boards at MyHeritage also carry this request, to no avail.

Another unfortunate outcome at 23andMe is that you cannot attach your profile to a parent in a tree at MyHeritage and sort your DNA matches by parent.

My family trees for review by DNA cousins are at Ancestry and Rootsweb.  I post web addresses on profile pages that I manage.

Which DNA test to buy for genealogy?

People ask me often:  Which kind of DNA test to buy?

I tell people they should do an autosomal DNA test.  This is the only test sold by AncestryDNA and 23andMe.  Family Tree DNA also offers this test, called Family Finder.  The price has dropped to around $100 at all three companies.

An autosomal DNA test matches you with other people whose DNA is identical to yours in a few spots, as most will be distant cousins.  These identical areas were passed down from an ancestor common to you and your match.

Diagram of Autosomal DNA inheritance

The goal is to figure out which of your ancestors you have in common.  This is not easy.  The DNA test will not produce a family tree for you.  You still must research your ancestors in records to find the leaves of your family tree.  You may find a close cousin who has done a lot of research and this cousin may provide you with his/her research.  You may find others who help you work past a tail end in your tree suspected of holding the ancestor in common.  If you were adopted, you may find close relatives who can help you identify your biological parents.

If you are serious about finding relatives, you need to test your DNA at all three companies.  You may have a close relative at one site who is not going to test multiple times to find other relatives.  You have to find them by testing at all three sites.

Confusion arises with the Y-DNA and mtDNA tests.  These tests are offered by FamilyTreeDNA and vary in price based on number of tested markers.

One ancestral line only:  Y-DNA testing and mtDNA testing

The Y-DNA test is for males.  Testers are matched to other men who share an almost identical Y chromosome.  The value of this test is that you don't have to figure out which ancestral line holds the common ancestor.  The common ancestor will always be on the direct paternal line, father to son, because this is how the Y chromosome is inherited.  Fewer differences with a match indicate that the common ancestor is within fewer generations.  This test is useful in surname studies, if your direct paternal line comes from a community that perpetuates last names from father to children.

The mtDNA test (mitochondrial, not maternal) is similar to the Y-DNA test in that the common ancestor will be in one ancestral line, mother to daughter.  MtDNA is passed on from mother to children, both sons and daughters.  Men and women may take this test.  A man will not pass his mtDNA on to his children, so that is why the test-taker can be male, but the common ancestor will be found in his mother's direct maternal line.  Unlike the Y-DNA test, the most recent common ancestor could be thousands of years ago, as mtDNA does not vary generation to generation as much as Y-DNA.

These Y-DNA and mtDNA tests provide your haplogroups, which is useful in tracing ancient migratory paths of humans across the globe.  23andMe provides predicted haplogroups with their autosomal test.  This is not the same as taking a Y-DNA or mtDNA test.

Anyone who has been researching their family tree should try the autosomal DNA test.  Your tree will grow.