RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: kat2004 on Monday 07 March 05 16:00 GMT (UK)
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Yippee! Just come back from my first grave hunt and boy did I get some strange looks! I was looking in a graveyard in Coniston for my Rigg family and I found one and took a picture. It occured to me that maybe I should have left some flowers or something, does anyone else do this?
Also we found the ancestral row of houses but they all seem to have been renumbered which was a shame but they were lovely houses and I took some pictures anyway.
Its ironic to be happy looking at graves, nevermind, its all in a good cause! ;D
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Lovely stuff! Glad you thoroughly enjoyed! So you haven't got to the stage of falling into graves etc yet then! ;D
I recently revamped my Great Grandfathers grave simply as no one knew his grave was so close to where my family lives. All the family that knew of the grave have long gone (since the 1960's) so I felt obliged to tidy it up.
I haven't done this will all graves I visit though! ::) But I am on 1st name terms with most of the Cemetery Supervisors in my locality! ;D
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My Father visited is Uncles Grave in the Naval
Cemetery at Portsmouth.
He could never understand why he was buried so far
away from home (Lancashire).
But after he had visited he said it was the best place
so neat and cared for.
In Generations most Graves will become unkempt,
as relations die, but being buried here seems to
preserve some element of dignity.
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I tried to find my Great Grandparents in Heath Town Churchyard but it is so overgrown I had no chance. Now found out from my uncle the general area they are buried in so the project for the summer is to find them and tidy it up
So many people have complained that they say they are going to cut back some of the undergrowth and yes I will take flowers when I find them. After searching through records to find them I wouldn't say I know them well but they are still my family and I don't think they should be forgotten.
My next aim to to find the details on my Great Uncle Samuel who was killed in WW1 and make sure he is mentioned on one of Wolverhamptons war memorials even if I have to pay for it myself!
Willow x
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What else is there to do on a nice sunny day than wander around a church or kirkyard armed with a camera and pad.
I had a little mishap in Woodkirk Churchyard, nr Wakefield about 18 months ago. I'd gone with a friend who was looking for her great aunt, so I went along for the ride and took piccies for my website.
Yes, the one you want is always in the middle of a bramble patch - so in I trod, gingerley I might add, gently bent down to get the headstone in view and then in veeerrryyy sloooowww mooottiioooon fell backwards.
I hope no one from across the road was watching as it was not very dignified to be heaved up from my position to the vertical.
At least I got the piccy, but my friend never found her great aunt. We'd been looking for a headstone, as told by another aunt, only to be told about a few weeks ago that there was no headstone and we had been within inches of the final resting place.
Carol Sklinar
www.wakefieldfhs.org.uk
Wakefield Family History Sharing
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did you fnd out about your gt. uncle Samuels memorial in Ypres :D completed
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I've always loved graveyards, but my first experience actually searching for family was when we went to Scotland this past summer. I found stones for my 3x great grandparents & a few others.
My husband proved himself invaluable in spying stones for other possible relatives which I was able to substantiate on my return to Canada. It was wonderfully satisfying.
I find myself worrying though. Both of the oldest monuments I found are in well kept cemeteries, but the stones themselves could use some tender loving care. How does one arrange for that & how much should one expect to pay?
Is there a protocol regarding who has right to restore a gravestone? I'm not sure if there is family left in the UK that would be interested, but one never knows. (I know in one case that all the children emigrated so no one is left to look after it. In the other case, it appears that most (maybe all) of the children moved away to England - other than the one that came to Canada.)
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When grave hunting, always have the car loaded with cleaning cloth, something to cut away grass and some flowers. I always give a good tidy, and the neighbours next door ;) Like to think that someone would do the same for my long lost relations which I can not get to from afar.
Suzy W
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I did a bit of grave hunting for my mother's ancestors, but I had little success (mainly because most of them were too poor to buy headstones), so it was another few years before I did any more.
I'm glad I did though, but it wasn't all plain sailing. I didn't find much wandering around the church yard, but later I was able to make contact with the church archivist, who was able to tell me where the graves of my ancestors were located, but more importantly who else shared the plot. This helped me immensely - it helped trace the marriage of a daughter, and also helped to confirm other relationships in the family.
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I been to some graveyards the last year or so. Some parts subsiding and you are wary of falling into the grave or breaking a leg etc. When you compare the state to the american war cemetry at cambridge but i suppose a lot of care and expense is put into that. It does put things into perspective though. Also 2 funeral i went to about 3 months ago, i found myself looking around the graves at the names. One next to where my cousin was being buried had the surname as my paternal side. Also one of the gardeners in cem apparently used to go out with my cousin! At the other funeral relatives looked for some graves of the older family, they thought one was our uncle. I realised after i know it was n't. Uncle's memorial stone was small and you could n't read it anymore and the one they stood by if they'd bent down to read it, they would have seen that was a married man and wife's grave and he was single. Also they were after another cousins grave who died when she was 5, i think i've got the ref, need to sort my rels out i think.
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This brought back memories of my first gravehunt a couple of years ago, when my 80yr-old Dad & I decided at the last minute to have a mooch about the area where his ancestors came from.
We hadn't planned to visit the graveyard, so hadn't organised ourselves at all - has anyone tried to take a gravestone inscription rubbing with nothing but an ordinary HB pencil and a few pieces of A4 lined paper?
It doesn't work that well :-\ ;D
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No i had n'teven thought about a rubbing but fortunately had a camera at the time and realised how well some writing can come out even if weathered. When i bought a new mobile phone i made sure i had a reasonable camera on!
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A couple of the relevant gravestones we found had one or two birth or death years with the last two digits that were difficult to read with the naked eye. I thought that 'rubbing' might highlight the engraving more accurately.
How does a photo (albeit taken with a good camera) better the writing compared with the naked eye view - is it because of the lighting or shading captured on the camera?
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I've had fairly good luck with photographing gravestones.
Remember, if you have a pic of a marker that is difficult to read, the folks on the Deciphering & Recognition part of the RootsChat board are a fabulous resource. They do manipulations, create negative images, etc.
Their assistance has proven invaluable to me a few times & I've seen them accomplish similar results for others.
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Tip - next time you upgrade your mobile phone, go for a good smartphone with a decent camera. You never go out without your phone these days, so you will also never forget to take your camera when on a grave hunt!
I always try and look systematically, going from row to row, and just take a picture of anything remotely likely, and sift through them later.
Last field trip I had, I took my dad as he likes old graveyards too, but we had a bit of an upset because this particular churchyard isn't being very well looked after and the memorial plaques for those cremated had been tossed onto a compost heap. One of them was for an old friend of his so he got quite upset about that.
I also found an old family grave (the flat stone type) that had got almost completely mossed over since the last time I saw it and was in a quandary about whether it was OK to clear the moss off it.
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I tried to find my Great Grandparents in Heath Town Churchyard but it is so overgrown I had no chance. Now found out from my uncle the general area they are buried in so the project for the summer is to find them and tidy it up
So many people have complained that they say they are going to cut back some of the undergrowth and yes I will take flowers when I find them. After searching through records to find them I wouldn't say I know them well but they are still my family and I don't think they should be forgotten.
My next aim to to find the details on my Great Uncle Samuel who was killed in WW1 and make sure he is mentioned on one of Wolverhamptons war memorials even if I have to pay for it myself!
Willow x
I have found the memorial! http://www.wolverhamptonwarmemorials.org.uk/memorial_pages/Church/st_johns_war_memorial.htm he is commemorated with his two half brothers Matthew Ralph and James Ralph
I will have to make a vist on one of my lunch times to pay my respects
Willow x
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That's wonderful Willow!
From one family history addict & graveyard crazy to another. ;) ;D ;D ;D ;D
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My best grave story is the fact that a kind tour guide from Poppy Tours( Royal British Legion) undertook to find and photograph the CWGC grave of my mother's brother in Imphal, India.
He was killed in WW2 but we didn't know where he was buried until I looked on the CWGC web-site. Imphal is very near Burma an unstable region over the years but they do do tours there now.
We were so very grateful to have a photo of my uncle's final resting place, beautifully tended as are all Commonwealth War Graves.
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When off hunting headstones, I find it very useful to take a photo of the nameboard of the church or cemetery.
Especially important if you visit more than one cemetery in a day (my record is seven on a trip to Nova Scotia). They seem to blur togetther in your memory otherwise.
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I think taking a photo of the board is a good idea, i did at one i went that i wa n't familiar with. It also gave me an idea of where abouts i 'd taken some photos , let alone the contact number and the layout.
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I was doing a look up for a grave for someone on Rootchat at Bowling Cemetery Bradford but the records were kept at Scholesmoor cemetery admin. I gave the lady the info and she came back with a detailed map of the section and number at Bowling. As we got chatting about the weather a some news on the radio with a bit of laughter, then after she looked at the map and said! I shouldn't really!! but I'll show you where the section is and out we went, got too the section and it was full of tall big posh grave stones-Great!. Then she said I'll leave you now to study your map.
Well I held the map walked up & down, around & a round but could find the location and after a hour looking for it! **BANG!** It dawned on me I was in Scholesmoor cemetery not Bowling. DUH!! Dumb and Dumber (Me!)
When I got too Bowling eventually there was only a few poor type grave tombstones in the section in a big near empty field.
Sod it! I thought!!, I left! got some fish and chips and went home.
Ps and a can of Coke!