Find A Grave biographies

[Blue70]

I'm sure there's a lot of good contributors to Find A Grave but I had a bad experience with them when Ancestry hints alerted me to information that had been taken from one of my websites and used to not only say where and when they were buried but to build biographies. Some information is family folklore and can be quite sensitive and is not what you want to see on a grave site. Some information evolves over time and the grave site remains stuck in time while original research has moved on. Some contributors just want to hoover up other people's information and are careless when it comes to accuracy and etiquette.


C

Just wondering - after your bad experience - did you contact the Find a Grave contributor and ask them to remove the sensitive information? Hopefully they did?

They denied copying it. It was a very frustrating experience. I remember telling them all the mistakes they made copying the information I was trying to get them to correct them. I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.


C

That's a shame to hear.

I wouldn't have copied information in that way in the first place, but if someone contacted me and pointed out potential errors in my research, I'd like to think I would have the common sense and good grace to listen and make appropriate corrections.

I suppose it's possible that the Find a Grave support team would have been willing to help, especially if any sensitive information needed to be removed.

I've just had a look and it looks like some things have been changed since I last looked but there's a very obvious mistake of a relative who emigrated to Australia being on Find A Grave as buried in England. I'm not going to look further it's not worth the work now. I see that the contributor has now died perhaps their lack of manners was down to their age or health issues or maybe they just got too big for their boots with their access to information.


C

[Sandrafamilytree]

I'm sure there's a lot of good contributors to Find A Grave but I had a bad experience with them when Ancestry hints alerted me to information that had been taken from one of my websites and used to not only say where and when they were buried but to build biographies. Some information is family folklore and can be quite sensitive and is not what you want to see on a grave site. Some information evolves over time and the grave site remains stuck in time while original research has moved on. Some contributors just want to hoover up other people's information and are careless when it comes to accuracy and etiquette.


C

Just wondering - after your bad experience - did you contact the Find a Grave contributor and ask them to remove the sensitive information? Hopefully they did?

They denied copying it. It was a very frustrating experience. I remember telling them all the mistakes they made copying the information I was trying to get them to correct them. I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.


C

That's a shame to hear.

I wouldn't have copied information in that way in the first place, but if someone contacted me and pointed out potential errors in my research, I'd like to think I would have the common sense and good grace to listen and make appropriate corrections.

I suppose it's possible that the Find a Grave support team would have been willing to help, especially if any sensitive information needed to be removed.

I've just had a look and it looks like some things have been changed since I last looked but there's a very obvious mistake of a relative who emigrated to Australia being on Find A Grave as buried in England. I'm not going to look further it's not worth the work now. I see that the contributor has now died perhaps their lack of manners was down to their age or health issues or maybe they just got too big for their boots with their access to information.


C

I know you have decided not to pursue it, but if the contributor has died, it might be fairly straightforward to contact Find a Grave support and ask to take over that memorial, and then you could correct it properly.

[Blue70]

I'm sure there's a lot of good contributors to Find A Grave but I had a bad experience with them when Ancestry hints alerted me to information that had been taken from one of my websites and used to not only say where and when they were buried but to build biographies. Some information is family folklore and can be quite sensitive and is not what you want to see on a grave site. Some information evolves over time and the grave site remains stuck in time while original research has moved on. Some contributors just want to hoover up other people's information and are careless when it comes to accuracy and etiquette.


C

Just wondering - after your bad experience - did you contact the Find a Grave contributor and ask them to remove the sensitive information? Hopefully they did?

They denied copying it. It was a very frustrating experience. I remember telling them all the mistakes they made copying the information I was trying to get them to correct them. I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.


C

That's a shame to hear.

I wouldn't have copied information in that way in the first place, but if someone contacted me and pointed out potential errors in my research, I'd like to think I would have the common sense and good grace to listen and make appropriate corrections.

I suppose it's possible that the Find a Grave support team would have been willing to help, especially if any sensitive information needed to be removed.

I've just had a look and it looks like some things have been changed since I last looked but there's a very obvious mistake of a relative who emigrated to Australia being on Find A Grave as buried in England. I'm not going to look further it's not worth the work now. I see that the contributor has now died perhaps their lack of manners was down to their age or health issues or maybe they just got too big for their boots with their access to information.


C

I know you have decided not to pursue it, but if the contributor has died, it might be fairly straightforward to contact Find a Grave support and ask to take over that memorial, and then you could correct it properly.

No I don't want to do any more work on this. I had a look at my old e-mails and it was in 2016 I sent a polite e-mail with corrections but it was ignored. In 2017 I sent a copyright warning to her and copied in a Find a Grave general e-mail address and that got a response from her she said, "I never rec anything from you ever.  Which records  I am a (same surname as my website but she's not related to my family) and so have my own research". I notice the bios have now been removed but there are still mistakes with dates and places. She presumed all my family were buried in the one cemetery.


C

[Andrew Tarr]

I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.

You have to allow for people becoming very possessive (and even opinionated) about their info and aptitude for research.  If a historical incident has been passed down more than one family line, mutating as it goes, positions can become entrenched - both of them .  There may be no way to resolve a conflict unless you are lucky enough to turn up a contemporary newspaper account, for example.  Even then heels may remain dug in !

[Nick_Ips]

I've just had a look and it looks like some things have been changed since I last looked but there's a very obvious mistake of a relative who emigrated to Australia being on Find A Grave as buried in England. I'm not going to look further it's not worth the work now. I see that the contributor has now died perhaps their lack of manners was down to their age or health issues or maybe they just got too big for their boots with their access to information.

Does the entry state the person was buried in this grave, or is it just recording that person's name on a memorial?

It goes back to the point I made on the first page of the thread -  the MI is not necessarily even proof the person in question is buried in that location.  The MI just memorialises them - it doesn't act as proof the remains of the person are actually there.

I've come across at least two cases of an MI suggesting a person was buried in England when in fact they died and were buried overseas.  On rechecking my 'facts' I discovered I'd assumed the person was buried in the grave solely because their name and dates were on a stone.  Having done this (twice) I learned to be more careful in future - and now regard MI's as pointers for further research, not providers of factual information.

[JenB]

It goes back to the point I made on the first page of the thread -  the MI is not necessarily even proof the person in question is buried in that location.  The MI just memorialises them - it doesn't act as proof the remains of the person are actually there.

To reinforce this warning here's an inscription, from Castleside Cemetery, County Durham:

In memory of Catherine the beloved daughter of John and Hannah Elsdon of Consett Park who died October ?? 1869 aged 12 years
Also Elizabeth Swalwell daughter of the above who died September 17th 1874 aged 21 years 
Also the above John Elsdon who died October 9th 1888 aged 72 years
Also the above Hannah Elsdon who died December 6th  1891 aged 65 years’

You might reasonably infer from this that all these people are buried at Castleside.

But only three of them are - Elizabeth Swalwell was buried some eight miles away at Hare Law.

[Blue70]

I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.

You have to allow for people becoming very possessive (and even opinionated) about their info and aptitude for research.  If a historical incident has been passed down more than one family line, mutating as it goes, positions can become entrenched - both of them .  There may be no way to resolve a conflict unless you are lucky enough to turn up a contemporary newspaper account, for example.  Even then heels may remain dug in !

In my case the Find a Grave contributor in the USA was not a relative she obviously found my website because she was researching the same surname and took it upon herself to add to the Find a Grave empire by copying over all the burials but not just that also adding bios that were clearly my texts which were not suitable for their site. They made a lot of copying mistakes and ignored me when I just asked for them to be corrected.


C

[Blue70]

I've just had a look and it looks like some things have been changed since I last looked but there's a very obvious mistake of a relative who emigrated to Australia being on Find A Grave as buried in England. I'm not going to look further it's not worth the work now. I see that the contributor has now died perhaps their lack of manners was down to their age or health issues or maybe they just got too big for their boots with their access to information.

Does the entry state the person was buried in this grave, or is it just recording that person's name on a memorial?

It goes back to the point I made on the first page of the thread -  the MI is not necessarily even proof the person in question is buried in that location.  The MI just memorialises them - it doesn't act as proof the remains of the person are actually there.

I've come across at least two cases of an MI suggesting a person was buried in England when in fact they died and were buried overseas.  On rechecking my 'facts' I discovered I'd assumed the person was buried in the grave solely because their name and dates were on a stone.  Having done this (twice) I learned to be more careful in future - and now regard MI's as pointers for further research, not providers of factual information.

The burial information on Find a Grave for the relative who went to Australia only gives the year of death (right), there's no grave info and it gives the wrong cemetery/place of burial. I never had burial details on my website for this person just their year of death so the Find a Grave contributor presumed they were buried in the same cemetery as other family members.


C

[coombs]

One of my ancestors was said to have died 11th March 1844, as written on her headstone, but her death cert says she died 12th March. The headstone writing clearly says 11th.

To a scientist that is almost within experimental error ....  .  Perhaps the person died late on the day but the death was recorded after midnight - or something like that ?

Or to add a bit of humour, it took her a few seconds to die, starting 11:59:58 on the 11th, and they were dead by 3 seconds past midnight on the 12th. 

Imagine being born at the very strike of midnight on the dot.