Genealogy
We always tend to think of our photography as just taking photos of our kids, friends, landscapes, water sports, other sports, etc, but there is one area of photography that most people don’t think about. That is in the field of genealogy. Now, if you’re interested in genealogy you know that you cannot post your living relatives’ names or photos online; this is for security reasons. You can, however, post photos of your deceased relatives along with their name and birth and death date. And, you can post online their headstone.
One of the biggest helps to genealogists are grave sites and cemeteries. Lots of people have taken their cameras and headed out to cemeteries and kindly photographed the headstones of the people buried there. They then upload them to this fantastic website, Find a Grave. Find a Grave has helped millions of people find their long lost deceased relatives, which has helped connect them to other relatives, basically “filling in” their own history. I am one of those people.
I had a sister born five years before myself who died at four months old. I didn’t know anything about her until I was in my early teens and I was upset that I had not been told about her. She was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and there wasn’t a facility in our area able to take care of her, so my parents made the very difficult decision to send her across state where they took care of her for around 2 – 3 months and at the time she died. I have an older sister that told me that she only knew that she was buried somewhere across the state. [I can’t imagine my parents not bringing her home for burial, but they didn’t.] My older sister was only 2 at the time so she didn’t know a lot of the history, and I never really pursued the whole reason with my parents at the time I found out about her. It was a subject that just wasn’t discussed, most likely because of the pain my parents understandably felt.
But, over the years I felt so incomplete because I knew about my sister, but had no closure. Before Find a Grave I did a lot of searching online when genealogy sites started popping up, but there wasn’t any information about my sister. In 2013 I had major back surgery to fuse my spine and have rods and pins put on either side and in my hips; I was born with kyphoscoliois and with a partial C1. I spent four months in the hospital and rehab learning to walk again and how to take care of myself with my new limitations. And then….
In December 2014 I decided to check Find a Grave. Mind you, I had been to that website many times but looking for other relatives, but not my sister; and I did find quite a number of relatives burial sites. I put my sister’s name in their search engine along with the state I knew where she was buried. To my shock and to my surprise there was her headstone! But her first name was entered incorrectly, and I could understand why – the lettering on the stone did make it look the way it was entered. I contacted the photographer/person who uploaded the information and they kindly edited the information. But, I couldn’t believe it! I found my sister! I cried and I weeped and cried some more. For me, my family was now complete because of the woman that went out and took photos of a cemetery. And just in the last few days I was able to find her death certificate at Ancestry, making my information on her completed.
So, after this long discussion and personal information, you can see how your camera can be useful in other ways. Even if you’re not a genealogist, you can help other people by taking photos of headstones, especially if you have a relatively unknown cemetery in your town.
Posted in Personal Thoughts, Reflections and tagged Five a Grave, genealogy by Jason with no comments yet.