I’m thinking about starting a project in my families creating Google earth files for all the cemetery information I’ve accumulated from the find a grave website. I did it for all the covered bridges in Ohio when I was a Covid shut in.
North Carolina had a statewide cemetery catalog project. I assisted in McDowell county with a couple of cemeteries.
I wish there was a standard way to write an obituary. I spend a lot of time mapping out family connections as I decipher obituaries. A well written obituary is a treasure trove of information that can be expanded with all the research tools we have today.
The absolute worst source of information is the Catholic Church. They can confirm some information you have but won’t give you access to their records to do research. You have to know what they have to request the information, so I don’t play the Catch 22 game. Funny thing, all this genealogy started with the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church is a Johnie come lately to the party.
I’ve been told, if you want to go to Europe to do research, you should go to one of the Latter Day Saints Centers - might save you a trip. I’ve found and photocopied a lot of information at my local LDS center. Very helpful people there.
I’ve been to LDS centers; So so information; best part is easily available; worst part is you can find someone had 32 children; they just tuck them all under the same person so reliability just isn’t there.
You can save your auto wear and tear by joining Family Tree Maker’s website. They have unbelievably massive files. Yes, mostly Protestant. But really good microfilm photos. I’ve done actual photos and I know how tough it is to get the books to lay flat and get decent photos.
Your cemetery project sounds EXCELLENT!! I like Find a Grave even though I find a lot of errors there, too. Kids just aren’t very interested in their grandparents and even parents. So when the time comes to fill in death certificates, it’s amazing how much bad info gets put in. Family legends end up as family facts.
Census data, for me, is most accurate when the person is a child. No one lies about the age of a 6 year old. But by the time the person hits 30, all bets are off as to what their real age is.
I started out concentrating on records, then got 4 different newspaper subscriptions. A lot of my research now is tracking multiple stories trying to find the few facts that can link the stories to show they’re about the same individual, since my family is replete with John Smith type names.
My grandfather, for example, was the eldest of his immediate family to die. It’s only by newspaper stories of his death and will that you learn he was cremated, then his ashes shipped home with his mother’s photo in the urn. The urn was then buried above his parents grave but he got no grave marker. I’ve called the cemetery that inherited the older cemetery records but minimal. Without the newspaper story, I wouldn’t know as much as I do.