Include cemetery name in Findagrave and Billiongrares source records

LegacyUser

Davis Giles Gardner said: Inasmuch as so much effort has gone into providing standardized place names for cemeteries, it would be good if the name of the cemetery would be included when a hint from Findagrave or Billiongrares is evaluated. I spend too much time adding the name of the cemetery to burial field in the vital information when the name of the cemetery is available in those sources.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: They can't. Billiongraves records always have to include an actual headstone, but Findagrave records don't. No headstone or memorial means no actual cemetery to include in the record. That's part of why Findagrave is actually fairly useless as a source.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Also note that the name of the cemetery is sometimes different today (as shown in Find a Grave) than it was when the burial occurred (e.g., as shown in some death certificates). I have come across cemeteries that have had their name changed 2 or 3 times in the last century alone.

Because they are standardized, either name will do since they both point to the exact same geo-location point. Technically, for a burial event, the name of the cemetery at that point in time should be used, but hardly anybody does (i.e., they use the name of the cemetery as it appears today).

Also a lot of the standard cemetery places only have the current names in the present database. The older names (when they exist) have not been entered yet

LegacyUser

W David Samuelsen said: David Newton, that was not the request.

He was talking about the need to include the name of the CEMETERY, instead of just the locality.

Like Davis, I am pretty tired of having to edit to include the name of cemetery every time even it is in the record but not transferable. BOTH Findagrave and Billiongraves are the problems.

LegacyUser

W David Samuelsen said: PlaceStandards committee is still going through Findagrave.com to get the former names of cemeteries. Many of these places already have former names attached to current cemetery names. Sometimes they have to update. There was that one case where there were 4 cemeteries with identical names but in different parts of same county so I had to point them out and they created the correct information for each one.

Time to time they miss a cemetery and I would let them known it's in Findagrave.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: That's great to hear. From time to time, I find that in Find a grave, the Current Cemetery name is correct, but the town or township is not (i.e., they have taken it from the administration mail address for the cemetery instead of the actual location of the Cemetery which is in an adjacent township, etc.)

LegacyUser

Paul said: Two points. Firstly, I raised the question, in another thread, of how the (full) cemetery name should appear and be inputted. I have found the locations always appear as they are known today. Maybe a good thing if you want to go and visit the grave, but not if you want to record what it was called when the person was actually buried. Many users would want to change the full name, even if it was displayed, so no real help attached to the time-saving factor.

Secondly, couldn't this be one of those things that the owners of the websites won't allow to be brought across into FamilySearch? There are plenty more examples of only partial information being provided in the FamilySearch version of a record, compared to what appears on the original source website.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: They can't. Billiongraves records always have to include an actual headstone, BUT FINDAGRAVE RECORDS DON'T. No headstone or memorial means NO ACTUAL CEMETERY TO INCLUDE IN THE RECORD.

So please tell me how cemetery names are supposed to be included in the source record if by definition there is no cemetery name in the original record?

LegacyUser

terry blair said: I'm confused, what does the presence or absence of a headstone have to do with including the name of a cemetery? In a local cemetery perhaps, in round numbers, 15% of the burials do not have a headstone, but the sexton records have the burial. Thus, if I understand correctly, Billiongraves would never record the burial, but Findagrave might. That means that the 15% of these local burials would not have a burial location in the FSFT database. And, to extend the idea, if Findagrave is not useful as a source, then one must also drop the city, county, and state where a burial might have concurred, absent some other record such as an obit or death certificate.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: Do Findagrave's records have to relate to an actual burial? No. They can relate to something without any of that information. Ironically I've just checked one of my great grandfathers and he serves as an excellent example of precisely this issue:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8...

Now I created that memorial back in 2012, and the dates and locations are correct, in as much as they are useful. However there is no headstone, there is no memorial and there is no knowledge of the actual location of the ashes.

So how, exactly, could a cemetery location be extracted from that entry?

Then of course we have issues like these profiles:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5...

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1...

Clearly the same person and yet one refers to a location in France and one refers to a location in Australia.

So I say again how exactly is a cemetery location to be extracted from the original data if it doesn't exist in that original data?

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I have a FindAGrave record where it explicitly states that the deceased was buried in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, San Mateo County, California.

When I followed this up with Cypress Lawn's staff, it turns out that she wasn't buried there at all but in Connecticut.

What had happened was that the Cypress Lawn company had bought the undertakers who'd shipped her body from California to Connecticut - so far as I remember, the Cypress Lawn company put the undertakers' records online on their site; a FindAGrave contributor (not me) copied the undertaker's details and put them into FindAGrave as if she'd been buried at Cypress Lawn. In fairness, it may not have been totally clear what had happened unless someone had carefully asked themselves the question: "What am I looking at?"

So the FindAGrave record's burial site for her is about as wrong as it can be while remaining within the continental USA.

AdrianClift

I agree with the original suggestion here. The issue is the cemetery name is being effectively lost currently. 90% of FS cemetery names are displayed as city and state (and perhaps county) only.

Brett .

All

FYI

Re:

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/446070#Comment_446070

Related ( EARLIER / PREVIOUS ) 'Comment', in a 'Post' ...

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'Post'

With standardized place names, where is the name of the cemetery where a person is buried supposed t

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/24296/with-standardized-place-names-where-is-the-name-of-the-cemetery-where-a-person-is-buried-supposed-t

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/24296/with-standardized-place-names-where-is-the-name-of-the-cemetery-where-a-person-is-buried-supposed-t

'Comment'

The cemetery name is available on the findagrave record and should be carried over and automatically plugged into the FS cemetery name field.

No one should have to manually enter the cemetery name; yet that is what is currently happening if the cemetery name gets identified AT ALL.

:-)

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/446069/#Comment_446069

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/446069#Comment_446069

Brett

dontiknowyou

Find A Grave memorial pages are not historical records, although they may include photos of original historical records. Unfortunately, Find A Grave is also a venue for family history fabrications.