Cemetery mapping site

DearREADERS,
"You’re probably familiar with most of the existing sites, which offer the facility to search for graves and transcriptions by name or location for free, such as Find a Grave, www.findagrave.com or Interment.net, www.interment.net.


Another new site focusing on cemeteries has appeared on the cyberspace horizon. Names in Stone, www.namesinstone.com, is a cemetery mapping site that lets you search for a grave,
and then view a map showing where it is in the cemetery and the nearby plots." *


Ol' Myrt here couldn't agree more with fellow geneablogger Lisa Alzo continues "Cemetery mapping is a good way to expand your family research to see the bigger picture. As noted on the site, maps that show each grave’s location allow you to visualize families, and fill in the missing pieces in your genealogy puzzle — perhaps by finally finding elusive ancestors, or even discovering those you did not even know existed."



But you must be cautious and not jump to conclusions about family relationships, as certainly Lisa knows. Competent genealogists take cemetery research a step or two further by locating courthouse and church documents to determine true family relationships. Case in point: The PLAYER FAMILY tombstones at the Salt Lake City Cemetery, in Utah. You'll see the tombstone pictured above listing my ancestors:

PLAYER
Alma O 1862-1929
Mary Elizabeth 1862-1903
Bertha 1895-1897

So, would you think that Alma and Mary are sisters, and that Bertha is the daughter of one of them, perhaps born out of wedlock?

Well, if you did, you'd be wrong because family group sheets, sexton records and Salt Lake County birth and death records collected and in Ol' Myrt's personal library indicate that:

• Alma O[ades] Player is my paternal great-grandfather.
• Mary Elizabeth was Alma's wife, daughter of William Brockerman and Emma Smith (Yearsley) Wright.
• Bertha was their 5th child, born in Salt Lake on 9 June 1896 and died 3 Feb 1897.

* SOURCE:
Alzo, Lisa. Virtual Memorial: Names in Stone. Internet Genealogy Magazine. April/May 2009, page 39.



Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
DearMYRTLE,
Your friend in genealogy.
Myrt@DearMYRTLE.com