The Santa of Gold Hill – A Find-a-grave HERO

Recently, a television program showing current day scenes of the famous towns and locations from the “Old West” caught my eye.  A couple of scenes featuring the cemetery in Gold Hill, Nevada reminded me of my visit there.  We were in a hurry to reach our destination in California, so my desire to stop and [...]

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Find-a-grave Comes of Age

When I started posting tombstone photos and histories on the Find-a-grave website over nine years ago, the site content was still fairly small.  On rare occasion, I’d find a photo of the marker of an extended family member, but that was enough to encourage me to continue posting.
Eventually, I posted a request for the photo [...]

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A Shovel On His Shoulder

I was out on the front lawn playing with my dog when I heard someone whistling.  Looking up, I saw my great uncle Si Bennett walking down the road toward our house with a shovel over his shoulder.
He wore his old sweat stained Stetson hat, bib overalls and work boots.  I don’t think he stood [...]

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Research Tools – Didn’t You Know?

“How’d you do that?”
I probably hear that question ten times a week and am a little surprised that folks don’t already use the same tools themselves.
You may not be using these tools in your own ancestral research, documentation and presentations but you should give them a try.  I think you’ll like them.

Irfanview.  Other than Legacy, [...]

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I Saw A Man Engraving…

The batteries in my camera died while I was taking photos of headstones recently. I heard another vehicle park near me while replacing the batteries and looked to see if it someone I knew. It was just a MAV (mother’s assault vehicle or mini-van to most of you) with a small trailer behind [...]

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I Met A Veteran Today

The weather was warm and the sun was bright in the hours before the next spring storm rolled into the valley.
I decided to spend a few hours taking photos of headstones and posting them on Find-a-grave and Footnote taking advantage of a Pay-It-Forward opportunity.  
Sometimes you just have to walk away from a complex problem [...]

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Pay It Forward

Most of us are ‘beholding’ to someone else for some if not much of our ancestral knowledge. Mom, Aunt Fran or Uncle Johnny collected family history information for years and eventually you received a copy of their work. You’ve added to that ’starter seed’ of data, photos, histories, etc., since, but few folks [...]

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Find-a-grave and other fun

A tale … a cemetery tale…
There is a wonderful way to do cemetery research for your own family and repay others who kindly help you in that quest…
If you haven’t visited find-a-grave yet, do so. See if you can find a burial listing and maybe even a headstone photo of [...]

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