Excellent tips. After a recent graveyard tour back home https://substack.com/@gunnarmiller/note/c-287706711 , I'd add one more: Find A Grave photos usully include GPS coördinates in the metadata, which if cut-and-pasted into Google Maps can get you to within 3-10 meters reliably.
If a contributor stood at the stone with a phone, consumer GNSS gives 3–5 m under open sky, degrading to 10–15 m under tree canopy or beside a stone wall or church. Dual-frequency phones (most since ~2018) do better, 1–3 m. If instead they dropped a pin by eye on satellite imagery, the error is whatever they eyeballed plus any errors with Google's imagery georegistration. The pin is placed at your exact coordinate in Google's frame, but the satellite tile underneath has its own registration error, typically 1–5 m in the US, sometimes worse in hilly rural terrain where orthorectification against a coarse elevation model shifts things. So the pin can look off even when the coordinate is perfect.
I have to admit, it was so hot (103°F, 39°C) on the day that I visited three cemeteries, that had I not sussed this little trick in advance I would've been miserable. Instead, it turned out to be a wonderful (and fruitful!) experience!
Great article. My mother always said she never really knew where she was born. Her first child was stillborn and the second lived about 18 days. Recently, I located the death certificate of the second child and on it says my mother was born in Huntington, West Virginia. Now, I have a place to start to see if I can find my mother's birth certificate.
Thanks Cyn, sometimes it’s the small pieces of evidence like this that can lead to a breakthrough. Hopefully you can find her birth record now, please let us know if you do 😊
As a US citizen I’m obsessed w/ UK death records (and annoyed when my person died pre-1837 with no record! - TIP: Ancestry often (confidently, wrongly) offers you a death index with year and quarter and location. Before purchasing, check the AGE at death! Were they a 1yr old when you need an 85yr old? Don’t buy that record! - AND more importantly keep looking for your person’s CORRECT death date! - Occupation, address, when it says she’s a widow. It you don’t know when her hubby died…now you have a window to look between for his death! - GRO BIRTH records are great also!
Thanks Diana, the availability of digital downloads here in the UK has made them so much more affordable, but because they’ve not all been digitised it can be extremely frustrating when the person you are looking for died just after the cut off date!
What you didn't mention and is my absolute favourite is the cause of death. It gives me context about his life. What people die of tells us much about the time they're living in. Actually, I could write a whole post about this but I'm sure others have done it better. Added to this is then name of the certifying doctor, who is often the family doctor. On my 3x great-grandfather's death cert, the doctor was his son-in-law and led me to researching him. Very interesting indeed!
Thanks for the graveyard tips. Very useful for my upcoming family history tour. I think some cemeteries also have plans on their websites.
PS: If you don't want to splash out £3 on the death cert for every ancestor, then the probate record has much of the same info. Not the cause of death or the informant, though. You get the name of the executor and the amount they left behind and sometimes to whom, also great leads.
Thanks Xanthe and good points about the probate records. And definitely you should write about the causes of death, it would make a very interesting read
What do you mean, "leap backwards as quickly as possible? " And thinking that getting back to the 1700s is a real achievement? Not everyone is so lucky! Getting to 1790 IS a real achievement! Yes, death records are fantastic. If you can find one. And if you do, it may be the only record you do find. I started researching in the 1980s, and didn't find a birth in the 1700s until about 2020. Forty years of searching. Death record? I can't find my great-grandfather's death in New York City. He is in the 1880 census, and when his wife died in 1887, she was a widow. New York City had so few records available for its millions of citizens, the German and Italian Genealogical Societies put abridged versions online as a public service. No parish records available for Catholics until about five years ago. Nova Scotia kept almost no records between 1800 and 1870, censuses only recording heads of households. Virginia records were destroyed in the Civil War. I can't get those ancestors back before 1840. Please consider, when you write, how lucky you are to be doing genealogy in England.
Thanks Anne and point noted about the availability of genealogical records in different parts of the world. We are very fortunate here compared to many other countries and I’m extremely grateful for that
I never knew a lot of this information so this was very interesting. “Talk to a gravedigger” did make me chuckle to myself as it reminded of something out of a film but I never would have thought of it and it does makes sense. A really informative piece of writing that I’m sure will help so many people who don’t know where to even start. I thought the title was great by the way 😊⭐️
Thanks so much and glad it made you smile. The gravediggers are the silent ones, they come, they go, nobody notices them but they see everyone and everything. A tip somebody gave me years ago when I first started blogging was ALWAYS have a killer title or a picture that draws people in, you have two seconds to make a person click before they scroll right on by!
Another excellent article Paul. I couldn't agree more with the need to delve into death certificates before adding ancestors to a tree without deeper consideration.
I'm ever hopeful that the New Zealand record office will eventually offer a similar system. Currently $26 NZD (approx. £11.30) and you have to patiently wait a number of days for it to arrive in your inbox. Which is still better than in other places! Great advice thanks Paul.
Thanks Zoe, I am always interested to hear what other countries charge for the certificates. We moan here at the charges, but compared to other countries, ours are not too excessive.
It sounds obvious, but local cemetery staff often possess decades of knowledge that no database can replace. I’ve found several family graves only because someone working there remembered where an old section was or recognised a family name.<<
Excellent tips. After a recent graveyard tour back home https://substack.com/@gunnarmiller/note/c-287706711 , I'd add one more: Find A Grave photos usully include GPS coördinates in the metadata, which if cut-and-pasted into Google Maps can get you to within 3-10 meters reliably.
If a contributor stood at the stone with a phone, consumer GNSS gives 3–5 m under open sky, degrading to 10–15 m under tree canopy or beside a stone wall or church. Dual-frequency phones (most since ~2018) do better, 1–3 m. If instead they dropped a pin by eye on satellite imagery, the error is whatever they eyeballed plus any errors with Google's imagery georegistration. The pin is placed at your exact coordinate in Google's frame, but the satellite tile underneath has its own registration error, typically 1–5 m in the US, sometimes worse in hilly rural terrain where orthorectification against a coarse elevation model shifts things. So the pin can look off even when the coordinate is perfect.
Still, way better than having to walk a whole graveyard https://gunnarmiller.substack.com/p/were-all-related ... if you do that, you should offer the groundskeeper to push a mower whilst you're at it ;-)
Thanks for that advice @Gunnar Miller
I have to admit, it was so hot (103°F, 39°C) on the day that I visited three cemeteries, that had I not sussed this little trick in advance I would've been miserable. Instead, it turned out to be a wonderful (and fruitful!) experience!
https://substack.com/@gunnarmiller/note/c-287702975
https://substack.com/@gunnarmiller/note/c-287704090
https://substack.com/@gunnarmiller/note/c-288884884
https://substack.com/@gunnarmiller/note/c-289445117
Did not know that!!
Great article. My mother always said she never really knew where she was born. Her first child was stillborn and the second lived about 18 days. Recently, I located the death certificate of the second child and on it says my mother was born in Huntington, West Virginia. Now, I have a place to start to see if I can find my mother's birth certificate.
Thanks Cyn, sometimes it’s the small pieces of evidence like this that can lead to a breakthrough. Hopefully you can find her birth record now, please let us know if you do 😊
If I find it I would be happy to shout it from the Moon, if possible.
As a US citizen I’m obsessed w/ UK death records (and annoyed when my person died pre-1837 with no record! - TIP: Ancestry often (confidently, wrongly) offers you a death index with year and quarter and location. Before purchasing, check the AGE at death! Were they a 1yr old when you need an 85yr old? Don’t buy that record! - AND more importantly keep looking for your person’s CORRECT death date! - Occupation, address, when it says she’s a widow. It you don’t know when her hubby died…now you have a window to look between for his death! - GRO BIRTH records are great also!
Thanks Diana, the availability of digital downloads here in the UK has made them so much more affordable, but because they’ve not all been digitised it can be extremely frustrating when the person you are looking for died just after the cut off date!
What you didn't mention and is my absolute favourite is the cause of death. It gives me context about his life. What people die of tells us much about the time they're living in. Actually, I could write a whole post about this but I'm sure others have done it better. Added to this is then name of the certifying doctor, who is often the family doctor. On my 3x great-grandfather's death cert, the doctor was his son-in-law and led me to researching him. Very interesting indeed!
Thanks for the graveyard tips. Very useful for my upcoming family history tour. I think some cemeteries also have plans on their websites.
PS: If you don't want to splash out £3 on the death cert for every ancestor, then the probate record has much of the same info. Not the cause of death or the informant, though. You get the name of the executor and the amount they left behind and sometimes to whom, also great leads.
Thanks Xanthe and good points about the probate records. And definitely you should write about the causes of death, it would make a very interesting read
What do you mean, "leap backwards as quickly as possible? " And thinking that getting back to the 1700s is a real achievement? Not everyone is so lucky! Getting to 1790 IS a real achievement! Yes, death records are fantastic. If you can find one. And if you do, it may be the only record you do find. I started researching in the 1980s, and didn't find a birth in the 1700s until about 2020. Forty years of searching. Death record? I can't find my great-grandfather's death in New York City. He is in the 1880 census, and when his wife died in 1887, she was a widow. New York City had so few records available for its millions of citizens, the German and Italian Genealogical Societies put abridged versions online as a public service. No parish records available for Catholics until about five years ago. Nova Scotia kept almost no records between 1800 and 1870, censuses only recording heads of households. Virginia records were destroyed in the Civil War. I can't get those ancestors back before 1840. Please consider, when you write, how lucky you are to be doing genealogy in England.
Thanks Anne and point noted about the availability of genealogical records in different parts of the world. We are very fortunate here compared to many other countries and I’m extremely grateful for that
I never knew a lot of this information so this was very interesting. “Talk to a gravedigger” did make me chuckle to myself as it reminded of something out of a film but I never would have thought of it and it does makes sense. A really informative piece of writing that I’m sure will help so many people who don’t know where to even start. I thought the title was great by the way 😊⭐️
Thanks so much and glad it made you smile. The gravediggers are the silent ones, they come, they go, nobody notices them but they see everyone and everything. A tip somebody gave me years ago when I first started blogging was ALWAYS have a killer title or a picture that draws people in, you have two seconds to make a person click before they scroll right on by!
Your welcome Paul, it’s really good and j look forward to reading your articles. The title you used is great, very attention grabbing 🥰
I’m glad it worked 😊
Great advice 👍🏻
Thanks Lex
Another excellent article Paul. I couldn't agree more with the need to delve into death certificates before adding ancestors to a tree without deeper consideration.
Thanks Jude, they are a very under valued and under utilised resource.
I'm ever hopeful that the New Zealand record office will eventually offer a similar system. Currently $26 NZD (approx. £11.30) and you have to patiently wait a number of days for it to arrive in your inbox. Which is still better than in other places! Great advice thanks Paul.
Thanks Zoe, I am always interested to hear what other countries charge for the certificates. We moan here at the charges, but compared to other countries, ours are not too excessive.
I love this bit of advice:
>>And here’s my favourite tip of all.
Talk to the gravedigger.
It sounds obvious, but local cemetery staff often possess decades of knowledge that no database can replace. I’ve found several family graves only because someone working there remembered where an old section was or recognised a family name.<<