People have asked me why I engage in this unusual hobby, which the good folks at FindAGrave.com refer to as "graving."
If I could boil it down to one word, it would be this: "information."
Years ago I became interested in genealogy: tracing my family tree. There are many sources of information out there--vital records, Social Security indices, obituaries, library records and so forth--many of which can be searched online or ordered through the mail. But there's another source of genealogical information that most often requires personal visits, frequently involving long-distance travel at considerable expense, followed by exhaustive searches in-person searches. This would be cemeteries.
If only there were a convenient online source in which genealogists and historians could look up people's burial information.
Well, FindAGrave.com has become such a source. It's completely dependent on the work of volunteers: there are thousands of people walking cemeteries around the world (mostly the US, Canada and the UK) and inputting information onto the site.
My goals in graving are two-fold: first, to pinpoint the locations of cemeteries of which online descriptions are poor or non-existant; and second, to photograph and record gravestones in order to create online transcriptions of the data.
Sometimes I visit a cemetery and just walk around taking photos of gravestones that catch my eye; this is the case especially with large cemeteries. With a few select cemeteries, however, my goal is to record every single legible gravestone (and even decipher illegible ones if possible).
Living in Asia, I have had the opportunity to contribute data from cemeteries in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Brunei and Malaysia. I hope to visit Singapore one of these days, and also India and Indonesia.
What do I get out of it? Well, apart from the thrill of the detective work and travel involved, I have also received a number of emails from people thanking me for finding long-lost relatives and friends. These emails make it all worthwhile.
