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Version 1.9.1  of the iOS Find a Grave app has been released. 
 
Various crash and bug fixes

Congratulations to Pat our feature Volunteer of the Month for June, 2020! She’s been nominated for going above and beyond for many years in Louisville, Kentucky and according to many members, being a pleasure to work. Pat’s been a member for a little over seven years, has fulfilled nearly 1000 photo requests and uploaded about 38,000 photos.
I have been married to the same wonderful man for 54 years. He is the love of my life and has always supported me in what ever I got into, never wavering. He knows that I will be itchy to go the “the Cem” when the weather is nice. He is always there for me! We are a team. He has supported me 100 percent from the day I got “caught” by the Find a Grave and Ancestry “bug.” We have 2 wonderful sons and 2 awesome grandsons and my “purrfect” cat who has been with us for 18 years. Nursing, Operating Room Nursing, took up 46 years of my life: General Operating Room, Ophthalmology in the office setting and O.R. and the last 11 in Open Heart in Eastern North Carolina. It was a place where a person who was always paying attention to the details (“picky”), could thrive. Tennis and golf USED to take up my time. When we moved back to Louisville in 2015 gardening has become my second interest. A quote from my wonderful father, “If you can’t do it well/right…don’t do it at all.”

Unmapped Cemeteries broken out by County. 5-color level.
This means that the cemetery listed does not have GPS assigned to it. This has nothing to do with % of cemetery photographed or mapped memorials.
How does your county look?
 

Timelapse image of unmapped cemeteries by county in the United States from April 2015 through April 2020 excluding October 2015.
 

 
 
 

Congratulations to Alison our feature Volunteer of the Month for May, 2020! Alison has added nearly 58,000 photos to Find a Grave, almost all of which are grave photos. Much of her work is done in the largest necropolis in the southern hemisphere, Rookwood General Cemetery in New South Wales, Australia.
Alison and Kaz at Hidden, an outdoor sculpture exhibition held annually at Rookwood. Alison’s been researching her family tree since 1984 and has always had a fascination with cemeteries and headstones. Find a Grave brought her family research and interest in cemeteries together. She started by adding her family members and then ventured into fulfilling photo requests. She was hooked! 

Version 1.9  of the iOS Find a Grave app has been released. 
 
New memorial list filters
- Search memorials you added by last name
- New list views for photos added and requests
- Swipe to go back
- Other minor improvements
- Multiple bug fixes

With this update : 
 
Link to Community Rules added to bottom of page New Memorial Search added to Cemetery pages

Congratulations to Asashi Ishizaki our feature Volunteer of the Month for April, 2020! He’s been working hard on submissions representing burial shrines and temples in Japan.
 
Asashi’s been a member for about three years. He’s added over 350 cemeteries to the site, almost all of them in Japan. We appreciate his enthusiasm to add memorials and burial locations and help others find information about those buried in Japan. Here are a few headstones that popped out to us while looking through his contributions:
 

 
Momoko Kochi is the actress from the original 1954 Gojira (Godzilla), know for her role as Emiko YamaneMomoko Kochi
 

 
Eiji Sawamura, a professional baseball pitcher and the 1st MVP in the Japan Professional Baseball Federation in 1937. Eiji Sawamura
 

 
The well cared for grave of the poet and scholar, Mizuho Ota, caught our eye with its fresh-cut flowers – beautiful!
 
Asashi, our accolades to you for your extraordinary work in cemeteries! We are so glad that you are a Find a Grave member and appreciate all your efforts in recording and memorializing those that have passed.
 
We welcome your suggestions for Volunteer of the Month. If you’d like to submit a volunteer for consideration in future months, please send an email with details of their work to feedback@findagrave.com.

Our wondrous earth and its boundless beauty, Happy Earth Day!
Speaking of beautiful sights, have you been lucky enough to see masses of cherry trees blossom in Spring? Yearly spring festivals around the world celebrate the bloom of these trees. Their majestic beauty draws people who gather and picnic underneath their canopies. The cherry blossom is known for its transience, only blooming for a few weeks each year as a symbol of hope in the early spring. 
To celebrate Earth Day, we’ve added the cherry blossom as a new virtual flower on Find a Grave. To add a cherry blossom, click on “Leave a Flower” from the Flowers section on any memorial page.
-Find a Grave Team

Version 2.6.4 of the Android app has been released. 
 
Bug fixes for a few crashes and remembering location in the cemetery search map better.

We spend a lot of time wandering in cemeteries! Just like you, we’ve seen headstones that need a little TLC. Some are covered in moss or lichen, while others are sunken, cracked, damaged, or broken. Over time, nature takes its toll on grave markers, especially older ones. Sometimes, well-meaning individuals attempt to clean headstones but unknowingly harm them with abrasive methods or cleaners. We discourage members from touching headstones unless you are related or have specific permission from the cemetery. In those instances, we’d like to point you to a fantastic website with a wealth of information on how to read weathered inscriptions without causing harm to the stone and headstone conservation.

Congratulations to Michael Moore our feature Volunteer of the Month for March, 2020! Thank you for your work in Canadian cemeteries, particularly photographing headstones in Quebec.
Michael was inspired to volunteer when he encountered the work of BCDocwalker, who has transcribed records for cemeteries in the Lachûte, Quebec area and added them to Find a Grave. This is also where Michael’s ancestors immigrated to in the early nineteenth century. 
He decided to make the 300-mile drive and photograph headstones for memorials created in that area and to visit his ancestors’ graves. The trip was a success! Later that summer, he went back to Lachûte and fully photographed all twenty cemeteries in the area, uploaded the photos to Find a Grave and created any new memorials needed. Now the information and photos can help people around the world! The collaboration aspect of Find a Grave is one of his favorite features of the site.
“I have two motorcycles, both long-distance touring motorcycles, one in Europe and one in Canada. When I head out on cross-continent tours, I make a list of locations where ancestors are buried, and I try to photograph the entire cemetery & upload all the pictures to Find a Grave. My experience has been that when I do that, other Find a Grave members start linking families together and that greatly helps me with my family history research.”
Michael spent much of his career flying in war relief efforts for the Red Cross in Africa. He retired a few years back, ending his career as an engineering test pilot for an aircraft manufacturer. Michael lives in Canada, but airport closures and closed borders have him stuck in Tunisia. He’s been trying to find a way home for the past couple of weeks. Fortunately, he has “a backlog of about 4,000 pictures” to upload and says this will “keep him busy.” We hope you get home soon, Michael! 

Congratulations to Stacey Shaw, our feature Volunteer of the Month for February 2020! Find A Grave has provided Stacey with some of her best leads in family history research. She’s met some of the “nicest people” and “wanted to help others” as volunteers had helped her. 
Julia nominated Stacey for going the extra mile and finding her mother’s grave. She was an infant when her mother tragically passed on. Frustration and confusion set in over the years searching for her burial location, as the cemetery seemed to no longer exist! She reached out to the Find A Grave community and found Stacey, asking if she would keep an eye out for her mother’s headstone in the local cemeteries.
Stacey “enjoys the hunt when walking around looking for headstones” and started researching right away. A visit to the public library proved the cemetery name had changed, which is why it was elusive. She drove to the nearby cemetery, found and photographed the headstone, and then uploaded it to the Find A Grave memorial. Julia was grateful and overwhelmed, saying that she “will never forget this.” Find A Grave members are astounding, going above and beyond to assist others! In Stacey’s words, “the family’s reaction is priceless” and always makes her smile.
Our accolades to you for your extraordinary work in cemeteries! We are so glad that you are a Find A Grave member and appreciate all your efforts in recording and memorializing those that have passed.
We welcome your suggestions for Volunteer of the Month. If you’d like to submit a volunteer for consideration in future months, please send an email with details of their work to feedback@findagrave.com.

Approximately 180,000 African American men fought in the Civil War. Their bravery and courage played a crucial role in helping the United States Army to victory. Twenty-five of those soldiers were recipients of the highest military award for valor – the Medal of Honor. To honor their service and sacrifice, we have gathered their Find A Grave memorials together into a virtual cemetery that yields inspiring stories of their heroism.
For example, Christian Abraham Fleetwood served as a sergeant major in the 4th Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry. On September 29, 1864, Fleetwood’s regiment fought in the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm near Richmond, Virginia. While charging the enemy, a fellow soldier bearing two flags was wounded. Fleetwood grabbed the colors before they could touch the ground, and when it became clear that he couldn’t penetrate the enemy line, he retreated back to the reserve line and used the flag to rally more soldiers. 
Fleetwood’s official Medal of Honor citation reads, “Seized the colors, after two color bearers had been shot down, and bore them nobly through the fight.”
We’ve gathered Fleetwood’s and all other African American Medal of Honor recipients Find A Grave memorials together in one place. Click on each memorial in the virtual cemetery to read the Medal of Honor citations. 
Take a moment during Black History Month to learn more about the brave and selfless sacrifices of these Medal of Honor recipients. 
-Find A Grave Team

In Memoriam 2019

December is a wonderful time to spend with family, reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the future. We hope your December is full of love and joy as you celebrate the holidays with loved ones and share memories of family and friends that have passed.
In this season of giving, many of us look for meaningful ways to make a difference. We’d like to mention one organization that could use your help. Wreaths Across America remembers fallen U.S. Veterans by placing honor wreaths at veteran’s headstones in more than 1700 locations in all 50 states, at sea and abroad. For more information about sponsoring a wreath, check their website. You can also donate your time by volunteering to lay wreaths on December 14th. They need individuals and groups to help with this large undertaking. Click here to search for locations near you and be sure to read more about the story behind the wreaths and how this breathtaking tradition began.
(U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. Jim Varhegyi) We encourage members, as well as friends and family, to get involved with this outstanding organization that honors Veterans. If you volunteer at the cemetery on December 14, take your camera or smartphone and photograph the headstones before and after laying the wreaths. Make sure that your location services are enabled. Then when you upload the headstone photo to Find A Grave, the GPS location will automatically add to the memorial page. Many veteran’s memorials include headstone photos on Find A Grave, but they don’t include headstone photos with these beautiful honor wreaths. We’d love to see that on the site, making sure that the inscribed headstone is fully visible. For those who’d like to contribute virtually, we’ve added an honor wreath to our virtual flowers under the holidays’ section.

We’re excited to announce a new search for Find A Grave memorials! Click here to try it out. Right now the new search looks similar to the regular search, but uses a different search engine. We’ll make updates to its appearance in the future. We’d love for you to try the same search on new search and regular search so you can see how they compare.
Here are some added options for the new search:
Last name is no longer required. We’ve added the option to include a spouse, sibling or parent in your search.  The date range options include +/-1 , +/-3 , +/-5 birth and death years as well as exact, before and after. Search by Contributor ID to find memorials within yours and others management. There is an option to make your name search fuzzy that will help find names which might have a letter missing or a slight misspelling. Added partial or prefix search similar to the old search for the first and middle name fields (Ben will find Benjamin and L will find Larry). The spouse, parent, child or sibling names can also be partial spellings. In the name fields, you can use the ? or * wild cards. ? replaces one letter. * represents 0 to many letters. E.g. Sorens?n or Wil* There are also some differences that you won’t notice in the fields, but may notice in your results:
Today, when a search returns more than 10,000 matches we just show an error message. The new search will show you the first 10,000 matches and the sort options will work on the full result list. If you’ve added a spouse, sibling or parent, their name and relationship will be included in the result. We’ve made the search header stay at the top of the screen as you scroll. You can use it to refine your search, sort your results or change the page number to jump to later pages (up to page 500). We’ve received great feedback and suggestions and look forward to more sent our way through our Beta Search Discussion page, pointed out below, or feedback@findagrave.com.

Whether you have a spare 15 minutes or an entire afternoon, you can make someone’s day by fulfilling a headstone photo request. 
Why Photograph Headstones? 
Headstones often contain a treasure trove of information. In addition to names, headstones might include birthdate and place, death date, the names of family members, unique inscriptions, symbols or icons, and other clues to religion, military service, fraternal organizations, and more. A simple headstone photograph can unlock the door to additional genealogical research! For example, the admirable castle on the headstone here is the logo for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

We are looking for people who would like to join our beta test group and help us as we make improvements to the site. 
 
As part of the beta test group, you might be invited to try out new features we are working on, answer survey questions about possible changes to the site, participate in usability tests and more. 
 
If you are interested, send an email to feedback@findagrave.com with “Beta Testing” in the subject line and we’ll add you to the group.

Why are GPS coordinates important for graves? 
 
It’s a great question. Have you ever visited a cemetery, wandered around for an hour looking for the grave, then finally left the flowers with someone else? I have! When GPS coordinates are added to a memorial it allows anyone to easily find and walk to the headstone or grave. In addition, that grave is also verified and recorded by a volunteer. This is important as the verified location of a grave can be a vital piece of the puzzle for your research. It’s probable that other family members are buried in neighboring plots or nearby. It’s also possible that a person’s burial location is near the location where they were living. This information can help in closing connections for those you’re researching. With GPS added, there’s no need to wander the cemetery or hope for your childhood memory to find the grave. Anyone will be able to visit the grave by walking directly to it.
 

 
What is GPS?
 
Any location in the world can be found through GPS coordinates. The Global Positioning System consists of over 30 navigation satellites orbiting the earth. This system makes it possible for people to receive their location from these satellites through hand held receivers. These receivers can be a smartphone or standalone GPS receivers. For the purposes of Find A Grave we use the decimal degrees format in latitude and longitude (+-dd.dddd, +-dd.dddd). If you use a smartphone then you can photograph headstones and upload GPS coordinates at the same time while using the free Find A Grave app, which you can download here.