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Congratulations to BobBoston, our feature Volunteer of the Month for January, 2020! Bob has been a member of Find A Grave for nearly 13 years and has fulfilled 47,630 photo requests! It’s very possible that he fulfilled a photo request for you! Thank you, Bob! In his member biography he lists some locations he’s visited and photographed headstones.
“I’ve been having a great time taking headstone photos from France, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Easter Island, Saigon, Africa, Iceland, Greenland, and all over New England. Wherever I travel I check out the photo requests in that local Zip Code. Rather nice hobby that keeps me walking now that I am retired.”
 
Here is a small sampling of his work along with the variety of places he has visited. Wonder where will his travels take him next? 
Bari War Cemetery – Bari, Italy Waverly Cemetery – Bronte, Australia Port Louis Western Cemetery – Port Louis, Mauritius Cimitero Comunale di Civitavecchia – Civitavecchia, Italy Hólavallagarður Cemetery – Rehyjavik, Iceland Bel-Air Cemetery – Dakar, Senegal Catholic Cemetery – Oranjestad, Aruba Oak Grove Cemetery – Massachusetts, USA Oude Siny Anna Catholic Cemetery – Willemstad, Curaçao Cemetery Municipal Ushuaia – Ushuaia, Argentina Cementerio del Buceo – Montevideo, Uruguay Cemitério de Santo Amarom- Recife, Brazil Cherbourg Old Communal Cemetery – Cherbourg-Octeville, France Sacred Heart Cemetery – Si Racha, Thailand Zeebrugge Churchyard – Bruges, Belgium Bob, thank you for all your walks and fulfilling member’s photo requests! 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.

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?
 

In Memoriam 2019

Version 2.6 of the Android app has been released. 
 
We've added a search dashboard. Now including cities for searches and creating new memorials. Various bug fixes.

Congratulations to James Bassi and Anne Macnair, our featured Volunteers of the Month for December, 2019!
James’ interest in Find A Grave started while researching his family tree on Ancestry. He discovered hints that led to Find A Grave memorials. He shared his discoveries with his mother Anne, and together the two of them developed a passion for research. They find joy in helping others by adding headstone photos and memorials for thousands of strangers to Find A Grave.
James and Anne have added over 6000 headstone photos and memorials in the past couple of months alone! One branch of their family tree is from Italy, so James and Anne planned a trip to visit Italy last summer. While there, they photographed as many cemeteries as possible. Their purpose was “to provide information for the relatives abroad that don’t have a chance to visit so they could see the resting place of their loved ones.” They each have a favorite cemetery that they visited while in Italy, Anne loved Cimitero di Isola di Compiano while James connected with Cimitero di Compiano.
The interesting discoveries and stories they find while photographing makes the research even more exciting for them. For instance, they photographed a headstone that included a statue of a child holding a flower. One would assume that the burial was for a child, but they discovered the headstone was actually a lovely tribute for a teacher. 
It’s exhilarating and moving to watch memorials being added to the site globally. Find A Grave expands each day thanks to our members. We’ve translated the site into nine different languages to make it even easier for more people to join the Find A Grave community. Language preference can be changed from the language dropdown at the base of the homepage.

Version 1.6.1  of the iOS Find A Grave app has been released. 
 
Crash and bug fixes

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.