The Curious Case of the Body Counters at Find a Grave 

These body counters are pretty much holding my family hostage. These body counter people seem oblivious that these were actual people that mean the world to others. I was able to get my grandparents on both sides but it took a great time and work.

I wouldn’t have a photo of my family members’ graves without Find a Grave volunteers-ditto the location of the long-lost family cemetery. ❤️

I have been using find a grave as a tool to build my family tree. While I find it concerning that things like this would go on, I can honestly say I have had good experiences, and any corrections suggested on my family's memorials has been honored.

This happened to me in 2020 when my dad died. The day after his funeral i went on find a grave and somebody had already posted one. I contacted the person and luckily they transferred it to me once i explained who I was.

Being a member for years I realized this problem years ago too. I was running ragged trying to fulfll these requests. Then I realized that certain people were making the requests all the time. I would then go to their profile and realize they had thousands of memorials! Then I realized they really hadn't taken any photos themselves for findagrave. Now I only do requests of family members and I start with the oldest ones first. Do these people think they are going to win a prize or something.

It happen to my family when my sister passed away. The next day after her funeral someone who saw her obituary created an memorial. A week later one of my sisters found it. She was horrified. I reached out to the person who had created and they did give me control right away and I took off most of the information. After a year I put back most of the information when we as a family were ready. The person who had originally created the memorial had over 5000 memorial. I think that Find A Grave should not allow non family members for at least 6 months. I am not a fan of Find A Grave.

This is awful! I joined Find a Grave before Ancestry bought it out. At the time I was 15 and doing genealogical research on my family. I had my parents drive me out to the family cemetery that our family had been buried in for centuries and logged, photographed, and uploaded every single grave there so others looking into their family would have that resource and so the people buried there would be remembered. Some of those graves I had to take rubbings because their gravestones were unreadable due to age. When my mom died in 2010 it was an act of love and grief that I added her record in, too. I can't imagine how painful it would be to log on to add the memorial for a family member only to find someone had already done it purely for social media clout and refused to hand over control to the family.

Every once in a while I get someone thanking me for listing a relatives memorial. most of the time they don't ask for a transfer, but I always reply back asking if they would like to take over management, they are typically thrilled when I offer that option and they usually take it. The numbers game I don't really care about. I typically post historical obituaries and photos that accompany them and some people have thanked me saying they had never known what their great grandfather looked like. I've put my own money into it. It costs me money buying historical photographs and having access to the newspaper archives but I don't mind, I enjoy it and it is my way of being charitable.

I have been a part of FAG for 14 years. They have changed things to make it easier to add info. When I joined they still were giving rewards to those that added so many memories. It made it hard to get your love ones or even get bio added. I went round and round with one person about info on who the father was. My Madden name is Giddens and I have done a lot of work on the Giddens & Gideon. Some spelled it Giddens and others stayed with Gideon. Most of my work was with the spelling of Giddens. Back to this person who added a few census and a marriage certificate that had the name Jim she said it was John ,who I said was his father was James. I had a email from another person who was also working on James Giddens wife's family her 2nd marriage. This is in Rolla Missouri at the time there was a Preacher named J.J. Watts who kept records of who he buried and also did some records of marriages and children. James wife was Melissa and J.J. Watts had documented his wife's children from both marriage's most of his vol.are only of mico film you can look up the records at Rolla library. I gave the woman who had James son Memorial his name was John the email I got and saying where the info was from. She refused it saying she did her research and believes his father is also named John. I lived in St. Louis and Rolla is a 3 hour drive away but I did the drive to Rolla got copy's of the record and sent it to her. Now I had told her where the info came from the J.J. Watts collection. Come to find out she worked at the Rolla library and could have looked up the info at any time. Once I sent it to her she said nothing to me just transfer the Memorial over to me. John was never found on any census with his parents, that had his name. I new he had to belong to this line of Giddens by the name Myrtle that was used. It's not in the other lines of Giddens sib. This is only one story I have about 10 more that I had to prove way over the top that I had done my research and knew what I was telling them was true. None of them were related and knew the history of the Giddens family's. I think the power of control was out of control at this time. If I was asked to transfer a memorial and it wasn't the FAG guide line Mother, father, grand and up. I would transfer the Memorial to them anyway. Most were Aunt's, cousin, ECT. Even if they were my family but this person was closer related are knew the person and I only knew of the person. I have had others demand I turn over a memorial. That doesn't work for me. Just because you are not having a face to face conversation gives on one the right to be rude and even at times hateful. Some won't let you add the death certificate to a Memorial they are in control of. We don't own these Memorials we may have made them but yet they are someone's loved ones they are a real person who deserves respect. I got into doing this because I went looking for my great great grandmothers grave that was buried under a bush and dirt. Had a hard time getting the Cemetery to find her grave and unearth it. I was told that no one had cared about her and now I come along and want to know about my family. The cemeterys even went as far as trying to charge me $5.00 for info on my family grave plot where they were in the cemetery. So I started taking photos of the headstones in the oldest part so if anyone came behind me wouldn't have to deal with what I did they could say well the headstone is on FAG. Most are flat stones and a lot have dirt on the stones. I would even uncover them with my hands and take a photo. I do want to say I always thanked the person who had a Memorial that I wanted info added too. You get more with kindness then rudeness. FAG has come a long way and Thank you for doing what you have done to get it there. I am not involved as I once was but do keep up with the request.

I noticed when my aunt passed away that an employee at the cemetery had already made her memorial. I started looking and yes this is actually part of someone’s job

Thanks for this video. I remembered watching it after my grandmother passed away and sure enough when I checked on the day of her funeral, not only had someone already made a profile for her, but another person had made a duplicate, both before she was even interred. I was fortunately able to take over management of her profile. Another relative has just recently passed away, and thanks to remembering this video, I was able to create their memorial before a body counter had the chance. Thank you for bringing this issue to wider attention.

That was the situation with my father in law. I had to add my grandfather in law, brother and mom before I even made final plans. 😢

That has been my bone of contention for years! I would go to create a memorial and it had already been done and always had incorrect information. Impossible to get corrected. Thank you for shedding light on this!

I had to stop this video midway to see if someone had created a memorial for my sister who passed away a few years ago. Lo and behold 3 days after she passed away complete strangers posted a memorial for her. I am still trying to figure out how i feel about this.

When it comes to the transfers, a lot of people don't understand the transfer process. you're supposed to go through an option that's on the memorial and do your request through there. If you send a request by the email address attached to the creator profile, they probably will not honour it as a lot of people go strictly by the rules on find a grave. If you email that particular memorial owner and ask for a transfer they will probably just tell you to go to the transfer option on the memorial.

I've had the problem of people bulk loading cemetery memorial records from a spread sheet. Sometimes the loader responded to a request to transfer management. Mostly there was no response. In one case the loader had over a million memorials. My work around was to create another memorial with full and accurate information and links to parents siblings, children, etc. I recently noticed that one auto memorial disappeared for one of these so only my memorial remained.

I've recently suggested to Find-A-Grave that they remove the contribution counts to reduce the incentive for gamification. People have been requesting it for years. Find-A-Grave doesn't care what pain is inflicted upon recently bereaved families by these ghouls. If they want to do something useful, Family Search has tons of images from unindexed burial registers on its website. Transcribe some of those instead of hurting grieving families.

I have only been a member of Find A Grave for a little over a year and was completely oblivious of this! But one of my closest friends passed away and I was shocked to see that someone added a memorial for him and wondered why they didn't photograph his marker

Find A Grave needs to how a totalizer for all one's entries into the system and a separate number of managed memorials. Of course, some body counters would still take prided in the managed memorials count, but it is a step in the right direction.

I feel like this is an easy fix Findagrave isn’t willing to fix because they won’t be as active without people competing with each other for having the most memorials.

Thanks for letting me be a part of this Jarrett.

Wow, I really don't know about this aspect of Find-a-Grave. Thanks for shedding light on this for users. UPDATE: I just checked and the person who added my mother's memorial has over 42K entries! Ewwww.

I have given information for DoB and places many times, and I have never had any rejected. Never had any rude responses, either.

I've been a registered member of FAG for more than 20 years. I was frequenting the site long before that. Body counters have been a problem the entire time. This was especially true with graves in the Veteran's cemeteries. At one point in time there was a challenge behind the scenes at the FAG forum to see who could get the most Veteran's graves. Some people had thousands of them that they had posted. Back when Jim Tipton was in charge if you could show that you were a relative/descendent he or one of his crew would automatically transfer. I had a handful transferred to me that way. Now I'm getting no response from people that I've contacted months ago to transfer so I can correct the mistakes on my family members memorials and no response from FAG staff. Jim's goal when he opened it up to non famous people was to make a website were people could go to find out were family and friends were buried. What members were encouraged to do was to post so that families could find their relatives and then transfer over if requested. Lots of people did that but others ignored or refused requests so the FAG staff had to intervene. It's sad this is still an issue. Many create memorials just so they can help people find love one. I'm sad this still remains a problem there.

I had the same problem. My Great Grandfather was a police officer killed in the line of duty in 1921. The find a grave info isn't even completely accurate. Plus they obviously took the photos from my Ancestry account. I reached out and they ignored me. It's very disturbing. Plus they then went and photographed the extended families graves. It's so creepy.

I've had a similar situation happen to me in March. My great granduncle passed away and a days after I made a memorial for him, I learned someone had precariously made a memorial for him YEARS before he passed (the uploader possibly learned about it via records on cemetery plots bought or something). My memorial was merged with it, and I asked for a transfer and waited MONTHS until I contacted FindaGrave. I now have ownership over my uncle's memorial but I'm disgusted that someone did that. And I'm most likely going to go through that same process when my great grandaunt passes away.

I see that Findagrave still shows stats on a user's numbers of memorials added and managed. If these numbers were not visible, it would remove a major motivation for the body counters to add memorials indiscriminately .

My mom was on hospice and her death was completely expected, so that helped me be able to create her memorial the evening she passed away. I knew if I didn't there would be mass competition from those who monitor the funeral home's web site.

I had no idea about this side of Find a Grave, I’ve only ever used it for genealogy purposes to find ancestors graves. It’s quite shocking to find out that people use the site in this “gamified” way. I can’t imagine how distressing it must be to go to create a memorial for someone you love and a totally unrelated person has already done it and won’t give up ownership. Thanks for speaking out about this, always love your videos.

I do as well find this disgraceful. I too have found ND this where my ancestors are and by one individual in particular. I also have family where there is no stone for the family but for my father only. Thank-you for making us aware of this practice. Please add my name to this petition.

They did that same 💩3 years ago when my aunt died. They copied and pasted her obit onto the memorial page which they're NOT supposed to do and lifted her photo from the same obit! I threw a freakin' fit.

Yep. In 2020 both my parents passed away. I posted their obituaries online and within four days after I posted both their pictures popped up on Find A Grave with their obituaries. I knew this was happening so I wasn't upset. Interesting because no one actually went out and took a picture of the headstone because at that point my parents hadn't been buried yet and the headstone had not been inscribed. I was a bit surprised how fast the memorials were posted. I proceeded to add flowers with my relationship to them and the actual photo of the headstone. I have not officially requested to host the memorial.

This prompted me to look. My grandparents in Missouri don't have memorials. Next time I go home I will consider adding them, though. But my aunt in Minnesota who died in 2016 was cremated and we had a memorial where we spread her ashes on private property, yet there's a memorial page for her at a cemetery where she isn't buried by a user with 59000 memorials. Geez.

Excellent video! Let's hope the "body counters" gain some compassion!

When I first started at Find a Grave I did create memorials from local cemeteries that I took pics of, but they were old graves. Now, I have close relatives that someone else created. Granted, one of them is my cousin (that's fine), but one created my uncle's memorial (he just died last year) and it's no one I know. I was not pleased to see that at all. No one should feel it's a race against time to enter their relative's info in Find a Grave because of the body counters.

My husband's Uncle by marriage just recently passes. He has no known living close family. I was careful to create his memorial ASAP. I've been researching and plan to do an obituary when I'm ready. I was worried that someone would grab his memorial and put up inaccurate information. Family obituaries from his father, if not read carefully, imply that the 2nd wife was his Uncle's Mother. Careful research indicates this is incorrect.

A little discussed issue is that Find-a-grave includes many "memorials" for people who are still living. A photograph can be submitted with the death field simply marked "unknown", and the names of living people will now appear in the site's index. Find-a-grave continues to display an appalling disregard for the privacy of living individuals who did not consent.

I have been with find a grave for 3 months in the last few days i have come across a member who has 13 million memorials over the last 4 years...I find this very concerning . Yes over 13 million Memorials ...I have wrote to find a grave waiting a response ...Thankyou for the video i have found it to be very helpful

Someone made a memorial for my daughter from the funeral home website 3 days after she died and even gave a place of burial. 8 years later and my daughter still has not been buried. I contacted the "manager" several years ago and she edited the memorial and transferred it to me. Fortunately, because now there is not even a space in the family plot for her.

One of the major problems is that Find/Grave is owned by Ancestry. I just came across another one of your videos in which you reviewed DNA testing companies. While it was very informative, I was horrified to see you rate Ancestry as #2. While they have spent massive amounts on advertising and sucking in customers to get their DNA tested, the data they provide, especially with things like Thru-lines has historically been absolute CRAP (and that’s an understatement). Similar to the photos mentioned mentioned in this video, I recently discovered that Ancestry would ONLY allow me to see a photo that I took TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, which I had NEVER posted on Ancestry, unless I bought their FULL (world) membership. I eventually ended up threatening to sue them (and I had a lawyer lined up) unless they IMMEDIATELY removed the photo I had taken. Ancestry is a moneymaking SCAM! While a lot of information can be found there, especially if you’re a beginner (I’m not - I’m a very advanced researcher l), an enormous amount can be found from FREE sources.

If Find-A-Grave wants to keep the "gamification" and make peace, I have a few suggestions. So far, I only see positive rewards and no negative rewards. Perhaps, those who have the most activity should automatically encounter a more difficult level in which unresolved complaints from family members or copyright holders would result in negative feedback. If the negative feedback had some teeth to it, say a restriction against creating memorials for a specific time period, this could reduce temptation to count the recently deceased. And, as was mentioned in the video, a requirement for a headstone would be an excellent change (unless cremation occurred - in which case, its not a grave). Perhaps, a restriction on the age of the headstone would be necessary as well. Perhaps one year from burial would be appropriate. Current technology exists that could look through the metadata of a photograph to ensure a body counter didn't go to the gravesite within 30 days of the burial or stone being erected.

My mom was the family genealogist and when she was on Hospice, she had me write her obituary before she died so she could make sure I had all the information correct. After she passed, someone put her memorial on Find a Grave based on info from the funeral home before the obit even hit the paper! I wanted to to be the one to post the memorial in her honor and didn't get the chance to. After it was eventually transferred to me, I converted it to a "Jane Doe" memorial and made one for her myself.

I am a Find A Grave member. Most do it for Genealogy reference. A family member may request a memorial transfer from a stranger or to remove a memorial. Whoever is closest kin trumps over someone not related or a stranger.

This is horrifying. I had no idea that this went on, not in this way at least. I think I want onto FindAGrave thinking of adding some of my grandpa's family graves that I don't think are on the site thinking I've had links from Ancestry to this site and it has been useful in finding out the stories of some distant cousins of his and I did see the close relative box so assumed this fixed the problem. There are two points I think that spring to mind here, maybe more, but these are my first two. Firstly I don't think have should be added, or at least visible until say 10 years after the burial (and if the close family don't want it there at all then not at all - I'm not sure how you'd verify this, but that's the problem of FindAGrave, not the families). Secondly in a lot of countries surely this violates privacy laws, and when I say privacy laws I don't just mean those of the diseased which I'm guessing you could argue are made null and void on death (although I'm not sure this is the case, though I'm not a lawyer), but those of the close (and even sometimes extended) family members? Maybe FindAGrave host their servers in countries outside of these locations, but in the end they are being used in them so aren't they open to lawsuits from bereaving family members over this? In the end anyone doing this needs to stop or be stopped, it's as simple as that.

There's a limit to how many relatives you can claim, but there's also a limit to how may you can remove. They updated their classification system, so now I have a bunch that are now wrongly classified.

I so appreciate the people who post at Find a Grave, it has been so helpful in my research. I don't even mind that strangers have added memorials because without that there would be much less information out there. However, Find A Grave needs to make changes to protect the family members of the recently deceased. I am the only genealogist in my family and I did not add a memorial to find a grave for my Grandmother, and it wasn't an oversite on my part. Grandma passed over 4 yrs ago, but there is no grave. Her ashes currently reside on my parents' piano. The other day I was doing some research and a memorial popped up for her at Find a Grave. I thought that was odd, considering the circumstances. Now it all makes sense. Someone had added a Memorial and a non-existent grave for her at the Church cemetery, of the Church we held her memorial service.

I think that they should include messages and a request of transfer to the app, as well. I’m rarely on the website.

I remember going through all of this issue and I felt that the managers encouraged them to take place. I was one that would go and take pictures that others requested and while at the cemetery would take more and post the information. When anyone would make a suggestion for an addition or correction, whether a relative or an old neighbor, i would transfer even without the request being made. In looking through some relatives, I will find that others have posted the same and even use the picture I took. This still is taking place. I think the best, one used a picture of a tombstone and posted the grave as being in a different state. BTW, the name of the cemetery was the same. It was a relative of the person, but shouldn't it have dawned on them that I knew which state I was in while taking the picture?

Great video Jarrett! Very informative. I hope everyone's efforts won't go unnoticed anymore & that change will occur. Signing the petitions now.

Quite recently I looked for my father on Find A Grave. Some information there is inaccurate (like his birth year--the picture of the headstone actually clearly shows the right date but the written information is wrong). I was a bit too distressed at that moment to think about what to do to make corrections. Now I wonder if I will be allowed to do so.

Two things that have irked me about Find A Grave: 1) My great uncle died eleven years before my great aunt. Unfortunately, her name and birthdate were added to the plaque where he was interred. Someone added a memorial for her even though she was very much alive. She passed in 2017 and her memorial was created in 2014. I found that horrible. 2) My great-grandparents and grandparents plus many other family members are all buried in the same cemetery. When I contacted the creater of their memorials to add what I thought was some important information such as birth places, original spellings of the surnames, etc., the person who created their memorials refused to put any of that information and informed me that Find A Grave is not a genealogy site. She only wanted what was available on the headstones and that's it.

If people are doing this for numbers/stats maybe they could also add a stat for number of memorials handed over (to family members of the deceased).

Count me as pleasantly surprised when I found my mother's name listed on Find a Grave. She died in 1999. I'm not much of a techno-person, so I'm glad someone did it for me.

Thanks for doing this video! I have been using FInd-A-Grave from almost the beginning. Everything that you highlighted in this video happened to me. I was a horrible experience.

Update - Peter Drinkwater, General manager of Find a Grave, sent me a few clarifying points; "1. The period during which memorials for recently deceased folks show in a limited view is 90 days. That’s what we came up with during our beta testing and what we rolled with in Jan. Amy and Daniel were both part of those beta tests and gave us great feedback on the process. 2. In addition to the 90 day limited view, family members can automatically take management of a memorial for 1 year from the time of burial. 3. We do have checks in place to limit the number of relatives a member can claim. Coming up with the numbers was tricky and we did a fair amount of research and testing before we rolled the changes and then modified them after the first few weeks of seeing how things went and listening to feedback. We can’t stop all misuse with those limits, but they are tight enough to significant abuse and we can modify them if we need to. 4. On the question of the apps, the changes we made in January were complicated and tried to find the right balance, but we knew we would need to listen to feedback and make changes once we rolled the updates. We chose to roll the updates on the website, gather feedback and refine the process before rolling them to the apps. We were/are still getting a fair amount of feedback on the process, so we hadn’t roll the changes to the apps yet, but in light of the concerns raised following Uvalde, we rolled some updates to the apps. We have not purposely done things to gamify the site. In fact, when we started working on it a few years after Ancestry acquired it, we removed leaderboards and other things that were on the site at the time that we felt were to game-like. We have left the contribution counts on members profiles and some people may get too concerned about them, but we leave them there because we believe they provide valuable information about the member to others who come to the profile. The profile is intended to help people using the site understand a little more about the member who created or manages a memorial or took a picture for them or suggested an edit. Since all of this is user submitted data, it’s important to have some pieces of information to evaluate the contributor." Be sure to sign the petitions on change.org! Petition 1 - www.change.org/p/memorials-for-the-recently-deceased-on-find-a-grave Petition 2 - www.change.org/p/find-a-grave-needs-to-make-changes-to-the-policies-for-creating-memorials

I've had cases where I correct info to the keeper on a grave, and immediately find that they have transferred it to me. I"m okay with this.

Perhaps memorials that are created less than 6 months after someone died should not count in contributors' stats. That would stop people who only want numbers.

Thank you for this well-made and concise explanation. Yes, it's all a numbers game with these "Body Counters". I hope Ancestry Corp. will do a better job in managing Find a Grave. #WaitDontMake

This has been an issue for years, including earlier mass shootings. I used to refer to these individuals as vultures, scavenging the dead before their buried. It has been great that genealogy bloggers raised an uproar about body counters as it was only after that that the opinion on this has turned. Previously, whenever this came up in social media groups, these individuals screams that FG allowed it and it wasn't against the rules. I've seen the attitude on "the rules" change in the last year; at least, there are not so many vocal defenders of the practice. Thank you.

We have a couple that share an account where I live and they are body counters, I also call them vultures or funeral home website campers since they basically check each funeral homes' website two or three times a day. Previously when their health was better they would go to a cemetery and run through the cemetery snapping photos, of terrible quality, to add to graves to chase the numbers. They frequently brag about how many they have created or the number of photos they have added and so I enjoy being able to let a friend know about a service coming up so that she can create a findagrave memorial with absolutely minimal information on it to keep their numbers lower.

I had no idea! I've only used find a grave to look for 50+ years old graves. That sucks.

I have very few memorials on Find-a-Grave and did not add my own parents, but they are there. I am not upset by this and still use this site frequently. I am sorry for those whose feelings are still raw and who were hurt by the actions of over zealous grave counters.

Thanks so much for making this video and doing the work to develop the story so thoroughly.

The word for this is Ghoulish and these memorial hoarders are GHOULS

That's so sad. I love FindAGrave and I'm a volunteer. I've obtained lists from towns of those buried in the cemetery, and I've gone to the local cemeteries to take photographs. Once I found a grave that I felt was too fresh to photograph as it was a rectangle of dirt in the grass of the cemetery. I also have no problem turning over a memorial to a family member. In fact, I'd love family members to take care of them because I refuse to add information to the memorial that is not documented on the stone unless the person submitting the information has proof. I make an effort to verify the information, and I hate contacting the submitter and telling them I'm going to have to reject their edit suggestion due to lack of evidence. I've seen many memorials with family connections that are incorrect and have caused problems for researchers. I don't want to see FindAGrave go away, but I'm all for some reforms. I'd like a one-year wait period, and an unlimited time period for a family member to claim the memorial.

Great video, Jarret! =D Now let's see if anything happens. I've told you my stories about that site and I honestly hope they listen because they can be a good resource. More accountability is needed.

My wife's uncle is listed on FindaGrave as being buried in a cemetery where none of our family are buried. I contacted the person who created the listing, telling them I literally OFFICIATED THE FUNERAL and sent them a picture of his marker in the proper cemetery, and they still refuse to take down or fix the listing.

I had no idea this was happening. Thanks for highlighting it.

@GeneaVlogger - I especially like the screen shot at 16:45 -- Thank you SO much! ~BJM

This happened to me. The cemetary wrote my mom's and I had to ask 3x to get control of it. Writing my mom's Find A Gravr was someting that I wanted to do as healing. I Did not get that.

I don't care much about who writes my memorial and what is written in it, once I'm gone, but I think it is most worrying when the wrong photographs and informations end up with the wrong people, and identities are mixed up with people that go by the same name. Once you are declared dead because of such an identification failure and some office gets informed, your digitalized citizen-accounts are terminated, your digitalized passports and property-acts are annulled. In the best of cases your legal heirs are informed, and they might show up with some legal guardian at your place and inform you, that you died. - This is something that recently happened in Germany. And the woman learned: Once you are deleted from official registers, because of such a mess-up, caused by unauthorized persons, that were unaware of the exact informations on the deceised, it is rather hard to 'return to life'. She is still in a state of limbo, half agencies accepted she is alife, half didn't. Most worrying: her pension-payment was stopped, and her bank blocked her account. All this because of a mess-up by somebody uninformed.

My 11 are all related, one by marriage (as in no blood relation to me). Most of them have already been done by others or I just haven't felt the need to find burial information to add it.

At the heart of this are people who cannot understand that it is the FAMILY that makes the decision on the obit, and that obits online are copyright protected. The arguments and pushback from the people who are guarding this right to post "memorials" immediately often sound like this: "Well if they didn't want it on Find A Grave they shouldn't have published it on the web," and "Well if it were my family I would like it if someone made a memorial..." For these people, what its really about is people barging in and confusing their hobby with some sort of public service. They lack empathy, and they don't understand that the site is Find A Grave, NOT Report A Death.

My father's memorial was created quickly in 2014 and included notes we gave to the paster.

I hadn't heard about this issue. This video prompted me to look up my dad on find a grave. Sure enough, someone who isn't a family member created a memorial. The person has created over 22,000 memorials and creates an average of 23 memorials per week and does not take messages. My dad's memorial was created before his funeral and the memorial is a copy and paste of the obituary posted on the funeral home website. The headstone photo was posted by another person who has created over 40,000 memorials and creates 60 memorials per week. I also checked my mother's memorial and same thing.

@ 11:00 I worked in the funeral business. One of the locations that I was at had a "Media Administrator" who job it was to enter the information of the deceased from the cemetery and the family's funeral home into the find-a-grave system. So, seeing the photo from the funeral home doesn't surprise me in the least.

Thanks for sharing

My biggest concern with Find AG is that there is NO direct phone # to call when an email will not suffice. Contrary to their claims, they do NOT permit all gravesites to be acknowledged. Trying to get a direct answer from Ancestry themselves (who controls this) is next to impossible.

It’s interesting - I’m very new to genealogy but it didn’t even occur to me to look and see who created the Find a Grave memorials for my family. I was just happy to see them there. If I had found them immediately and I was intending to make a memorial I would have found it off putting for sure. I just looked up who manages my great grandfathers memorial and he averages 65 memorials per week! He’s been doing it for 7 years. Something about that is definitely strange but at the same time, without this memorial I would have never seen a photo of his grave. The ownership and gamifying off it is very bizarre to me.

The only memorials I've EVER created are of graves in abandoned and very rural cemeteries where there is no information online for the grave. Typically the only memorials I add are of people who lived and died so long ago that they can't possibly have living parents or siblings, and most likely no children, living. People who hopefully fall under the category of ancestor not immediate relative. If I find information or have photos on more recent graves I typically contact the manager of the memorial. I didn't even realize this was such a problem! I just had my own personal ethics about using the site based in common sense. I did always wonder why there was a counter on how many memorials you created, but I assumed it was just so you or someone researching could search through other memorials you may have also found, etc. I always just hoped that a memorial I added might one day pop up for someone who'd been researching and couldn't find their ancestor. The only time something similar to this happened to me was my grandmother's memorial. I went to add her info about 2 weeks after her death, and someone already had. It was someone with my last name but whom I did not know personally. I was not bothered by it, but then again I didn't have a problem with them managing the memorial or refusing me access to that. In fact I didn't even try.

Very interesting video. I always wondered how people were posting pictures of so many gravesites of people I knew and didn’t know the person who posted them. Happened with several relatives of mine. I have noticed now that you can’t add anything for several months. Thank you for the information.

They are adding whole baby cemeteries in UK and Ireland. Still born infants and infants born too soon - 20 weeks - 23 weeks gestation, the Parents still have to arrange a cremation or burial, parents and councils are getting these removed removed, then the Users wait a while, then these profiles show again - there are potentially thousands of these tiny infants on Find A Grave. It's horrific.

And these relatives now prevent friends and family from adding flowers to memorials while the memorial is held hostage.

The problem too with photos is that even close relatives may only have a few photos of the person. My niece would post a photo of my mom taken in her 70s or 80s. While I have photos in her prime. I would prefer a picture of her young and beautiful not old, gray hair and wrinkles. In chousing a photo, I consider how would the person want to be remembered as. That is why I never create a page on find a grave. Any photo I use on even any of my trees is the best I can find. Yes, sometimes it isnt the most flattering but It may be the only chouce. Pictures do make a person real not just names, dates and places. Never create a memorial for someone you arent closely related to. Once a cllose family member creates one, you can always add comments in a section about your memories with the decessed. So before you create a memorial page on Find A Grave, please contact the closest LIVING relative.

it’s so frustrating and the whole situation is genuinely so bizarre to me…. there’s one person who currently manages over 40,000 memorials, about 10,000 more than they’ve actually created btw, who manages nearly all of my relatives and ancestors from a specific area (which is the majority of them since that side of my family lived there for generations until recently). though they seemingly prefer hoarding mostly the men, and completely disregard the women in these families which is just crazy disrespectful and overall weird. but anyway, at first i assumed they were local the town but their memorials span across multiple cemeteries/towns and states, and i’ve noticed for the most part none of the memorials they created have photos and ones that do were uploaded by other people. worse though is that most of their memorials have straight up incorrect information or are linked to people who have no relation with each other at all. i know for a fact they’re not related more closely to my ancestors than i am, and am pretty certain they are not related to me at all in any way. so far i’ve been lucky getting them to transfer me the women in my family but they seem to still be clinging to the men… im lucky that the photo of my grandfathers grave was taken several years before my grandmother died, and that we lived in another state, so no one knew about her and therefore couldn’t snatch her memorial before i thought to make one. bc another user with over 7000 memorials won’t transfer my literal grandfather to me, and is choosing to instead make me wait a month to get find a grave do it for me, despite them being fairly active otherwise. then there’s another user with a whopping 100,000+ memorials and a condescending bio who will not transfer my great grandmother or great grandfather, and has turned off messaging entirely. since these memorials are within guidelines i’ll be able to have the site transfer in a month as well but it’s just ridiculous. i know they really care about their stats but i truly don’t understand why its this important to them to the point they no longer have any functioning morality or rational thought left. and i know find a grave’s guidelines state that transfers should be made up to your great grandparents, but honestly why the hell should some random bone collector be allowed to mismanage my actual relative’s memorials when they are in no way related to the person at all?? like if i have actual knowledge of my 2nd great grandparents or 2nd great grandaunts/uncles or whoever, directly from their children/grandchildren, then why the hell is a perfect stranger allowed to wreak havoc on my family tree with all their incorrect information??? if they have no relation at all (or are more distantly related than me) then it simply should be transferred and honored by site guidelines. goddddd. sorry for the rant, there’s some amazing volunteers there doing actual good and charitable work, but the bad ones are so god awful it’s just genuinely so mind boggling to me, and i’ve reached my limit having to deal with these people these last few weeks lol

My concern has been the fact that anyone can add info....no checking to confirm accuracy...or even if the person is really there. I had a cousin add a relative to a particular cemetery because other family members were buried there...but there was no evidence that this is the cemetery where they were buried. It was a reasonable guess..but a guess none the less.

Semi-related twist, have found Find a Grave listings for people who are very much alive. Do they have a cemetery plot and a headstone? Yep. Are they deceased? Nope. This isn’t uncommon where a spouse dies. The surviving spouse buys two plots and a shared headstone. Both names and birth dates are inscribed but only one has a death date. Leading to the other issue I’ve come across…two graves, no body. Surviving spouse remarried, plans to be buried with 2nd husband but is still living.

Wow, I've never thought about how families might be upset about the memorials being created. I'm not one of those who searches the obituaries but I do frequent my local cemeteries and if I see newly buried individuals, I'll search to see if a memorial has been created for them and will create one or add a photo to it. I have yet to encounter an Body Counter but it's good to know that they exist! Most people are nice and will willingly transfer a memorial to you if you have relation to them. EDIT: Most memorials (if they've died in the past 3 months, will have a note on the memorial stating that only a family member can add anything to it. Granted, I don't know how they confirm this, but I have seen this message appear on a recent relative's page.)

That’s just f***ing ghoulish, particularly with the Uvalde victims.

I'm curious. If one finds a stranger maintaining a close loved one's memorial, and refuses to transfer, is it possible to create another memorial, and then request to merge? I have requested to merge other memorials that really did need it and am not sure who determines the merge and which remains as primary? Is this a solution?

I’ve had some negativity there also. People making memorials of my ancestors with wrong info

Thanks!

We all got the identical email. Just disgusting and so callous.

Great video. Thank you!

I kind of hate to see documents put on there, even though they might often be on public file, its still a violation of those that knew them best

Oh, dear. I've never used this, but assumed it was for locating historic graves! What a shame.

Finally got the guy that added my aunt to transfer management to me. However, now I’m having difficulty with getting the gal that added my great grandaunt (she doesn’t have any descendants) to me. And the surname keeps getting changed to the misspelling that is on the stone. Since my great grandaunt’s life was in an asylum and probably not the greatest, I want her to be taken care of in her death and have the correct spelling of her surname (I have the French birth record of her father, my great great grandfather).

Some people are adding living people to Find A Grave simply because they share a headstone with a descesed spouse. I have seen this quite a few times.

My experience has been, that a family member who is interested in genealogy (has lost her parents and 2 younger brothers too early, due to differing causes) has taken these photos of graves of most family members.

He was surprised there wasn't anything online about it in 1995? Bruh, almost nobody had a home computer in 95'. That didn't become commonplace until around 2000 with broadband and file sharing.