One Of My Favorite Things About The Genealogy Community

It's the good spirit of the work. I love the spirit of the work. It's not only the passion people develop in finding their ancestors but it's more than that. It is the spirit of service, one to another that is so common in this industry.It shows up in how people treat each other. It shows up in how we can collaborate and share. It also shows up in the partnerships taking place even in the business part of this work. As we find our ancestors we seem to be bound to them. As we share our knowledge with our family members we are more closely bound to them.

As an example last summer I wrote about how great it was for my young grandson Michael from Iowa to go photograph headstones together As I was indexing our own work the headstone of one our photos reflected Michael's image into the picture. We not only shared in the fun of doing this together, we reveled together of him being in the picture. He called me a few days ago to tell me he was passing by the cemetery we photographed and it reminded him of our fun time doing the billion graves thing. To see that article and photo, click here.

Using billion graves as another example I received this email this morning from another great company; MyHeritage. Read on and see if  you don't get the same great feeling I am talking about.

By the way; don't you just love the MyHeritage artwork?

Dear Larry,

Cemeteries are among the most valuable resources for family history research. Headstones (gravestones) contain a wealth of information about the deceased, such as dates of birth and death, names of relatives, and surprises such as photographs and emotional epitaphs.

There are hundreds of thousands of cemeteries worldwide, but most of them have never been documented, and the headstone information is not available online. Time is chipping away at the headstones and many become unreadable over the years :-(

Together with our partner, BillionGraves, we have recently launched a global initiative to photograph and transcribe all of the world's cemeteries, and make the data available for free!

This week we kickstarted this initiative by taking the employees of MyHeritage to "practice what we preach" and digitize an entire cemetery ourselves. We photographed more than 50,000 gravestones in a few hours in the largest project of this kind ever done in Israel. Read about our amazing experience and look at many photos documenting our project on our blog. Leading genealogy bloggers agree that this is a wonderful, worthy mission – read the posts of Dick Eastman, Randy Seaver and James Tanner about it.

We cannot do this important project alone. This is where YOU can make a big difference!
We extend an invitation to you to come join us in this exciting project.

How does it work?
1. BillionGraves is a very easy to use iPhone and Android app. First, click here to sign up to BillionGraves for free in its special MyHeritage welcome page.
2. Download the BillionGraves mobile app from that page.
3. Visit a cemetery near you, and take photos of the headstones using the app. GPS information on each grave is automatically captured.
4. Use the BillionGraves website to help enter the names and information that appear in the headstone photos that you took or other users have taken. All information is made available for free on the BillionGraves website and on MyHeritage SuperSearch. MyHeritage Record Matching technology will match the headstones automatically to your tree and all trees on MyHeritage, for free.

For more information, read our blog post. If you have questions about participating, email them to our team at cemeteryteam@myheritage.com.

As part of the project, I photographed 2000 gravestones myself this month, and I must say it is fascinating and addictive. Join our global initiative too, by clicking here.

Thank you.

Gilad Japhet
Founder & CEO
MyHeritage

Sometimes You Get The Coolest Surprises, Even With BillionGraves.com Service

A few days ago I wrote how Billion Graves is a kick.  I wrote how my grandson Michael caught the spirit and took over the iPhone.

Today I was transcribing some of the photos I took in Iowa, should I say Michael took. Below is the proof of my story about his doing picture taking. It's also a cool surprise photo I will print and treasure. Michael is in the reflection, along with my skinny legs.

Billion Graves Is A Kick

CLICK HERE FOR THE SITE:

BillionGraves is one of the cool uses of smart phones. It is also valuable in the Genealogy World. And to add the coolness factor, your kids can join in to catch the family history experience, even some 8 year old kids.

It's a simple concept, take a photo of a headstone, upload it easily to billiongraves.com, let someone transcribe (index) it for search and watch it eventually show up on both billiongraves.com and http://familysearch.org/ You simply download their Ap, turn it on, and point and shoot.

Because of the GPS technology built into your cell phone the headstone is noted on their website within 10 feet of it's actual location. You can see it online or you can walk to it.

The Ap shows you what cemeteries have been photographed, how many have been done, and where they are. It even lists what cemeteries are nearby you how and far away from you they are.

I was with my 8 year old grandson Michael and he thought he could do this just fine. HE DID! He made his mom download the Ap to her phone so he could do it after I had gone. We did over 1000 in Ames Iowa between the two of us while we were there.

It really is a kick.

Watch out, there is a leaderboard. If you are the least bit competitive it could be a hazard to your health. I'm on it, and intend on staying there. Oh well, it's a worthy project.

Incidentally, gravestones are a pretty good source, albeit not perfect. Take a look at this picture. Can you see what is wrong?

A lot of headstones have family information, children, when married, etc. Many have family members buried righty by them. It's a good thing, and as in all family history projects, a kick in the pants.

1 Million New Entries This Month On Billion Graves

It looks like Billion Graves is rolling and thats a good thing. In a previous article: Click Here, I wrote why I like the website, it's unique features, and more.

One of my favorite likes about Billion graves is that it uses smart phones, which many of your children have. You can take the family to the cemetary and make genealogy a high tech family affair.

From the company:

Dear BillionGravers,

Wow! We’ve had record uploads every day so far in May! Keep up the good work! We’ll still need thousands more images, so let’s make the weekends our highest uploading days. Keep watching that Leaderboard to see how you’re doing—if you are among the top 25 transcribers OR picture takers on May 31, you get your choice of a free BillionGraves t-shirt or one free year of our great BillionGraves Plus Account.....

Billion Graves - A Different Graves Website

Earlier I wrote about Find A Grave and how important information can be found on their site. That is if your relative has had someone create a memorial for that ancestor. Click here for that article

I want to introduce you to a different approach, and one that could be meaningful. It is a relative new site called Billion Graves: http://billiongraves.com/



The differences are this: Find A Grave will often have a biography in the memorial.

Not so with Billion Graves: Just a photo of the headstone and sometimes the maiden name of the wife.

I like Billion Graves for a couple of reasons. It is a smart phone experience. What you do is go from headstone to headstone taking photographs of each. Your smart phone technology will set the location automatically. This means if the headstone is on their site, your smart phone can take you right to it. (within about 10 feet) Since kids like things like using their smart phone you can get them involved in genealogy this way. Pretty slick. You can photograph a lot of headstones in a short period of time. Don't worry if you are related, that's not the point - it's the service you are providing others.

I also like the fact they are able to upload these photos by having you just upload the camera to their website. It is easy to do. Billion Graves seems to have caught on which along with the fact it's not limited to a particular ancestor makes me believe that they will eventually have a lot more headstones in their collection than will find a grave. 

Their website uses Google mapping for both seeing where to go for a headstone you want but also to visualize what cemeteries or what portion of cemeteries are photographed.

They won't say how many gravestones are on line yet, only less than a million - could be a lot less. However, they seem to be gaining some buzz and do have a lot online. Researching what cemeteries already have work done will show that they are gaining legs in other countries. It doesn't take long to check out an ancestor, so I plan on making it a part of my research.

Once a photo is uploaded, you can do the indexing part or someone else will. You can even do it as a service project. Some who don't have the ability or time to take the photos are transcribing (indexing) what is on the photographs. Apparently photos that are uploaded are indexed within 48 hours most of the time.