In a recent update to search, we added an option for including information about linked family members to your search.
Imagine that you were looking for your Aunt Mary. She’s not linked to your mother’s memorial and you’d like to add her. You can’t remember her married name, but you know her maiden name is Young since that is your mother’s maiden name. You could search for Mary Young using the maiden name search , but you’ll end up with thousands of matches.
If you know the name of a family member, you can use that with the maiden name search to narrow your results.
For example, if you remember that Mary and your mom had a brother that they called Manly, even though his real name was Manuel, you can enter Manuel in the “Spouse, Parent, Child or Sibling name box” in the “More search options”:
This will narrow your search to just 19 matches and details about the linked family members will be included in the result to help you find the memorial you are looking for.
You can put multiple names, including the names of different people, in the field.
Remember that this will only help if the family members have been linked. If they haven’t been, you won’t get a match. It may be best to try different family member’s names individually in case some have been linked and others have not. And if you don’t get a result, it doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t have a memorial for the person you are looking for, you may just need to try a different search tactic.
Oooooh… Thank you for these search upgrades! They have been needed as the current search function was terrible unless you know the exact spelling and the full name of the person. Thanks.
I really hope this works. I’ve searched so many places and for a long time to find my aunt. I’ll give this a try using her husband’s name.
I hope you’ll take a look at the cemeteries soon. Some cemetery names are in error, and you need the exact spelling and punctuation to find a cemetery. If you are not familiar with the cemetery, you don’t know if it’s a park, mausoleum, St Thomas Cemetery, St Thomas’s Cemetery, or Saint Thomas, etc etc. Thanks.
Hi Shirl, thanks for writing in. You can send updates for cemetery pages to cemetery@findagrave.com. Our search should catch any version of Saint. If you search only with “Thomas” and location all the cemeteries with the word Thomas in the cemetery name or aka will come up in the search, that are in that location that you search with. If you are seeing something differently, please send an email to support@findagrave.com that includes a link to the search results. Thank you!
Hi Find a Grave Team – thanks for the email addresses to contact you – is there anywhere on your site that I can find all these different email addresses for different things we can contact you for? Or do we have to save them on our Contact list to remember them? Thanks in advance.
We have a Contact page (listed at the bottom of the homepage). Here is the link for that: https://www.findagrave.com/contact We also have a Help site with articles on different subjects. You can find the email address in the specific article or search the Help site with “@findagrave.com” and that will bring them all up.
Thank you for this informative email. It is greatly appreciated.
When adding a memorial it is good show other that have added with the same name or date. But is it really necessary to show the ones with different names and dates
Thanks so much for this Update. Very useful and helpful to Genealogists.
Could we have the option to show the newest replies first? I looked for one and didn’t see it.
I’ve used Find a Grave many years. You used to be much more user friendly. If a person has a name a city and a state, it doesn’t work. I spent way too much time on my latest search, with -0- results. Guess I’m losing my old touch.
Hi M J, thanks for writing in. We’d like to help and see what might have occurred. Feel free to write us at support@findagrave.com with the details and our support team will assist you further.
you provide a great service to the world.
Why are there so many errors? There is no need for most of them if people would just read the downloaded information on Ancestry. It is near to impossible to get these errors corrected.
Hi Linda, if you see an error on a memorial you can send a Suggested Edit. The memorial manager will process the edit. Edits are automatically accepted at 21 days if the manager happened to not process it.
Thank you! I try to do as you suggest but wouldn’t that be up to the family of the deceased? Most of the time I will come across bios without any family. I figure that if I can find the family then the person who created the bio can. I am still having trouble editing my own close relatives because of people not reading the information. I just get a bit frustrated at times and I imagine you all do, as well. I truly appreciate all the good work you all do!