Virtual Cemeteries are a great way to organize and highlight memorials you are interested in. With a Virtual Cemetery you can bring together any memorials on the site that are connected for any reason. You could use them to create a group of memorials for family members or one for each branch of the family. You could create a Virtual Cemetery for high school classmates who have passed, cast members of a favorite TV show, interesting historical figures or members of the 1912 World Series winning Boston Red Sox. You could collect memorials with interesting inscriptions or similar symbols or designs. The possibilities are endless.
Virtual Cemeteries can also be a great way to organize work you are doing on Find a Grave. You could create one for memorials you are still researching, memorials from a local cemetery that need a photo or GPS coordinates, or memorials you are writing bios for.
You’ll need to be signed in to use Virtual Cemeteries, but once you are, there are a couple of ways to create a new Virtual Cemetery.
Option 1 – Click on your profile name in the upper right part of the site and choose “Virtual Cemeteries” from the menu and you’ll go to the Virtual Cemeteries list page. There you can see Virtual Cemeteries you’ve already created or create a new one by selecting “Add a Virtual Cemetery.” You’ll be able to give it a name and a description and choose whether you’d like it to be public (so that other people can see it) or private (so only you can see it). Once the Virtual Cemetery has been created, you can add a cover photo for it, edit it or, if it’s public, share it.
Option 2 – Go to a memorial you want to add to a Virtual Cemetery and select the “Save to” button and choose “Virtual Cemetery” from the options. If you already have to some Virtual Cemeteries, you’ll see them listed, or you can select “Create a Virtual Cemetery” to create a new one. When you create a Virtual Cemetery this way, you’ll just give it a name, but once it’s been created, you can select “Edit” to add a description, cover photo and set your privacy preference.
You can find links to your Virtual Cemeteries list page on your profile and on the lower right hand side of the Cemeteries page where you’ll find a link to the Virtual Cemeteries page and few of your Virtual Cemeteries listed.
You’ll find a link to the public Virtual Cemeteries of other Find a Grave members on their profiles.
Here are a few new features of Virtual Cemeteries pages that you may find helpful:
- Cover Photos: You can add a cover photo to your Virtual Cemeteries to spruce them up and make them easier to find in the list. To add a photo, open the Virtual Cemetery and select the “Change Cover Photo” button. Then choose a photo from your computer to add.
- Share: For public Virtual Cemeteries, click the “Share” button to send a link to your Virtual Cemetery by email or though some popular social media sites.
- Updated Sort Options: Sort the memorials in your virtual cemetery by name, birth or death date, cemetery name or date modified.
If you have quite a few Virtual Cemeteries, these new and updated tools may help you find what you are looking for on the list page:
- Settings: You can decide if you’d like to use infinite scroll or a more condensed view of the list.
- Sort: Sort the Virtual Cemeteries in your list by name, number of memorials or date created
- Filter: Choose to see All your Virtual Cemeteries of just the Public or just the Private ones
- Search: Search for a Virtual Cemetery by name using the search box.
Virtual Cemeteries are a great way to organize memorials on Find a Grave and share what you’ve found with others. We’re sure you’ll come up with lots of exciting ways to use them and if you already use them, we hope you’ll share some tips in the comments.
I use a virtual cemetery for deceased high school classmates. I also use them for obituaries I want to find. Thanks for the settings hint.
I do a lot of genealogy research, and set up a different Virtual Cemetery by surnames, as everyone in an extended family is not buried in the same cemetery, sometimes they are across the country.
This is a useful tool to collect Findagrave IDs for groups of people. The one additional piece of information that I hope you could add to the Virtual Cemeteries is a map tool which would show the actual graveyards of the members of the Virtual Cemetery.
Is there an easy way to search public virtual cemeteries others have created? Those are sometimes very valuable for research because of the time others have put into them.
Thanks for your question. We don’t have an overall search for virtual cemeteries right now. You can use the search on your browser to search for certain topics. For instance, you might search for “Gone with the Wind virtual cemetery, site:FindaGrave.com” to search for any virtual cemeteries for those involved with the movie Gone With the Wind. By adding “site:FindaGrave.com” the search will be limited to the Find a Grave site.
Being able to search within the virtual cemeteries or have those listed on the main memorial page would be very helpful. Some of the Civil War veterans are in virtual cemeteries by their units, but if I find a new-to-me veteran, I can’t tell if he’s already in the 13th TN Union Cavalry virtual cemetery without lots of scrolling.
This sounds so exciting!! Will be signing up!! Comments above shows so many ways I have wished could do. Look forward to this. Thank again Find a Grave for going above and beyond!!!
Wow! Loving the extended search and sort options.
I would like to request that there is an easy way to see what public virtual cemeteries someone is included in. My suggestion is to have a Virtual Cemeteries tab in the same row as the Memorial, Photos, and Flowers tabs. So just as for photos and flowers, with a click of a button you can easily see what virtual cemeteries they have been included in.
Would this be possible?
I am a fan of these resources!
My desire is to include links to my virtual cemeteries in the bio fields of memorials.
Since it is possible to link to another memorial and VC’s are FG domain resources, it seems to me it would be allowable to include such hyperlinks in a story so others who are part of the story can be included as a group.
I LOVE this service!
Rick Dondo
Is there a way to find someone in a large virtual cemetery without having to scroll through all the names if they are set up alphabetically by last name?
What a great idea, I will definately use this. Perhaps having a matching symbol (like Ancestry’s green leaf) could be set up to connect with members who have the same person in their virtual cemetery, could be included at some stage.
I put all the misfits, rejects & malcontents together.
What a great idea!
I love the Virtual Cemeteries function. I have many of them but I use them for geographical statistics to organize where my relatives are buried. Locally (I’m in Nova Scotia) I have separate ones for each cemetery in my local (Lunenburg) county. We started here in the 1750’s and eventually spread out to other areas. Outside Lunenburg county, I have one for each other county in Nova Scotia, then outside of Nova Scotia I have one for each province in Canada and each state in the US. A quick look at the list and I can see at a glance the geographical areas where many relatives settled. My top examples … the one for Massachusetts currently has 555 memorials and the one for Halifax County, Nova Scotia has 545. Many people from Nova Scotia moved to New England in the first half of the 1900’s, mostly to the Boston area. I have found them in all 10 Canadian provinces, and 37 US states so far.
Virtual cemeteries are great for collections but their major limitation is that they can’t be searched. I think cemetery searches and normal searches should be combined and also virtual cemetery should be allowed to be chosen and then all searches are identical no missing capabilities or none as in in the case of virtual cemeteries.
Is there a limit to how many virtual cemeteries you can create? I hate it when I don’t find out about a limit until I run into it! Thanks!
Thanks for the question. We have some members who have thousands of virtual cemeteries. We don’t want a limit to stop you from using the virtual cemeteries the way you’d like to, so that limit is pretty high.