On Christmas Day 2024, a Find a Grave member wrote to us to share his experience with the site. He has been researching a military group his grandfather was part of and as he researches members of the group, he puts a virtual flower on their memorials with details about his project. He told us about several cases where those flowers helped him connect with others who were able to share information, learn about family members from him and help him in his research. He said, “I would not have been able to learn ANY of these things without Find a Grave.”
Stories like this highlight the value of the Find a Grave community and the work you are all doing in a way that numbers never can, but, just for fun, here are a few numbers that tell something of the story of what the Find a Grave community accomplished in 2024.
These are the 10 countries where the community has done the most work in 2024:
By contrast, here are a few places where not much was added to Find a Grave in 2024, just in case you are still planning this year’s vacation.
Faroe Islands, Mongolia, Togo, or, if you are looking for something a bit more tropical, Belize or Martinique.
If you do plan to contribute to Find a Grave while traveling, please be sure to know and follow local laws and customs related to cemeteries.
Here are some famous people who passed away this year whose memorials were among the most viewed:
And here are a few people who passed in 2024 who weren’t famous, but have been remembered through Find a Grave memorials:
Thanks for all your amazing work in 2024. You are making a real difference for people all over the world.
Thank You FindaGrave staff and participants.
I have been finding useful information about my relatives here for a number of years, and I am amazed and very grateful for your work to continually update the website. I have entered a number of my relatives on the site also. My acct # is 48527752.
Keep up the GREAT WORK!
My Family has many many graves at one of our militery cemeteries in New York.
Why do ads pop-up automatically, seems disrespectful.
Is “FIND A GRAVE” owned by a public company? Please respond.
You may have noticed that Find-a-Grave is completely free to use. But Find-a-Grave costs a LOT of money to run. Their costs are offset by 1] running third-party advertisements; and 2] grave sponsorships (which only costs US$5 and permanently removes ads form a sponsored grave). Find-a-grave is owned by Ancestry.com
INCORRECT! SPONSORING is now $10 PER EACH MEMORIAL to have all ads removed and get the ability to post more photos.
I use Findagrave to research celebrity graves for my YouTube channel “KG Graves”, but the search is extremely time consuming. To support findagrave, I would be happy to pay a subscription for the ability to extract this data into a spreadsheet. I would pay an annual fee of maybe $10 for 4 download a year.
I… LOVE… this service.
Thank you to the staff, administration, and especially to all the AMAZING and generous volunteers.
Together, we can accomplish so much more.
I took a look at some of the bios for the memorials you posted in this blog. I would like to suggest that the format of the bios be such that there are spaces between paragraphs or sentences, if appropriate.
A long block of writing in a bio creates a situation that is harder to read on a screen. Thanks for letting me make this suggestion.
Having patience with support works!!!
In the past year I have been making sure my families have memorials. Even now my Great Great Grandparents have been found in Norway.
I then was in contact with a woman SR, representing respect the Potter’s Field burials.
Unfortunately, a person P kept harassing her because differences. SR was reported to FG and SR was reprimanded by FG.
The woman P then started on me and I notified who P represented. HCGS. They didn’t understand. I had to try to contact FG.
BLESSINGS to Marie and Amber Sr Advocates. They researched every memorial that I screenshot as proof. The lady stopped!! SR was reinstated.
Have patience and proof
Now I have my respectful memorials. THANK YOU!!!
Isn’t the bio written by the person including the FindaGrave post or taken from an obituary in a newspaper?
It is but Find a Grave could require it be written the way I suggested.
Or someone else can suggest it as an edit and the person who manages the memorial can accept the edit or not. I agree that spaces make them easier to read.
Definitely using proper punctuation, like periods, makes it easier to understand. Sometimes it is very hard to understand what someone is trying to say. I am grateful to all volunteers who take their time to help others connect with their family stories.
VERY GOOD!
I joined my local Family History Society in October 2008 and 2 1/2 years ago joined Find a Grave. I have been given the job of updating our local cemeteries (of which there are about 6). It is a big job but one that needs doing.
Thank you for taking on the task.
I love using Find a Grave. Thanks to using it, I’ve been in touch with over 50 “cousins” from all over the world.
I can’t find my husband’s grave in Lawton Oklahoma James Franklin Hands Jr 10-3-1957 – 7-27-2017, could you help me?
Could it be this memorial? https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/193419893/james-franklin-hands
Have you requested a grave site photo on Find a Grave yet?
Your husband, James Franklin Hands Jr., is listed in Highland Cemetery, his id number is 193419893…
Hi Gwendolyn, click on this link and it should take you to your husbands grave information. Thanks…
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/193419893/james-franklin-hands
thanks to everyone who helping !!!!
As a researcher in our local archives I have found Find-a-Grave to be very helpful as a source for our data base on military personal.
As a long time user of Find A Grave, I have taught classes to members of our local Genealogical Society and our local FamilySearch Center in how to begin using Find A Grave. I have shown many people one-on-one how to use Find A Grave, and, most fun for me, I used Find A Grave to build my family tree for both my father’s and mother’s ancestors back to third great grandparents which provides my family members with a way to meet their family ancestors without the cost of time and money to do the research using Ancestry, FamilySearch, or any of the other web based genealogy data bases. I am still searching for a great, great, great grandmother’s maiden name to be able to research another branch of my family tree.
I absolutely love the Find A Grave web site as it helps me with my volunteer work with a local cemetery to find those people who have passed but are not yet memorialized on Find A Grave. When I find someone who has passed but has not yet been memorialized, I enjoy taking the time to research and build their family tree then begin by adding a Find A Grave memorial for them followed by linking them to their family members as I find them. This way, people who come to Find A Grave to find the memorials of their parents or other family members, can click on the links to discover more of their family tree and learn on whose shoulders they stand. This has been most rewarding personally as I sometimes “meet” friends of my parents or grandparents and people I may have met years ago but did not understand how they fit into my life at the time. The stories are often heartwarming and it makes me happy to be able to shine a light on these folks for the wonderful work they have quietly accomplished as they helped others or worked to improve our local community.
I did this for the deceased members of my high school for our 50th class reunion. I also created a virtual cemetery for our high school class and provided the link to class members who attended the reunion.
A new project for me will be to post the GPS coordinates of the graves in our local cemetery to make it easier for visitors to find the grave they are seeking.
My heartfelt thanks go out to the Find A Grave team for the great work you do to provide us with ability to memorialize others so that fewer people are left unremembered for their good works. I especially want to thank Mr. Drinkwater for the kind assistance he provided when I met him at RootsTech.
Jim, I appreciate & applaud all you are doing to promote Find a Grave & to ensure that ppl are not forgotten. What I wish many of the volunteers who post memorials (not that I don’t appreciate them when I am searching for someone) understood is that they not willy nilly just post a memorial for every obit they run across somewhere. I know this is not your fault & I tried to bring it up with the Find a Grave team, but did not get a satisfactory response for those of us who are genealogists & have recently lost loved ones, I would ask that ppl allow the family themselves to post the memorial first rather than just posting one bc you saw it somewhere & bc you can. I have been a genealogist using Find a Grave for a good many years with close to 30 years research experience. My father passed away last October & before anyone in our family could post a memorial for him, a volunteer somewhere took it upon themselves to do so for us. This incensed our family & my mother in particular who was married to him for almost 59 years. We were at least appreciative of the fact that we, as his family, after his passing, were able to at least request that his memorial be transferred to us, but we were going through a rather stressful & sensitive situation at the time he passed & it rubbed salt into the wound to see that someone had already created his memorial. Maybe, since you are acquainted with Mr Drinkwater, you could suggest to him a solution (like a moratorium of sorts) on memorials for those who have recently passed so that their family members might have time to create memorials for them themselves. There was a lot involved in planning my father’s funeral spur of the moment & jumping immediately online to create his Find a Grave memorial was not at the top of our very long list of priorities when it came to burying him. Again, I appreciate all of the volunteers (yourself included) & I am sorry if I come across as singling anyone in particular out, but I have run into this with several of my family members & my father was not the first time something like this had happened in our family. Just understand that our grief is fresh & we are still healing. If there is anyone at Find a Grave you know that you might share our story/concerns with & make suggestions, our family would appreciate it. Thanks!
Thanks for your comment. We recognize how difficult it can be right after someone passes away and we don’t want anything going on on Find a Grave to add to those difficulties. We have made changes to the site to provide a period of time (3 months) during which a Find a Grave memorial is limited and a longer period (one year) during which a family member can easily take on management of the memorial. We hope those updates are helpful and that you don’t feel like you need to worry about a Find a Grave memorial while you and your family are working through the loss of a loved one.
I absolutely do not want to intrude upon the grief of family and friends suffering the loss of a loved one. When I am at a cemetery photoraphing requests, I maintain at least one hundred feet from any other visitors, and when there is a funeral in progress, I either leave, or if the cemetery is large, I stay at least two blocks away.
That being said, one thing I wish could be changed on the restricted memorials is the ability to put flowers on the memorial before three months have passed. A high school classmate of mine died this week, and I am going to have to make a note in my book for three months hence to leave her flowers. I would like to leave them now; she was a very good friend. I am old. My memory is not all that great. Leaving flowers seems harmless, since one is encouraged to do that on the obituary pages of cemeteries and funeral homes.
I am so glad I found Find A Grave online so many years ago. With it, I have been able to locate my family members who had passed away and to include photos of my loved ones, makes me feel so very happy. Now they not only have a memorial, but people can also see their faces, should they choose to look for them. I never met my father’s family, but with Find A Grave, I have finally been able to put a face with their names. Thank you for creating such a wonderful site for us all to use.
I have enjoyed being a part of Find A Grave for 10+ years.
What a blessing Find a Grave has been to millions of us, especially myself. Not only are you a huge contributor to those tracking down their family histories, but to those who feel deep loss by others they admired but never knew. With cremations and ash scattering Find a Grave is often the only physical, graphic place to find someone you loved in life. I send so much gratitude to you and everyone who supports this vital, worthwhile activity.
I love using Find A Grave. I have been working on genealogy of 7 families 3 on my maternal side and 3 on my paternal side and 1 on my husband’s side. It is such a great site to find so many ancestors that are usually more correct than some other sites. I have doing genealogy since 2004. Am still able to find family members that I otherwise might not have found if not for Find A Grave. I highly recommend this site if someone is looking for info on their ancestory.
My late father got me started on Find A Grave 23 years ago. I love it more than any paid job I ever had, except working for the Chicago Cubs. (Go, Cubs!)
I have learned useful genetic information about my family’s medical history from a previously unknown relative, and I was able to provide the answer to a question that another individual had about her ancestor, because my grandmother told me the story when I was 12. No one else still living knew it.
I have found friends I did not know were gone, and relatives whose names and stories were new to me. Find A Grave is a wonderful tool for all these purposes.
My brother Jim & I along with Rosa King and countless others have created memorial pages for all our Vietnam KIA’s and MIA’s.
I could be here all day relating the stories, truths and family reunions that have taken place in our quest.
It has been a true blessing to the surviving families to know that some still care & remember our fallen.
Thank you FindAGrave for allowing us to honor these over 59,000 men & women !
I love findagrave. I have been a member since 1997. I find the information better than ancestry. I follow 8 families that feed into my family and add full names, dates of birth/death, etc. to their profiles. It is so nice to put families together. I lost my 48 year old daughter in 2022. One of findgrave’s workers fixed her page so she could be accessed to her grandparents up up since both her father and I are still living. It is a wonderful site. Janet Greentree
I have been a member of FG for 18 years and have contributed pages, photos, etc. I help teach a Beginning Genealogy Class in Palm Harbor, Florida. My specialty to teach is Find A Grave. The new students are always amazed at what can be found on the site. I love thrilling them by finding their ancestors grave sites that they had no idea about.
I have enjoyed and found Find a Grave very useful for many years. Somehow over time, my password doesn’t work. Is it possible for me to learn my password or do I have to change it? I could use help on this matter. I still get messages from other Find a Grave members, but I can initiate using Find a Grave myself. Lois
I’ve been a member of Findagrave for almost 17 years. I’ve added many profiles and photos, and I’ve found many profiles that someone else added. I’m so grateful. About 12 years ago, browsing surnames, I found my 4th great-grandparents in Palmer Chapel Cemetery, Bethel Township, Miami, Ohio. This is near Dayton, Ohio. The first chance we had, we visited the cemetery which still has the de-consecrated church building on the private property. The gravestones are not in place due to vandalism. But the gravestones of my grandparents, and several aunts and uncles were standing against the church wall. They are beautiful. Without Findagrave, I still wouldn’t know where they are buried.
I just came across this email link entitled “2024 in review“ and what caught my eye was the following “…He has been researching a military group his grandfather was part of and as he researches members of the group,”… for a moment, I thought it was me that was being referred to since I do the same thing using findagrave.com. My research involves my fifth fifth great grandfather who was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War. I was going to try to contact the person that wrote into Find a Grave to see if we might share information. But then it crossed my mind that he probably wasn’t referring to the revolutionary war. Anyway, I’m sure a lot of people are doing similar things these days and it definitely would be fun to exchange information. Cheers, Tom
I had a hard time finding out who my 3x-great-grandfather. I found my 2x-great grandfather living with an uncle, then found my 4x-great-grandparents (luckily she had an unusual first name) who came to the United States from England in 1850. Using FindaGrave, I found my 4x-g-grandparents buried and that’s how I found out my 3x-g-grandfather’s name, on his mother’s gravestone–buried at sea.
The graves were just 2 miles down the road from where my mother grew up and my grandparents lived their whole lives. My mother had researched our family since all the way back in the 50s, and she never new that her ancestors were buried down the road! By the time I found them her dementia was so advanced that she couldn’t understand. 😥 She would’ve been thrilled to know.
Thanks FindaGrave!
I am very grateful to findagrave.com for the information available and over the years have added hundreds of bios, photos, and obits for my relatives. Recently I was interviewed for 10 minutes about my volunteer work with Zion Cemetery in St. Louis and the research I’ve done on over 800 unmarked graves in one section of poor people from 1883-to about 1920. I checked each name of the 800 and if they weren’t on findagrave then I added them and in a few cases where obits could be found, I added them also. I explained all of this to the TV viewers so now any of their descendants can find a record of their existence in this world. Marian McCreary
Findagrave is helpful but one needs to carefully evaluate created memorials. It is distressful to find memorials with misleading information due to family lore or a desire to connect to notable families. I experienced this with an individual who has confused several people of the same name in the colonial time period. Response from support could be more helpful. Both false and accurate information was removed.
I love find a grave. I have been updating my family as I am doing research anyway have documents for proof. What I don’t like is when you a memorial has been created from a double headstone and one of the individuals is still alive. This happened to a cousin of mine that passed away. Someone created a memorial for the spouse, and he is still alive. Wish they would verify before creating.
Find a Grave has been beneficial for me. I Trase my family history and loved ones
I want to say thank you to all the Photo Volunteers! They have often provided information as well as taking photos. Unfortunately, I received a message from a Photo Volunteer yesterday about a problem with my Photo Request. What I received is below.
Reported Problem: Other problem
Details: The Public Cemetery no longer exists. The cemetery was built over and the headstones were either thrown away or used in some other capacity (house foundations).
I volunteer with my local Historical Society and we have updated a tombstone book for the county adding GPS locations as well as burials since the original version of the book was done about 50 years ago.
We included any burial, not just public or church cemeteries, but ones in yards, in woods, on farms, etc. It is sad to find that a cemetery was destroyed for “progress”. The Photo Volunteers provide a record for the future. Unfortunately, in this case it came too late.
What I read was interesting. Thank you.
I still think that when one goes to the memorial site of find a grave that a married woman’s maiden and married names should be able to be put in at the same time. I’ve had to open countless sites to see if the person was married to who I was looking for. HAVING BOTH MAIDEN AND MARRIRED SURNAMES HUNTED FOR AT THE SAME TIME WOULD CERTAINLY HELP REDUCE THE SEARCH for a lot of people. However, I have found people I was not looking for: George Patty Watson, Jr. & Sr., I found in 2 different cemeteries that had my relatives in the cemeteries. I read the bios and newspapers and found missing family members and attempted to have them connected. I would not have spent that time on non relatives. Alicia
My experience with Find a Grave is that it is a great hobby and takes up some of my daily hours while stuck in the house with medical problems. My wife and I were once on the road in this country and numerous foreign countries touring cemeteries, writing down info and taking pictures. My only conplaint is that when searching for a name, the system does not always find that person until full information is put in system. When that happens, one must put the full information in Find a Grave and then find out the person is already in the system This creates double work and is many times very frustrating to the individual making the entries. Otherwise, my experience with Find a Grave has been great and work will continue as long as my body and mind continue to work at a decent level.
I’ve used Find a Grave for years with lots of support by other members. One experience was very unique. A WW2 Navy Veteran friend/coworker passed away and his children wanted me to be the trustee.
Anyway, I posted my veteran friend on Find a Grave in the Garberville, Calif. Cemetery. I placed a temporary stone at his location there next to his wife’s marker while I waited for the VA to mail their marker to the cemetery for my friend.
After the VA stone was placed a good Find a Grave member took a picture of his final VA marker and emailed it to me. Garberville is about 400 miles from my residence. Then some months later a woman from Montana contacted me for the address of one on the sons of my Veteran friend. It turns out the son had spent some summer vacations with the woman’s family in Montana and she had found my Find a Grave post for my Veteran friend because she had lost contact with one of his sons. So I checked with the son in Nevada and they made contact. There are many caring Find a Grave members. Russ Taylor
I too have belonged to Find a Grave for 10 years + and I love it. Sometimes I just sit and go through the graves just for fun. It is relaxing.
The Malheur City, Oregon Cemetery has survived the ravages of time for 150 years and two major range fires. We still manage to keep it open to relatives and historians and bury loved ones from time to time. The Stone House Museum in Vale, Oregon supports Find a Grave with photographs as we find them in our collection.
Same here. Dito.
I love Find a Grave. It has helped me find ancestors while doing my ancestry research. I also love that it is a free site to use. Thank you for keeping it free and for all the volunteers that make it possible.
I love Find a Grave! Not only has it helped me find ancestors, but living distant relatives that I may never meet in person but stay in touch with via email. Being on our high school reunion committee, it’s also helped with finding former classmates so we can share their passing with those of us who remain. I sponsored our family cemetery page just to keep the ads away and it was worth the small fee. I also try to help with photo requests in cemeteries I visit – thank you for this valuable service!
This site is so useful to so many genealogists. Thank you for all the volunteers that make this possible. Great site.
I love, love, love 2024 In Review, especially “And here are a few people who passed in 2024 who weren’t famous” Great job, thank you.
Un sito interessantissimo che uso molto anche dall’Italia e partecipo per quanto riguarda l’inserimento di cimiteri italiani e di alcune pagine commemorative. Mi trovo però costretto a lamentarmi perchè negli anni e sono tanti, non sono mai riuscito una volta, dico una volta, a veder pubblicata la biografia di un personaggio illustre seppellito nel Cimitero Monumentale di Torino. Ho letto diverse volte le regole e le disposizione cercando di seguirle il più possibile ma niente …. non va mai bene nulla e non mi viene specificato il vero motivo per cui quella volta non è stato pubblicato! I personaggi che cerco di inserire non sono calciatori o giocatori di base-ball ma personaggi politici, storici, attori della cultura italiana. Forse non interessano a “Find a Grave” ??? Sono veramente dispiaciuto! Dario Cimberle
Thank you, Find a Grave, for a fabulous job. Thanks to all of the contributors that take their time to create memorials, contribute photographs of cemeteries and gravesites, and taking the time to link passed family members on memorials.
Very interesting comments. I have been a volunteer for 24 years. I am a DAR and a Genealogist. I wanted to honor my family when I first got started posting, but little did I know that years later this very site would solve my brick walls and I would find lost ancestors. I have traveled to many states to find them and I appreciate all the volunteers who have come after me to do the work. I do like to have volunteers who use my work post me as the source and I especially love it when posters of edits have documentation for their requests so I don’t have to prove every edit. I am also so grateful for the Find A Grave managers and the volunteers.
I have been a member of Find a Grave for many years, however, I have developed new grave sites and posted so many pictures & obits ect. and then someone comes behind me and wipes out my info or adds to the info but takes my name off and puts their name under my info and pictures. This is not fair! Also, the site is supposed to let you have that page to take care of if you are related to that person…..but I have ask one lady many times to allow me to take care of my parents page and she absolutely will not turn it over to me! How do I find where to write to your company and where do I find the rules for being a Find a Grave Admin?
My Find a Grave ID: 48043776
Sorry to hear about your experience. You can always contact the support team using the “Contact” link at the bottom of the site (https://www.findagrave.com/contact) and you can learn about using the site using the “Help” link at the bottom of the page.
Gladys Ivory
I have been a member of findagrave for many years. I love doing ancestry, have found many family members and have helped others find theirs. It is very gratifying. I feel no one should be forgotten and when posting, I know they won’t. I have documented and posted whole cemeteries. I find it very fulfilling, and know my information will last long after I am not here.
through ancestry I have even reunited sisters and in another case a brother and sister.
Thank you to all who make Find a Grave work. I have found information on Find a Grave that is available nowhere else. For example: babies who were born and died between census records.
Thank You Find a Grave, you do a phenomenal job!! I have been a Find a Grave member for almost 10 years since my 1st wife passed away in 2015, I spent so much time at the cemetery that I became fascinated with the history of the people buried there, I love to connect families an acknowledge veterans and am fascinated how people lived in the past. Keep up the great work and I will continue to help Find a grave in my retirement.
Find a Grave has been a wonderful tool in the genealogy work that I do. I believe it could be improved, if those who own or maintain memorials were nudged in some way by Find a Grave, if they simply do not respond to requests – either accept or reject. If you are not the owner of the memorial and have some information that you believe would enrich the story of the person being memorialized, it is very disheartening when you submit a request and never get a response from the owner. In my area, one or two members of the Find a Grave community either created or have inherited a great many memorials. And I have not been able to get a response. I am wondering what recourse I have if the owner never responds to a request. I am currently having that problem with my mother’s memorial, which is very precious to me.
As it it your mother’s Memorial you can ask to take over management of her Memorial. Being within the Findagrave guidelines for requesting transfer of a Memorial of a family member you then can add information to her Bio, etc. If the person still doesn’t respond to your request you can then contact Findagrave to have your mother’s Memorial transferred to you.
A huge bouquet of appreciation to Find a Grave and all of the volunteers who take photos and who post and amend memorials. I find it wonderfully satisfying to update birth/death dates and places and, especially, to link family members and add women’s maiden names — my way to honor those who came before us.
As I research my family, I get a hint that leads to Find a Grave. For everyone that is a direct relative or ancestor (not in- laws etc) I leave a Forget me not and “Remembered” and my maiden name. Last year a cousin in NZ got in contact as I’d left a flower for their mother who had died tragically young. As they’d been adopted their name had changed, and I’d never have found them. Now we speak regularly and we’d never have found each other without Find a Grave. I also love seeing the pictures that have been left, and marvel that often, from across the world, I see a face I know. Thank you for the work that you do.