Congratulations, and thank you to Michelle Woodham, our latest spotlighted member! Michelle’s journey began more than twenty years ago when she started searching for her 2nd great grandfather’s burial location. She’s been contributing to Find a Grave all that time and helping many people along the way through research, photographing graves, adding memorials, and giving presentations on Find a Grave to genealogical societies and other organizations. Here are a few of her stories.
From the time I was a young child, I have always been interested in my family history. But living a thousand miles away, it was almost impossible to find any information or know who to contact for answers to my questions. I was so excited when the internet arrived. In 1996, I purchased a computer, got a second phone line and I was finally researching, connecting with distant family members I didn’t know existed! I immediately began making connections and filling in the blanks in our family trees. While researching, I discovered the wealth of information that could be found in cemeteries! Most of my information was found in cemetery transcriptions that volunteers had compiled through years of walking the cemeteries row by row.
At this time, Michelle’s research was mostly focused on the Tunstall family of Virginia. She was trying to update a 50 year old family book, full of descendants. As she looked at the inscriptions recorded in the book, she found some of them didn’t completely make sense and knew she needed to visit the cemetery and find the stones. She traveled to the cemetery, located the graves with the correct inscriptions, and immediately thought “a picture is worth a thousand words.” She photographed the gravestones and added them to Find a Grave. She knew “it was the perfect place to create memorials and show the actual markers.”
A few months later, I ventured south to Hill Crest Cemetery in Marshall County, MS. There were a few Tunstall family members buried there! As I walked the cemetery row by row searching for Tunstalls, I came across some interesting names like “Buffalo” or magnificent obelisks. Snap, snap, snap on my new digital camera. I returned home with pics of our Tunstall markers, as well as several more photos. As I entered a name into the Find a Grave database, I did a bit of research on each person, discovering several of the extra people in someone’s database that didn’t have burial locations yet. In fact, the Buffalo marker was for a distant relative of someone who I had emailed with! OH! I was so hooked! I really felt the call, the need to go back and photograph every single marker in Hill Crest Cemetery. It’s like walking through history, looking at all the markers… so many Confederate soldiers… so many who died from Yellow Fever… so many stories to be told.
When I began photographing cemeteries, I thought my work might help people searching for their ancestors. Little did I realize that I would be contacted by people regarding more recent burials. My search for distant Tunstall relatives took me to Stanton Cemetery, Haywood County, TN, a small country cemetery with about 1,000 graves, small enough to allow me to photograph the entire cemetery. After returning home, I created the memorials and uploaded photos. The very next day, I received an email from a young man who was so excited. His mother had died when he was a small child and he did not know where she was buried. He had been searching for years, and “just happened” to check Find a Grave the day before ~ literally hours after I had created a memorial for his mother.
A similar experience happened after I had completed photographing Beal Memorial Cemetery, Okaloosa County, FL. I was contacted by a man whose family had lived in Fort Walton Beach in the 1960s. Fort Walton Beach is a military town, with Eglin Air Force Base being right next door. That is what brought our family to Fort Walton Beach. Many military families are stationed there for only a few years, and then move on to another assignment. The gentleman’s mother was elderly and knew the end was near. What she wished more than anything was having her family all in one place. While her husband was stationed at Eglin AFB, she had a baby that died as an infant. She could not remember where the child was buried. Searching Find a Grave, the man discovered a memorial for his sibling in the Beal Memorial Cemetery. He shared with me that he would be making arrangements to have his sibling moved.
Remember the off and on twenty year search for Michelle’s 2nd Great Grandfather’s grave? Michelle and her father had walked through many cemeteries near the family farm, hoping to stumble across his name on a stone, Henry Louis Cahour. She had exhausted multiple avenues of research over all those years, when something wonderful happened.
Just before traveling north for another family reunion, I happened to enter Henry Cahours in the Find a Grave search box with the thought, “been there, done this before.” I was shocked when the results popped up for one “Henry L. Cahours, St Patrick’s Cemetery #1, Row 12, Grave 3.” The memorial had been created JUST 10 days earlier! I exchanged several emails with the wonderful lady who was creating memorials from genealogical society surveys and church burial records. Travel plans were altered, and a few days later found us driving directly to the cemetery, where my dear elusive Henry L. Cahours has been resting since 1874! He knew where he was, and I’m thankful that a kind volunteer took the time to create a memorial for him.
Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
I’m not sure I believe in serendipity. Too many odd and “coincidental” events have occurred since I began researching family history and photographing cemeteries. I think we are guided to be in a particular place at a particular time, for a specific purpose. Today, we are retired and enjoying traveling the country and the world. Wherever we visit, my eye is keenly watching for interesting cemeteries or markers.
Michelle, we appreciate your contributions and efforts in our Find a Grave community. We love that you’ve been helping people all these years and that another Find a Grave volunteer helped you find the grave for your 2nd great grandfather. Thank you for all you do!
We know Michelle is one of the many wonderful volunteers in our Find a Grave community. Do you know a Find a Grave member who would make a good candidate for Volunteer of the Month? If so, we welcome your suggestions. Please send an email with details of their work to feedback@findagrave.com.