With a home in McMurray, Pennsylvania, in the United Sates, Joe Aman began contributing to Find a Grave® almost 11 years ago. A retired mining engineer, Joe enjoys using those engineering skills to locate unmarked graves in particular. He focuses on Southwestern Pennsylvania, Northern West Virginia, and Eastern Ohio, but he also travels the world photographing graves. Here is a photo of Joe Aman in the cemetery at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Ireland.
Speaking of how he became involved with the website, he noted, Find a Grave not only turned out to be a terrific resource for discovering my genealogy, but also encouraged the start of a wonderful activity. The first marker photos that I added were for my 7x great grandparents, Samuel Diehl and Margaretha Diehl, who are buried on a small family cemetery in Bedford County, PA.
Focusing on about 200 cemeteries within 70 miles of where he lives, he has helped many thousands of members with their photo requests.
Over 10 years ago, Joe started fulfilling photo requests when he noticed that there were hundreds in his area that had not been fulfilled. From that modest start, Joe has now fulfilled over 53,000 photo requests! As mentioned, Joe has an affinity for finding unmarked graves, too, even if he must tackle overgrown vegetation.
I would guess that I have found several thousand unmarked graves. I cannot remember any one grave that I would describe as being particularly difficult. This may be explained by the fact that I always have the burial location, and, with the use of plot maps, it always is just a matter of time to find the unmarked grave. I guess that [the ones I have located] in areas that are heavily overgrown with vegetation and take some time to make a path to the grave site, would be those few that could be described as challenging.
When asked more about his engineering background, he explained like so:
I am a retired mining engineer. During the course of my work, I had many occasions to work with maps, and that experience has come in handy for navigating around cemeteries using my map and problem-solving skills to locate the unmarked graves.
He feels that his efforts have been rewarded more than he could have expected. Helping with the website’s mission to find graves has afforded him plenty of physiological and psychological exercise as well as personal satisfaction and the gratitude of members whose photo requests he has fulfilled.
[This] has brought much joy and satisfaction from reading the responses from so many grateful people. The most special have been those where a marker has been found and has allowed a person to see the marker for a parent, a grandparent, sibling, or a child for the first time.
Find a Grave is one means I use for fulfilling my passion for helping others. In addition, it provides a healthy combination of physical and mental exercise during my retirement. Since most of the cemeteries I fill requests in do not provide easy access to burial records, I walk the cemetery, row by row, to find the requested markers. On occasion, my steps will exceed 20,000 for the day. Hard to beat an activity that provides physical and mental exercise, all while helping others.
One particularly memorable and unusual experience occurred when he was looking for gravesites in the First Lutheran Church Crypt in Washington, PA.
The cemetery was originally located where the present church sits. It was next to the original church. The church was founded in 1798 by early settlers of the German Lutheran and Dutch Presbyterian Church. The first burial was on Sep. 29, 1817, and the last burial was on Oct. 3, 1892. The cemetery was dug up in 1924 and the 373 remains were sealed in a vault in the existing church basement. The tombstones that were still intact make up the vault wall. I photographed all of the markers in the crypt and added them to existing memorials without a marker photo or to new memorials. The right wall of the crypt is covered by burial markers from the original cemetery.
I found out about the First Lutheran Church Crypt due to photo requests being posted. I made arrangements through the church pastor to visit the crypt. Since most of the markers are very similar in that they only contain the name, a relationship, date of death and their age, I selected two markers (George Andre and Martha Schwerdtfeger) that are different due to the inclusion of a short epitaph. I would also like to point out that, since these markers have been indoors for the past 100 years, they are the best-preserved sandstone markers I have seen that are 150 to 200 years old.
One of Joe’s other favorite things to do is photograph the resting places for Civil War soldiers.
The Pittsburgh area is blessed with many old cemeteries that date back to the 18th century and include graves of many veterans of the Revolutionary War. Photographing the markers of the heroes of the Revolutionary War is especially rewarding. Here is my photo of the marker for David Hamilton.
Having served in the Civil War, David Hamilton’s name is on a plaque in Mingo Cemetery, which was placed by the George Washington Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, Washington, Pennsylvania. Hamilton served in the Pennsylvania militia and operated an alcohol still at the time.
As the story goes, Hamilton offered his homemade whiskey with Jamaica ginger to his fellow officers when they came to seize his still. When the drunken officers fell into a deep slumber, Hamilton and his neighbors swiftly moved the still and whiskey elsewhere. Today, due to the ginger in Hamilton’s spirits, the area is known as Ginger Hill.
Of course, Joe does not limit his efforts to the United States. He photographs gravesites wherever he travels:
Although my activity has been concentrated in the counties of Southwest Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and Northern West Virginia, I have had the opportunity to visit and photograph burial sites on all continents. Some of the most memorable have been those in Jerusalem, Arlington National Cemetery, the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and graves at Eskimobugt in the Artic region of northern Greenland.
This member’s willingness to travel to so many cemeteries in order to reach both marked and unmarked graves is commendable. We appreciate his unique, engineering-based contributions in our Find a Grave community. Even in retirement, he is still using his skillset to bless the lives of others.
We know that Joe is only 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 their contributor ID number and details of their work to feedback@findagrave.com.