Memorial Day was once called Decoration Day. One of the ways to celebrate Memorial Day is to visit a graveyard, and decorate the graves of your ancestors who were in the military. This gives a genealogist the opportunity to record the information that is found on their gravestones. If you are unable to travel to a cemetery on Memorial Day weekend, you might still be able to obtain the information on a grave from an online resource.
If you are visiting a cemetery this Memorial Day weekend, it is traditional to decorate the graves of your ancestors who served in the military. This is a way to honor their sacrifices, and to remember them. Most people will bring small American Flags to decorate the grave with.
Other acceptable option includes decorating the graves with flowers. You can choose whatever form of flower decoration that you would like. Keep in mind, however, that if you do not return to the cemetery after Memorial Day, there is a possibility that the pot or vase that the flowers are in could be discarded by the staff of the cemetery. I wouldn’t advise leaving a family heirloom at the cemetery this weekend.
It is also perfectly acceptable for people to decorate the graves of those whom they are not related to. This weekend you will see boy scout troupes, and members of Veteran’s organizations placing flag decorations on the graves of every military man or woman in a cemetery. This means that if you were unable to make it to the graveyard that your ancestors are buried in, there very well could be someone decorating their grave for you this weekend.
Genealogists who couldn’t make it to the graveyard can still find out the information that is on the gravestones of their ancestors. Thanks to the efforts of a lot of people, most of whom are volunteers, there are websites that keep a record of the data on gravestones. You might be able to find out the full name, the birth date, and the death date of one of your ancestors through the use of these types of resources.
You might want to begin your search with one of these websites:
Find A Grave has photos of thousands of gravestones. Their purpose is to be a graves registration website, to memorialize those who have passed on, and to be a resource for genealogists. Use their search engine to find the grave of your ancestor. If the grave has been archived, then you can see a photo of it, and even leave some virtual flowers.
Interment.net has information from thousands of graves from all over the world. You can narrow your search by country, or by a state within a certain country. You won’t see a photo of the grave, but there will be a listing of a person’s name, birth date, and death date.
The National Gravesite Locator is run by the United States Department of Veteran Affairs. It has information about the grave markers of veterans.
Image by Tony the Misfit on Flickr