Go Out and Find A Grave
Graveyards can be eerie places, don’t get me wrong. Especially this time of year when the leaves are off the trees and the weather is a seasonally appropriate 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But there are plenty of reasons why you would want to stroll among the headstones. Perhaps you’re visiting a loved one, searching for the grave of a newly discovered ancestor, or paying your respects to a dear cultural icon.
There’s also a livestream if you want to see Andy Warhol’s grave but you’re not so invested that you would drive to the South Hills.
How would I go about locating a grave? You just access the publicly available, totally free to use Find A Grave. You can search for people by name, location, D.O.B., D.O.D, names of relatives, plot numbers, and more! You can also browse specific cemeteries or browse for cemeteries by location. A neat feature for the morbidly (read: academically) curious is the famous grave search, where you can find the resting places of famous people!
And if you’re looking for some spooky fun grave facts for tonight’s Halloween party, you can rattle on about the famous graves of Pennsylvania!
One of the coolest features of the site is that members can contribute information, like memorial data and photos. This is helpful for creating a more comprehensive resource for genealogy researchers and folks who are searching for the lost graves of relatives.
So, if you go out to the graveyard today, you may want to bring your smartphone so you can better navigate your way through history with Find A Grave.
Derek – South Park Township Library