Tracing family roots has become quite a hobby. The mighty Ancestry.com has monopolized the business and readily digitizes documents wherever they are found. In many cases the documents are illegally obtained, but for the most part, I think Ancestry abides by guidelines.
Another old popular website is “Find-a-Grave”: originally a privately owned site with free membership. As a member, you created a memorial page for an ancestor. It may have incuded the person’s vital statistics, or a short bio or a gravestone or personal photo. If you didn’t have a gravestone photo, a member across the globe would “volunteer” to help you by going to the cemetery at your request and their expense and take a photo. “At your request” is the key here.
Today the site is owned by Ancestry.com, although still a free membership site. Its no longer pleasant and private, but big business. All records added are routed back to the main Ancestry.com fee site. And now, instead of waiting for a family to request volunteer help, people are running around photographing entire cemeteries: washing stones, chalking stones to make them easier to read, removing trinkets or flowers left by family and posting photos on Find-a-Grave.
Nothing ruins an old stone more than washing or chalking. I recently read that on the East Coast, the police are looking for someone who ruined 200-year-old stones by washing them.
My fears also momentarily lie with the goings on of a genealogical the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogy Society.
The group boldly declares members will photograph and post on Find-a-Grave, every stone in Snohomish County, including new burials. (Sounds almost like the paparazzi.) All without permisson of newly grieving families and regardless of the age of the stone.
The society is also asking for donations for a tombstone project to buy stones where there are none. Isn’t this altering history and records?
I personally have family who bought plots when their spouse passed but then remarried. They never used the second plot. They’re buried with new spouse under different surnames or with diffeent loves ones, and the old plot is empty. Cemetery records don’ts always reflect this.
I also have family that asked that no stones be placed on the family plot so the area would be parklike, a place for family picnics as families did in the 1800s.
The genealogy society has no way of knowing a family’s wishes. Their actons could alter history and family records. Our state needs to follow the example of Missouri and Virgina and pass cemetery protection laws. Strangers shouldn’t be able to alter, wash, chalk, and in some cases, photograph stones, and certainly not add a stone where there never was one.
Geneaology groups should be directed to protect and preserve, not alter and change, not without a certified request from a documented family member. And copyright laws should also apply to gravestones. No photos should be published nor changes made by non-family members.
Elaine Jenkins is a resident of Everett.
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