Asking for transfers of memorials managed by Find A Grave (non famous memorials, managed by member number 8)
By Chris Mills
If you want to cut right to the chase and get to the instructions, scroll down toward the bottom of the page where it says Actually Asking for a Transfer of a memorial controlled by Find A Grave member number 8)
This ties in with a long running theme of mine which has been relevant since late 2015. That was when Find A Grave disabled a group account I had set up, AJ Marik told me group accounts were no longer allowed, and Find A Grave seized over 200,000 memorials I had created. AJ wanted to ram them down my throat and force me to take the memorials back into my account, but I didn't budge. Actually, they could have simply transferred the memorials back to my account and there wouldn't have been anything I could do about it. It's possible the only reason they didn't is that I might have just walked away from the site and told them to go pound sand, in which case they would have been stuck with all the memorials I had created, not just the ones they had seized.
In any event, Find A Grave got those memorials, and they have had most of them for more than five years now. Which means they have been responsible for approving edits, making changes, and responding to emails pertaining to those memorials.
I wondered if this would eventually cause them a severe case of indigestion, and my answer came this year. If you are a current user of Find A Grave you have noticed some changes to the suggest edits screen on the people memorials.
For the purposes of this article, there are three types of memorials in find a grave. The first is most memorials, where the person who created the memorial "maintains" the memorial. At the bottom of these memorials there is a block of verbiage which starts with "Created by" followed by a link to the find a grave page for the contributor who made that memorial.
The second type of memorial is the "famous" memorials, which are controlled by find a grave itself and (as far as I know) are never transferred to any other users. These fall into two other classes, the early ones, where the block at the bottom of the memorial starts with Maintained by: Find a Grave (but there is no link to member number 9 because Find A Grave has disabled linking on that account, although you can view that user page if you know how to find it). The early famous memorials don't have a Originally Created by: contributor, either because there wasn't one or find a grave wasn't keeping track of it back then.
The newer famous memorials are all or virtually all created by normal contributors, nominated for famous status, and then transferred to find a grave. The verbiage at the bottom of these memorials starts with Maintained by: Find a Grave and the next line says Originally Created by: followed by a link to the find a grave page for the contributor who made that memorial.
The third type of memorial, and the reason this page was created, are memorials created by normal find a grave users and then transferred to (or seized) by find a grave. The find a grave member number for this account is 8. The verbiage at the bottom of these memorials starts with Maintained by: Find a Grave followed by Originally Created by: followed by a link to the find a grave page for the contributor who made the memoria. Visually, the only difference between these memorials and the famous memorials is that the Find A Grave contributor name at the bottom of the page is clickable, unlike the famous memorials, where the find a grave contributor name is not a link and is NOT clickable.
Before now (and I know this happened in 2020 but not exactly when in 2020 it happened) if you wanted a memorial transferred to your custody you had to jump through a few hoops on the suggest edits or suggest corrections page of the memorial. (This does not include famous memorials, which as I mentioned above, are apparently never transferred from find a grave back to individual users). The link below tells you how this process works (and still works this way, if you are asking for a memorial transfer from another user, and not the find a grave account).
How To Ask For Memorial Transfers on Find A Grave
The paragraph below is the new wrinkle. This ONLY works with memorials maintained by Find A Grave member number 8, as far as I know.
Actually Asking for a Transfer of a memorial controlled by Find A Grave member number 8)
Go to the memorial you want to ask for. Verify at the bottom of the page that the information says Maintained by: Find a Grave and that the words Find a Grave are highlighted in blue (in other words, a clickable link).
Towards the top of the memorial, underneath the block which ends with the memorial number, you should see a line with three boxes: Share, +Save To, and Suggest Edits.
Click on Suggest Edits. The window that opens should say Suggest an Edit. Directly underneath that there should be a box (which I would describe as tan in color) that begins with this text: This memorial is currently managed by Find a Grave. If you know more about this memorial or would like to manage it, Request to Manage (Request to manage is within a clickable box).
If you click on the Request to Manage box, the following window will open:
This memorial is currently managed by Find a Grave. We'd be happy to transfer management to you.
As a memorial manager you will be expected to:
Respond respectfully to 'edit requests' and other contacts regarding this memorial
Transfer the memorial to any relative if they request it
Learn more about managing memorials.
The decedent's name, dates (if there are any), and a photo will appear (also if there is one) on the left side of the window.
The bottom right gives you two options, a "Cancel" button and a "I agree, transfer the memorial" button.
If you hit Cancel you will go back to the Suggest an Edit screen. If you hit the "I agree" button, the memorial will be transferred to the find a grave user account you are logged in with (or at least it did when I tested it earlier today).
I made the prediction two years ago that if current trends continued find a grave would directly control at least 15 million memorials on the site by 2023. My guess is that they have finally come to their senses (at least briefly) and realized that they CANNOT adequately or meaningfully maintain that many memorials, and they are trying to reverse the flow. So far I myself have only availed myself of one memorial I created which they had (a memorial that I had transferred to another contributor who has apparently gone inactive) and had it transferred back to me.
This is a step in the right direction. It still does nothing to assuage my mistrust of Ancestry Dot Com and my loathing for AJ Marik, who presided over the dismantling of the group accounts five years ago. But it does show that the people running things are not completely insane and power mad (just mostly so).
Find A Grave made an enemy of me five years ago by what they did then. I would prefer to not be their enemy. I can't imagine being their ally again, not after what they did several years ago. But I would be fine with some kind of neutral status. We shall see if anything else comes along to change my opinion of them one way or the other.
A short postscript
At first I thought this only applied to memorials managed by the standard find a grave house account, number 8. However, there are other similar accounts that I knew worked like number 8, and I just tested the transfer feature on memorials controlled by these accounts and they appear to be working the same way:
Utah State Historical Society 4
US Veterans Affairs Office 5
War Graves 6
IWPP Custodial Account 48586138
There are likely other accounts that work this way, but I don't know of any off the top of my head. In any event, if you see the tan box underneath Suggest an Edit when you go to submit corrections or edits on a memorial, it seems that memorial is up for grabs if you are so inclined.
In addition, if you know a user's account is inactive and their memorials were NOT transferred to another contributor, it is very likely you will be able to ask for transfers of memorials they created the same way
Page created 22 November 2020
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