Find A Grave Duplicate Policies From the Site FAQs


By Chris Mills

As a long time contributor to the website Find A Grave.com (and so far a Top 10 contributor, although I am always in danger of falling out of the Top 10 into the Top 15, which doesn't sound quite so thrilling), I am constantly getting emails telling me about this duplicate memorial I created and that duplicate memorial I created, and people frequently request that I delete one of my memorials because it looks like a duplicate entry, which the site rules are fairly clear in specifying should be removed.

In most cases, I really don't care about an individual memorial I created. And in many cases when I research a memorial I find out that I did in fact create a duplicate memorial, so in those situations I remove my memorial. However, there are some situations in which I feel no compulsion to remove my memorial, because a careful reading of the site FAQs reveals some interesting facts about exactly which memorials are considered duplicate memorials and which are not. In my experience many of the people who feel a compulsion to lecture me on the site rules regarding duplicate memorials have never even read the FAQs or have misread the FAQs.

One reason I bring this up is because of a great deal of work I have done on a specific cemetery, where I created around 190,000 memorials within the span of a couple of days in early 2012. Before I began my upload project there were already about 32,000 memorials listed in the cemetery, which was Forest Lawn Glendale. To try and minimize the number of duplicates I created, I did a small data scraping project on the Find A Grave memorials contained within the cemetery and added that data to a table within the database I was using to keep track of the people I was adding to the cemetery. In addition to the "snapshot" I took of the cemetery in early 2012, I took another snapshot of the cemetery in early 2014. This will become significant later as I go over the Find A Grave FAQs regarding duplicates and "burial unknown" memorials.

By the way, below this paragraph, the links are to the actual Find A Grave FAQs I have referenced, while the italicized text is what I have copied directly from the Find A Grave FAQs as they were published as of August 2014 (if changes are made after this point in time I will not have changed this page unless it is pointed out to me). The non-italicized text (normal text) is my writing, editorializing, interpretations, etc., of what I have read in the Find A Grave FAQs.

There are two specific mentions of adding memorials for burial memorials within the FAQs. The first is quite brief, under Topic 16. This paragraph would lead one to believe that before you add any memorial anywhere you should search the entire site for a person before adding their memorial.

Can I add my relative/friend to Find A Grave? How?

Please do! We welcome your information. . .please perform a search to ensure that we don't already have your loved one listed. If you don't find them, please use one of our submission forms to add your information. If you do locate the memorial, you can submit additional information to the submitter using the "Suggest A Correction" link under the 'Edit' tab in the upper right corner of the memorial.

However, there is a much more detailed description under Topic 141, as quoted below.

Why are there multiple memorials for the same individual? How does Find A Grave handle duplicate memorials?

Because so many people add data to Find A Grave, there are often duplicate cemeteries and duplicate memorials added. This is a very common situation and is quite difficult to resolve in a way that keeps everyone happy. Before adding a memorial, you should search the cemetery to see if a record with that name has already been added. If you are adding a memorial for someone who does not have a physical grave or memorial marker in a cemetery (perhaps their ashes were scattered), please do a general search on Find A Grave (do not enter a location) to see if a memorial has already been created for that person. If you find a memorial has been added but has incomplete or incorrect information, instead of creating a duplicate memorial you should use the tools provided to submit corrections, additions or a transfer request via the "Suggest A Correction" link under the 'Edit' tab on the upper right of the memorial. You should never deliberately create a duplicate memorial. In regard to duplicates, a memorial with a correct known burial location will always be preferred over an unknown burial location. If a case of duplicate memorials falls to the Administration, the Administration will have the final word on which memorial is deleted and which data will be retained in the remaining memorial page. There are some situations where an individual (usually a 'famous' individual) may have more than one memorial page, because their body was buried in one location but a cenotaph or second marker/memorial was also placed in a second location. NOTE Jan 25, 2013: If there are two memorial pages for the same individual, and one has a Lost at Sea designation, and the other gives the location of a cenotaph or memorial marker, the memorial page with the Lost at Sea location may be merged into the memorial page with a physical cenotaph stone or memorial location.

I am going to call your attention in particular to these two specific sentences. Why exactly are they worded the way they are?

Before adding a memorial, you should search the cemetery to see if a record with that name has already been added. If you are adding a memorial for someone who does not have a physical grave or memorial marker in a cemetery (perhaps their ashes were scattered), please do a general search on Find A Grave (do not enter a location) to see if a memorial has already been created for that person.

I believe there is a bit of a clue in some verbiage a bit below that section, as follows:

In regard to duplicates, a memorial with a correct known burial location will always be preferred over an unknown burial location.

So what exactly is this bit about an unknown burial location? You have to look at Topic 146 for an answer to that question:

How do I add a memorial when I'm not sure what cemetery they are buried?

This is similar to adding a memorial for cremation. Do not create a new cemetery which does not exist in order to add these memorials. Location of body unknown should be used for recent deaths where the disposition is not currently known. Final disposition should be determined and updated within 30 days.

Use the Family and Friends link to add these memorials.

Choose "Other" under the burial option.

Choose one of the options under "General Info" on the next page. If the burial is recent and the location is unknown, choose "Recent death, location of body unknown". Update the memorial page later by clicking the "Edit" link next to the "Burial: Unknown" section of the memorial page. Then, click the button next to "Cemetery burial" and proceed with adding the cemetery.

Yes, you can create a memorial for someone without knowing where they are buried. But, the fine print says you should determine where that person is actually buried within 30 days after the creation of the memorial. It doesn't specify what will happen after 30 days, so it's kind of a toothless rule.

Why is this even an issue? Most gravers I know who are on the site and entering a lot of memorials, don't bother checking the entire site for someone before they add a memorial, they just check the cemetery they are working on. If you refer back to Topic 141, this is not only allowed, but is mentioned as the normal way to add memorials. Only Topic 146 discusses searching the whole site for someone before adding their memorial into a specific cemetery.

Not only is this a commonsense issue, it's also a usability issue for the site itself. If you are searching for someone in a small cemetery it's not that difficult to see if a person has a memorial in that cemetery. But if you are working on a large cemetery like Forest Lawn Glendale (currently over 260,000 memorials listed) or one of the big national cemeteries like Riverside or Los Angeles National Cemetery, a search on a common surname can bring up hundreds or even thousands of matches. There are plenty of duplicate memorials in Forest Lawn alone just because so many people are buried there. So forcing contributors to search the entire Find A Grave website for a name before adding that person to a cemetery where they are known to be buried is not only time-consuming but in some cases (especially with common surnames) it can make the task well-nigh impossible. Because so many memorials are put in with wrong or alternate information, such as the first and middle name being switched, incorrect or missing birth or death dates, etc., this tends to force experienced users of the site to put less information in when running searches, and that's doable to some extent when you are just searching one cemetery but if you are trying to search the entire website it's just not going to happen, it means that even burial unknown memorials are getting duplicated by contributors who are putting people in under different names and with different dates.

Also, look at the name of the site itself -- it's called "Find A Grave", not "Find A Person". The burden is not on the contributor who has found a burial and is documenting it, the burden is on the person who has created the burial unknown memorial who has 30 days to nail down that burial location and update their memorial. If they take more than 30 days to update their memorial, the implications of what the FAQs say is their memorial can no longer be considered an "original" memorial, if another memorial has been created with a known good burial location, that memorial is now the original memorial, not the burial unknown memorial.

Back to the "burial unknown" entries - as we just discussed, in theory you're supposed to find the burial location and edit the memorial and move it into the correct cemetery. In practice, if it were really that easy to find burial locations, no one would bother creating burial unknown memorials at all. Needless to say, most of the burial unknown memorials are NOT located within a cemetery within 30 days after their creation. I don't know exactly how many there are on the site right now, but out of the 116 million burial records currently out there I would expect at least a few million are burial unknown memorials.

News flash - the easiest way to locate a burial for a Burial Unknown memorial is to wait for someone else to find out where the person is buried and create a memorial for them! And therein lies the problem. Once you find someone has created a memorial in a cemetery that you have already created a memorial for as a burial unknown, there is a great temptation to edit the burial information on that memorial and put it into the correct cemetery without drawing anyone's attention to it, then either waiting a few months and pointing the other memorial owner's attention to their "duplicate" memorial, or just waiting for someone else to do it and assuming that your memorial will survive the cut because it is chronologically older than the memorial that was originally in the cemetery (without ever having been moved into it).

By the way, this is not always the experience I have, but it is certainly a common enough experience. I am just as likely to get an email from someone who has moved their memorial and is now demanding I remove my duplicate memorial. This is where my cemetery archive snapshots come into play. I can check one or both of the tables I created in 2012 and 2014 and tell if any particular memorial number was located within Forest Lawn Glendale in Find A Grave when I took those snapshots. I'm pretty sure the staff at Find A Grave have the same capability to check the history of a memorial, if they can be persuaded to do so. Sometimes, when confronted with the evidence that their memorial was not in the right cemetery (or perhaps, any cemetery) I am told that it doesn't matter, but sometimes I am hit with the comment "Well, I never thought about it, I just assumed that if I could do it that it was OK".

Sometimes I get someone being proactive who contacts me BEFORE they move their burial unknown memorial and asking if it is OK for them to do that. And normally, when they ask me, I say sure, not a problem, just make sure you get the correct plot information, and I'll delete my memorial.

The difference is, when they are doing that, they are acknowledging my contribution and thanking me for it, and I am more than happy when they do that to let them keep the memorial they created as a burial unknown.

And that's what the people don't understand who are trying to sneak their memorials in under cover of darkness without anyone noticing - it's not about the memorials, it's just about acknowledging that the contributor who made the memorial in the correct cemetery actually took the time to find where the person was buried and create a memorial for them. The people who are stealthily (or not so stealthily, because they don't even understand how it could be a problem) moving their memorials are doing the equivalent of saying to the person who actually found the burial place, "Sorry, this is my relative, and I was too lazy to find out where they were buried, but you did all the work and now I'm going to take all the credit".

Some contributors have wised up to this practice and actually state on their bio pages that they query every cemetery they add names to and WILL NOT delete their memorial within that cemetery if someone later moves a burial unknown memorial into it and claims their memorial as the "original". And based on my reading of the site FAQs, they are within their rights to do this.

By the way, I have created a few hundred burial unknown memorials myself over the years. I now consider them place holders to display the genealogical information that is recorded on them, and in cases where someone has added a memorial for that person in a cemetery I have sent them edits to update their memorial and then removed my burial unknown memorial for the same person.

In the interest of completeness, there are two more FAQs that are germane to these topics so I am going to include them as well.

Why are there multiple copies of the record I submitted?

Duplicate entries sometimes happen when you use the "back" button to view a newly entered record. . . it is best not to use that button to navigate our site because it can -- as you already know -- result in duplicated records. The other possibility is that when you are trying to edit a record you have already saved, you are using our submission form and recreating the entire record, which results in the creation of an additional record.

You are able to delete duplicate copies of records that you have created.

This is just basically explaining to you how you can accidentally create an exact duplicate record of a memorial by hitting the back arrow on your browser right after creating the memorial. This isn't normally an issue, any time I've pointed this out to someone who was active on the site they have removed one of the two memorials. The only problem I've found with these mistakes are where the person is apparently no longer active on the site and sometimes I've had difficulty getting the admins to delete one of the duplicated memorials.

Another area of confusion on the site (as if there weren't enough of them) is the subject of cenotaphs. Here is Topic 81:

What is a cenotaph? How do I have a memorial designated as a cenotaph?

A cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons whose remains are buried elsewhere. It can also be the initial marker for a person who has since been interred elsewhere.

To add a cenotaph, create a memorial just like any other. Then email edit@findagrave.com with a link to the memorial and a message to mark it as a cenotaph.

The word Cenotaph is from the Greek, it literally means "empty tomb". One of the reasons people are so confused on the site is because not all cenotaphs are marked as cenotaphs (either on the marker inscription or on the memorial itself) and the other reason is just that people who have never heard of the word cenotaph or had it explained to them just don't understand the concept.

There are many "intentional" cenotaphs for famous or semi-famous people, others were simply created by people who had enough money to not only buy themselves grave spaces and grave markers but put up fancy memorials for their entire families to show how important they were.

I have found a number of accidental cenotaphs, usually when a husband or wife died in one state and a marker was put up with the names of both spouses, but the surviving spouse later moved away and is buried in another state. In many cases when this happens one of the two markers will not have a death date for the person, and usually the marker that has the death date is the actual burial location, while the marker next to the spouse who died earlier, with no death date for the surviving spouse, can be considered a kind of cenotaph.

Even more confusingly, I have run across cases where someone's name is listed with no death date on the same marker with a spouse, but they are actually buried in another cemetery but either have no marker in the cemetery they are actually buried in or their name has not been added to the marker where another family's member's name is listed. That is a real mind-bender, and might even lead one to believe that person didn't want anyone to find their burial location.

The reason I bring this up is because the site FAQs specifically mention cenotaphs, it means they are allowed, and a cenotaph memorial is just as valid as a burial memorial, it's just not meant to be confused with a burial memorial. If you have created a cenotaph memorial and there is another memorial for the actual burial, if someone emails you and asks you to remove your "duplicate", you can just tell them it's a cenotaph and point them to the place in the FAQs where it mentions cenotaphs.

I have had the opposite happen, as well, where there was an existing cenotaph memorial and I created a later memorial for the person which had their actual burial location. In those cases I have just said, "Look, they're both valid, but this one is a cenotaph and this one is an actual burial, there's no reason to remove either one of the memorials."

I have a second cousin who has two cenotaphs. He was killed in action aboard the USS Franklin in 1945 during WWII, his body was either lost at sea or he was buried at sea along with many of the other crew members after the ship was attacked by a Japanese bomber. RJ Downen's name is listed in the Punchbowl memorial in Honolulu, on Memorial Wall D. His family also paid to have a marker put up for him in his hometown in Gallatin County, Illinois. The Find A Grave memorial for him in the Punchbowl was created by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission/American Battle Monuments Commission, a group who has been tireless in documenting the final resting places (and memorial or cenotaph markers) of many soldiers, sailors and airmen who fell in the service of their country. The other memorial for RJ is one I created, and they are both valid memorials, but they are both cenotaphs. Confusingly both of the memorials are linked to RJ's parents through the family links section, which looks a bit strange as it makes it clear there are two memorials for him, but I have never bothered trying to talk the owner of the other memorial into unlinking his memorial from RJ's parents.

There are two more things I am going to bring up. What happens when someone creates a memorial in the wrong cemetery by mistake? I believe that is covered under the verbiage I quoted about a "known good burial location" taking precedence over a different burial location. The way I read that is that if there are two memorials for the same person in different cemeteries, the one that is actually in the correct cemetery gets precedence over one that is in the incorrect cemetery even if it was created after the memorial in the wrong cemetery. That being said, I for one am going to be a lot more tolerant of someone who made a good faith effort to find the right cemetery but made a mistake rather than someone who made no effort to find the correct burial location.

The other situation I am going to bring up is the occasional contributor who creates a memorial in a cemetery knowing full well that someone else has already created a memorial for that person in the same cemetery (in other words, they have intentionally duplicated a memorial). Some people are very strange in some ways and apparently can't even tolerate seeing a non-family member's name on a memorial for their relative, even when that person's memorial helped them find where their relative was buried.

That practice is expressly forbidden by the site rules, as witness this line from Topic 141 in the FAQs:

You should never deliberately create a duplicate memorial

I really have no sympathy for the type of people I described above. A lot of successful genealogical research is predicated on "the kindness of strangers", if I may use the phrase. Most people on the Find A Grave site understand this and don't have a problem with seeing evidence of other people's helpfulness on memorials for their family. For those people who just don't get that, well, I guess it takes all kinds . . .

Before I forget, there is also a different scenario I will bring up, some people have created duplicate memorials for another reason, the person who created or owned a memorial for their relative either died themselves, or dropped off of the site and stopped caring for the memorials they created or own. So people have created their own memorials out of frustration because a person who created memorials for their family wasn't responding to edit requests. The bad news is there are still a lot of orphaned memorials out there that are not being cared for by anyone, but the good news is that the edit system on Find A Grave that was rolled out in 2013 has made it a lot easier for the site administrators to "push" updates for memorials where the current owner is no longer maintaining them.

In any event, you should not be surprised if any duplicate memorials like this are either deleted by the site administrators are merged into the other memorial. When that happens, when you look up a memorial by the memorial number, you will be sent to a redirection screen where you are prompted to click on a link to go to the surviving memorial.

By the way, if for some reason I have a suspicion there might be a memorial for someone that was created as a burial unknown memorial or put in the wrong cemetery and I do a search and find it, I will send the owner of that memorial an update with the correct burial location. In many cases this results in stony silence as the contributor is apparently no longer active on the site, but in some cases I have heard back from people who are absolutely ecstatic, or at least quite happy, that I found the burial location for that person. So I just want to point out that I'm not just a mean person who wants everyone to delete the memorials for their relatives that they just can't find a burial location for. And, like I said earlier, if a memorial creator or owner asks me, I will usually delete a memorial I created if they want to move theirs into the right cemetery.

Anyway, I think I've discussed this as much as I need to, and probably more than I need to. But my basic point is, just because a memorial is chronologically earlier than another memorial for the same person, it does not necessarily mean the later memorial is a "duplicate" memorial. That being said, if it is given to the Find A Grave site administrators to make the determination, they may just blithely ignore the site rules and do whatever they feel like, which in most cases will probably mean deleting the newer memorial or merging it into the older memorial. That still doesn't make it right. But I understand how busy the site admins are so I think they can be forgiven for not being able to take the time to work all this stuff out. It really is up to the contributors who make the memorials to educate themselves on the rules and not go around lecturing other people on the site when they themselves haven't taken the time to read and understand the rules that pertain to the determination of duplicates and the disposition of burial unknown memorials.

Page created 13 August 2014

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