Find a Grave and BillionGraves: Using Memorial Sites Wisely

Find memorials, compare headstone photographs with typed information, and follow burial clues into cemetery records. A practical workflow for checking dates, relationships and conflicting entries.

5 min read · Last reviewed November 2026 Print this guide

A cemetery search can put a face, a place and a family group around a name in your tree. It can also hand you a confident-looking date with no explanation of where it came from. Find a Grave and BillionGraves are useful research starting points when you examine each result carefully. This guide walks through an online search and shows how to turn a promising memorial into a documented research lead.

Understand what you have found

Find a Grave contains memorials contributed by members. A memorial can bring together burial information, photographs, a biography and links to relatives. Read those parts separately: a contributor’s family link and a photographed inscription answer different questions.

BillionGraves includes GPS headstone records created from photographs uploaded with its app. Its collections also include headstone photographs without GPS, burial records and other material. Check the record’s collection and attached image before assuming you are looking at a photographed grave with coordinates. Account requirements and access to particular tools can change; check the site’s current access information before planning your work around a feature.

Keep our broader Cemetery Research and Reading Gravestones guide alongside this one for cemetery-office requests and advice on visiting and photographing markers.

Search in small, recorded steps

Begin with one person and write down the facts you already have from other records. Separate a known death year from an estimate, and a documented cemetery from a family recollection. Then search systematically:

1. Start with a name and a likely place. Compare candidates with your existing evidence before choosing one.
2. Remove uncertain details. A guessed middle name, exact year or cemetery can make a search too narrow. Try initials, married and maiden surnames, and spelling variants individually.
3. Search the cemetery. When you have a supported burial location, search within that cemetery for the surname and possible relatives.
4. Try the other site. Compare what each result actually supplies: a different photograph, a transcription, a location or an additional source.

Record the site, search terms, filters and date in My Research. A search with no result means that search did not find a matching entry. Find a Grave explicitly describes its coverage as a work in progress; a missing memorial does not establish that someone was not buried there.

Separate the photograph from the typed claims

Open the available images and transcribe the inscription yourself. Keep uncertain letters in brackets or explain them in a note. If the page gives a full birth date but the marker shows only a year, record that difference. Do not silently expand the inscription using the page’s typed fields.

Use three short headings in your notes:

• Visible on the marker: the words and dates you can actually read.
• Stated elsewhere on the page: biography, family connections and additional dates, with any cited sources.
• Still to verify: claims that need another record or a clearer image.

A photograph documents what the marker says; that does not settle whether every statement on the marker is accurate. Treat linked parents and spouses as leads until supporting records establish the relationships. Agreement between two websites is also less useful if both entries repeat the same inscription or contributor’s account.

Work through a conflicting date

Fictional example: a memorial’s typed fields give Clara Mercer’s birth as May 12, 1881. The photographed stone reads only “1882–1949.” A linked parent has the right surname, but no source explains the relationship.

Your notes should preserve all three observations: the typed date, the inscription and the unsupported parent link. Do not choose 1881 because it is more precise, or 1882 simply because it is carved in stone. Look for records that can address the disagreement, such as a birth or baptism entry, a death record and censuses. Consider who supplied each statement and how close its creation was to the event.

The result may remain unresolved. Write “birth year conflicts: memorial text 1881; marker 1882” until the evidence supports a conclusion. Our guide to separating people with the same name helps when the discrepancy may indicate two different people.

Follow the burial information

Copy the cemetery name, locality, section, lot and plot details when provided. For a mapped result, check whether the point represents the cemetery or a particular grave. Preserve the record link with your notes so that another researcher can see what you used.

If two entries name different cemeteries, investigate before treating either as a duplicate. Look for an explanation involving a memorial marker, an earlier burial or a later removal. Ask the cemetery office which records support the burial location and whether it has a burial entry, lot record or removal information. Follow a cited obituary back to its publication; our obituaries and death records guide explains that next step.

Request a photograph or suggest a correction

Find a Grave offers photo requests sent to volunteers near the cemetery. Its iOS instructions place Request Photo under the memorial’s More menu after signing in; follow the current help for your device. Supply a verified section or plot location if you have one. Treat the request as a request, and continue researching while you wait.

For a correction, use Suggest Edits on the memorial and include a concise source note. Explain the discrepancy and identify the record, page or image supporting your suggestion. The memorial manager reviews suggested edits and may have different evidence. Keep the correspondence focused on the records.

Before creating a new memorial, search thoroughly for an existing one. Find a Grave says burial locations should be verified and asks contributors to wait when a recent death’s final disposition is not yet known. Avoid adding private information about living relatives from an obituary.

Save enough to retrace your work

Record the website, memorial or record title, Find a Grave memorial ID when available, URL and access date. Identify the particular photograph and its credited contributor when possible. In your notes, distinguish an inscription you read from a biography or linked relationship. Use the cemetery transcription form to organize the details.

Before republishing a photograph, check permission and the site’s terms; a link and your own research notes are often enough to document the lead. For every unresolved claim, finish with a specific next action rather than copying it into your tree as established fact.