Life gets in the way of a blog about death

I've got two kids - a teen and a tweener - and they keep me incredibly busy, so yes, it's been a long time since the last post.  Yeah, life gets in the way of my genealogy research and my graveyard hopping, but that's OK. 

Anyway, it's hard to want to graveyard hop in Minnesota in the middle of winter.  It's just not as... inviting as those warm fall days with the leaves all changing....

Since my last post, I have watched the GeneaBloggers' prompts for 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy, and though I haven't posted about any of them, there was one in particular that really caught my interest.  It was week #44, end-Oct/beg-Nov:

Research ways to give back to the genealogy community. A great deal of genealogy information on line was put there by volunteers. This week, your challenge is to examine some different ways genealogists can donate their time and effort in kind.

One of the first places mentioned for volunteer genealogical work was Find A Grave.   I love Find A Grave.  I clicked over there and realized there was something I could do.  There's a very small private family cemetery near me that is placed incorrectly on all kinds of maps (including Google Maps and MapQuest).  I contacted Find A Grave and gave them the information to correct that.  I told them where the cemetery actually is, what  it's called and another name it's also known as.  And since I had just been there (taken there by my double 4th cousin, whom I met through Ancestry.com) and taken pictures of every headstone, I offered to set up the names of the people interred there! 

Because of my e-mail, Find A Grave made the corrections, and I have started listing the interments!  How cool is that??  Even cooler, I've had another distant relative contact me  through Find A Grave because of that!  And even cooler than that, he had an actual photograph of my 3rd great grandmother, Anna Gee Aldritt (1805-1890). 

And I know for sure it's really her, because she looks remarkably like one of her daughters, Jemima Aldritt Trumble (left, 1835-1891), of whom I already had a picture.

And how cool is that??  So, the moral is, pay it forward, and it comes back to you.  The genealogy community is fabulously generous with information.  Help out wherever you can, to pay back those who worked hard to put your information where you found it! 

And dream of nicer days for cemetery hopping!