Find a GRAVE is the world's largest gravesite collection with millions of cemetery records. This free genealogy website allows anyone to contribute, create and discover gravesites from all over the world. While it started out as a site for the tombstone tourist to find celebrity graves, Find a GRAVE has evolved into an invaluable tool for genealogists, history buffs and cemetery preservationists. Many Find a GRAVE memorials are rich with content, including dates, photos and biographies. As a “final resting place” database, it is a critical resource to complement your family tree software.
After addressing the five W questions (why, what, where, when and who), Mike will focus on how you can use the program to optimize your own family history research and records. This will focus on search features, navigation, linkages with Ancestry.com, volunteer opportunities, and additional features that come from acquiring a free account. He will also highlight how Find a GRAVE is a valuable project management tool to help achieve your various historical and genealogical initiatives.
Mike Woodcock is the Vice President with the Victoria Genealogical Society (VGS). He is the Past President of the Victoria Branch of the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada (UELAC) and remains on the Victoria Branch Executive with responsibility for Membership and Outreach. Mike is also a member of the Old Cemeteries Society, Victoria Historical Society, and the Saanich Pioneer Society.
To raise the profile of United Empire Loyalists on Vancouver Island, Mike has developed an online Loyal-List with profiles of over 800 UELAC descendants found here between 1860-1950. In developing this large genealogical resource, Mike made extensive use of the Find a GRAVE website and mastered its many valuable features. Mike has given cemetery tours (Loyalist Descendants, Early B.C. Public Servants, German Pioneers) at Ross Bay Cemetery for the Old Cemetery Society. He is considered the expert on early British Columbian UEL descendants.