Why I Love FindAGrave.com

I just love FindAGrave.com!!

I pretty much check my email first thing every morning. I have to. I'm like a dog with bone when researching so if I don't make myself check it first thing, before I know it days have gone by and I have 100's of emails to wade through, but I digress.

Before I go any further though,  I need to give a big shout out to Helen, the FindAGrave volunteer who took the photos, because without her, I never ever would have found out about this!!

I always get excited when I get an email from FindAGrave stating that one of my photo requests have been fulfilled, but I have a lot of photo requests out there so some are more exciting than others. I received one last week for a distant cousin. It was nice to have and I dutifully documented everything, but it wasn't a "my tail is wagging" kind of discovery. 

Today was different. 

Today I received an email stating that my photo request for Abigail Oulton Tingley (1778-1843) had been fulfilled. 

Today I found my 4th great grandmother.............

But that's not the most amazing thing. The most AMAZING thing is that she is buried in the Tingley Cemetery! Yes, the Tingley Cemetery! Not Ye Olde Burying Ground or Whatever Town I Live In Cemetery, but the TINGLEY Cemetery! How cool is that?!?! Our family has it's own cemetery!! Albeit, it is in the middle of nowhere, as the address is listed as

"Junction of 114 and 915. This cemetery is in a field....located behind a clump of bushes. NOTE: this must have been a family farm, because these are the only known graves."

 [see the yellow thumbtack?] 

Here is a closer one

With this one you can see that it is at the end of the Bay of Fundy.

[Sorry for the poor quality Google Earth pictures, I'm still learning!]

Now here is where it gets even better. The woman who took Abigail's photo also photographed the whole cemetery. 'The  whole cemetery?" you say? "didn't that take a long time?" you say? Not really, because there are only 7 graves in this cemetery. Yup, 7 graves.  And look where it is!

See the clump of bushes and brambles? I have no idea how this woman found it, but she's a trooper!

This is how she got in....

And this is what she had to deal with to get the photos....

Can you see the headstone buried among the brambles??

So, because of one little photo I now have knowledge of the following family members:

Abigail - my 4th great grandmother
Daniel - my 4th great grandfather
John Agreen - [I really need to find out where the name Agreen comes from. It was used often in the family!] - my 3rd great grand Uncle
Sarah J - John Agreen's wife
Joseph A - John Agreen and Sarah's son
Margaret - Agreen and Sarah's daughter
Jemima - my 3rd great grand Aunt

I am so stoked! I can't wait to see what else I can find as the Tingley family was quite a presence in the area. There might be more small cemeteries to discover!!

And, if this was a family cemetery then odds are it was on or near the family farm. 

ROAD TRIP!!!

Google Earth....UGH............

I promised myself that this year I was going to really learn how to use Google Maps and Google Earth.  I'm usually a dive right in kind of person and then if I get stuck I'll try and find instructions, but told myself that I wasn't going to do that this time as there is so much to learn, and so much I want to do with these two applications.

Yeah, that didn't last long....................

One major thing I want to accomplish is to pinpoint all of my Brooklyn/Long Island ancestors addresses onto one map so anyone can see where everyone lived in relation to one another.

Made a list of about 8 addresses and figured that was a good start.

Typed in 169 Troutman St., Brooklyn as that was where my great great grandfather, Casper Roth, was living when he passed away. He passed away at home so if I could find this building I would be looking at where he passed.

Cool!

Good news is I was able to find the building, bad news is it was difficult to manipulate the image to my liking, but I finally got one.

Took me 10 seconds to find the building and 30 minutes to get the image I wanted!

 It was hard for me to get an image of the whole building.

 I kinda had to do an onside thing. 

I thought this view was kinda cool though. 

According to Casper's death certificate this was a tenement building. Neat to still be able to see all of the old tenement buildings from this view.

Bottom line is I'm happy I was able to get images. I looked up two other addresses and the buildings don't exist anymore. Hoping I can still put a pinpoint on the place where the houses used to be and someone said that you can overlay old maps over the current ones, but I'm saving that lesson for another time!!