Find a Grave

Find a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.

History
According to the founder, Salt Lake City resident Jim Tipton, the website was developed in 1998 to address the lack of any existing site that catered to his hobby of visiting the graves of celebrities. After some time, an online forum was created on the site. As of November 30, 2011 the site states that it hosts over 72 million records.

Content and features
The website contains listings of cemeteries and graves from all around the world. American cemeteries are organized by state and county, and many cemetery records contain Google Maps (with GPS coordinates supplied by contributors) and photographs of the cemeteries. Individual grave records contain some or all of the following data fields: dates and places of birth and death, biographical information, cemetery and plot information, photographs (grave marker, the individual, etc.), and contributor information.

Interment listings are provided by individuals or genealogical societies, and listings with tombstone photographs are considered reliable. Major institutional contributors to Find A Grave include the US Veterans Department, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and American Battle Monuments Commission, and the International Wargraves Photography Project.

Contributors must register as members to submit listings, which are called memorials on the website. Upon submitting a listing, that member becomes the manager of the listing, but may transfer management. Only the current manager of a listing may edit the listing, although members and non-members may send correction requests regarding listings. Members and non-members can submit notations, which consist of images or pictures or flowers, flags, religious symbols, etc., which are posted on the individual listings. Managers of listings may post links to other listings of spouses and parents for genealogical purposes. Members may also request photos of graves which then other members can fulfill.