Find a Grave is a lead, not a record: how to use it properly

What it is Find a Grave is a volunteer-built index of burials and memorials. Ancestry has owned it since 2013. It is enormously useful, and it is also the source of a large share of the wrong dates in online trees. What can be wrong - Dates are typed by volunteers, often from a weathered stone, an obituary, or another tree. - Family links between memorials are added by users and are not checked against records. - Duplicate memorials exist for the same person. - A memorial can exist for someone buried elsewhere, or whose grave is unmarked. How to use it properly - If the memorial has a photo of the stone, read the stone yourself. The photo is the evidence. The transcription is someone's reading of it. - Treat a headstone as derivative: it was usually carved after death, sometimes decades later, by someone recalling the dates. - Confirm the death against a record created at the time: a death certificate (many states' are indexed on https://www.familysearch.org), a funeral-home record, the cemetery's own interment register, or a newspaper obituary (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov for pre-1964 papers). - Cite it as what it is: "Find a Grave memorial no. ____, created by ____, accessed (date)." The better source Call or write the cemetery office. Interment registers and lot cards often record the informant, the funeral home, the cause of death and the lot owner, none of which is on the stone.