Cemetery Projects for Church Groups
Planning cemetery projects for church groups is easy with BillionGraves. BillionGraves is the world’s largest GPS-linked cemetery data resource. As volunteers take photos with the BillionGraves app, each gravestone is automatically marked with a GPS location. The data is then transcribed by volunteers, plotted on…
Winged Skull Gravestone Symbols
Winged skull gravestone symbols were common in 18th-century cemeteries. While they may look strange to us today – even morbid or creepy – they held important meaning for our ancestors. Death was a frequent visitor to households in the 1700s. In many areas, it was…
8 Outstanding Eagle Scouts Serving in Cemeteries
There are some outstanding Eagle Scouts serving in cemeteries, taking hundreds of thousands of gravestone photographs to help others find their ancestors and expand their family trees. We would like to give a shout-out to a few of them. The rank of Eagle is Boy Scouting’s…
Occupational Gravestones are Family History Clues
Occupational gravestones can help you discover the story of your ancestor’s life. It’s the dash between the dates! As family historians, most of us look for gravestones to find birth and death dates to add to our family trees. What a pleasant surprise when we…
Catholic Cemetery Symbols
Is your halo slipping or shining? Do you know why the rosary was invented? What does a sideways horizontal cross mean? This blog post will help you understand Catholic cemetery symbols. And after that, your trips to the cemetery will never be the same! My…
Rescuing Abandoned Cemeteries
Warning: rescuing abandoned cemeteries can be addictive. Barry Russell, a retired engineer for Verizon and current BillionGraves volunteer, was born and raised on Long Island, New York. And although he has had a life-long love for graveyards, Russell never suspected he would spend his retirement…
