I first discovered Find A Grave back the 90's when it only listed celebrities graves.

We were transplanted midwesterners living in southern California back then.

I would come here, gather all pertinent info needed to find our favorite celebrities final resting place, later my family and I would take off on a day trip to Hollywood, Beverly Hills etc looking for our favorites graves like Lucy, Ricky or Marilyn!

Our naïveté led us to believe we were the only ones doing this, expecting to drive up park and just get out …. But Noooooo

Turned out we were not the only ones looking for deceased celebrity graves! (We didn't think of that!). Parking tough at times.

Alas, we then moved on to our self driven car tours of celebrity "Homes"

Anyway. … Find A Grave has come a Long way since those days!

Evolving and becoming an important source for researching family history , genealogy.

Another tool in the box for the search for ancestors and building my family trees.

And also, once in awhile, an extra joy and a satisfaction for me,

are the times I stumble across information about a random person, (not connected to mine) while in search for my own. Either on this website, or while at a cemetery.

I will stop, take a moment, offer to add the info I noticed to link a random stranger to their own, at times right next to each other!

My hopes are the little bit of added detail I randomly noticed, will help someone else in finding their own elusive family member.

It's just connecting the dots, even when they're not my own dots …