The ancestors of both my mother and father have lived in Berks county for centuries. Many generations of my father (Baer) are buried in St Peter's (Becker) Church cemetery in Molltown, near Fleetwood, PA. Many generations of my mother (Schaeffer) are buried in several cemeteries in the Tulpehocken area of western Berks County, PA, especially near the village of New Schaefferstown, PA, which is served by the Bernville Post Office. One of my goals has been to tie my mother's Schaeffer clan with the Peter Shaver clan that settled the land on which I live, back in 1772.

Per Ancestry.com, I am a related to the Palatinate Germans who emigrated from New York state and settled in western Berks County, Pennsylvania in the early 1700s; so, this should be possible.

I pay attention to details. When I find errors in Find-A-Grave, I submit suggestions for change, simultaneously submitting reasons for my logic to the managers. In almost every case, my suggested changes are accepted. I think we all want to make this site as accurate as possible.

I must admit, I'm more a taker than a giver regarding Find-A-Grave; although I am inclined to supplement pictures of grave stones with images of death certificates.

In many cases, FAG provides the initial data to add members to my Ancestry.com family tree. When I first started this genealogy obsession several decades ago, it required many visits to court houses and historical society headquarters. No so, today.

I'm fortunate that Berks County, Pennsylvania, has done a good job, with all real estate transactions digitized, indexed, and easily searchable; probated wills; tax maps, marriage applications, too. I kind-of thank the many contributors of Family Search. Some serious deductive logic must be used to search and verify their data, but I like the way FamilySearch.com rates the data, and present alternative means of verification. For me, census data after 1850 is usually one of my first go-to places ; and, I'm always happy to see digitized documents on Ancestry.

Soapbox time:

Find-A-Grave is a site of SHARED data. It confuses me when I see "managers" complaining about folks "stealing" their work. If people post photos, copyrighted or not, the information is available to all. If we use it in our own genealogical work, we try to give credit to the contributor, but really, the reference is to the cited memorial. That being said, too often, obituaries and other notes posted in the memorials have no reference, making it difficult to truly verify.

Thanks to all for continuing to build this wonderful site!