Check out our many Immigrant Virtual Cemeteries, organized by today's country of birth, mostly European immigrants to North America, some also to Australia..... Find your country of interest, then search "key word" names or places to find other immigrants from your ancestral village, county, etc. Remember, place of birth may not necessarily be the same as person's ethnicity.

-----DO NOT CONFUSE Slovakia with Slovenia with Slavonia - 3 different places !!!

-----DO NOT CONFUSE Yugoslavia (country) with Yugosica, Mexico (village) with Oficina Yugoslavia, Chile (village) !!!

Are you searching for ancestors from Central and Eastern Europe?

Watch "How Did The Austro-Hungarian Empire Actually Work" (9.5 min) to understand the political influences that drove your ancestors to emigrate before World War 1,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTkgFak2gi4

and the four-part "The Collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Almost Anschluss" if they emigrated after World War I.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSQkFNO6H_0

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(1) PLACE OF BIRTH = AUSTRIA or HUNGARY or ITALY or GERMANY or RUSSIA or TURKEY etc - any of the pre-World War I European Empires

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HISTORY AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT IS CRUCIAL IN GENEALOGY!

One of us has extensive interest in the successor countries to the Austro-Hungarian Empire which existed until November, 1918 (just look at our virtual cemeteries).

Most of the memorials we manage have some connection back to Imperial Austria, or are our family, or both.

PLEASE DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY SUBMIT "AUSTRIA" OR "HUNGARY" AS A PLACE OF BIRTH BEFORE 1945 for European emigrants unless you've confirmed the correct birth village, and especially so if the name does not sound Germanic. Over time we are reviewing memorials we manage from European Empires to identify the proper connection back to Imperial Austria-Hungary.

Someone born before 1919 might have "Austria" or "Hungary" as their place of birth written on their American death certificate, but in most cases, citing "Austria" or "Hungary" as their country of birth would be INCORRECT for F-a-G purposes which uses modern day geography. To complicate things even more, some Imperial Austro-Hungarian lands were administratively part of the Austrian part of the Imperial Crown, while others were administered by the Hungarian part of the Crown, and Bosnia-Herzegovina was administered by both. So, after its disintegration, emigrants from Austria-Hungary quite often claimed, later on, their original "Crown Land" as their "home" country, that is, they claimed "Austria" or "Hungary," instead of, for example, "Yugoslavia" or "Slovakia." This is confusing since Austria and Hungary both exist today, but are definitely NOT the countries in which that 19th-century person was born.

For example, someone born in 1907 in "Austria" or "Hungary," could today list their place of birth anywhere between modern day Poland to the north, modern Ukraine and Romania to the east, modern Italy to the west, and modern Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to the south and every modern country in-between. Before sending an edit listing "Austria" or "Hungary" as someone's pre-1920 birth country, please confirm the correct birth village to properly identify the modern country.

Similarly, a country using some form of the word "Yugoslavia" only existed from 1929 - 1991, and that country's now-dissolved borders only go back to December 1918 with the fall of Imperial Austria-Hungary. Someone born or died outside these dates COULD NOT have been born/died in Yugoslavia, even if the document you are viewing lists it; that document was written during the years that Yugoslavia existed, and would not accurately reflect the country in which the event occurred.

Another example, a U.S. marriage certificate written in 1930 might list a 1907 place of birth as "Yugoslavia," or "Italy" but that person was actually born in Austria-Hungary and never heard of Yugoslavia or never considered north-eastern Italy as their birthplace until the 1930s. Today that place from Austria, Hungary or Italy could easily be Slovenia or another country.

As countries' boundaries might change in the future, listing the proper village here will ensure the place of birth will always be accurate on F-a-G....Think of today's war between Russia and Ukraine....will those borders eventually change in the end?....much as the borders of the land regions formerly at some point in "Yugoslavia" kept changing over the last century from 1918 to at least 2007 and who knows, may yet change again. Ditto with today's "Poland" or "Russia" and many other countries formerly in an Empire.

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(2) GPS coordinates: YES PLEASE!

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Please do not decline edits which supply geocoordinates! Have you ever clicked on the "Show Map" link of a memorial page? It's also called "Add To Map" if no geographic coordinates are uploaded yet. Viewing the online location of the grave in the cemetery helps relatives (especially elderly or handicapped ) decide where to park, which walking route is best, which other burials of the same name might potentially be relatives, etc.

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(3) Memorials As Sourcing For Family Trees

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When adding individuals to your family tree, consider:

In memorials with a headstone photo, for the most part, the only certain 'primary source' section of such memorials are the headstone photos, especially if the photo has embedded GPS coordinates. More rarely, a photo may document a former burial site if the remains have moved, or an intended burial site if the individual whose name was engraved on the stone pre-death ultimately moved homes, remarried someone else after being left as the surviving spouse, or otherwise changed their minds about their burial site for any reason after paying for the engraved headstone in advance.

Note that all memorials located in cemeteries but without a headstone photos may or may not be accurate, especially if the memorial was created by a contributor relying on (a) historical death certificates, or (b) a modern obituary involving cremains which will be eventually laid to rest together with a still-surviving spouse. Obituaries stating where remains will ultimately rest often are not ultimately followed, or especially in the case of cremains, are followed years or even decades later.

In memorials without a headstone photo, the fact of the burial itself on F-a-G should be considered a secondary source only if the primary source was that cemetery's original legal records documenting the burial.

Memorials made based on obituaries or even death certificates should be treated as investigative leads only, and not sourcing at any level for your accurate family tree.