I have been a fan of findagrave.com for close to ten years. Back in those early days of researching ancestral roots, I used it as a go-to tool that lushly added branches and leaves to what had once been a scrawny family tree. I remember the excitement of discovering links that carried me further and further back through my family’s history, and with each discovery, I was acutely aware that I was the beneficiary of the labor and love of the many people who had grafted their own families onto the site.

I, too, have become a contributor to findagrave.com. Yesterday, I started with the record of my brother’s life and death. He would have been sixty-three on the second. He wasn’t the only one I was thinking of, though. I was thinking of our nuclear family and added our parents, and I linked them to each other and to him. I also needed to link them to their biological families, and that meant I needed to add my father’s mother, Adrienne, to the site. I also completed the Keatley/Fleck family by adding Maggie, all alone all this time, to her family. There they all are: John, Jennie, Mollie, Emily, Frank, and Maggie. Together again. My grandmother, buried in Los Angeles, has been linked to her parents in Nebraska. All of these families have been reunited, and I imagine them as they might appear at a family picnic or sitting around a holiday meal. They’re gathered together as if for a family portrait. Everyone’s smiling.

The name of the site is findagrave.com, but it is an excellent resource for finding families. I look forward to many more years of contributing to its legacy.

I have been a fan of findagrave.com for close to ten years. Back in those early days of researching ancestral roots, I used it as a go-to tool that lushly added branches and leaves to what had once been a scrawny family tree. I remember the excitement of discovering links that carried me further and further back through my family’s history, and with each discovery, I was acutely aware that I was the beneficiary of the labor and love of the many people who had grafted their own families onto the site.

I, too, have become a contributor to findagrave.com. Yesterday, I started with the record of my brother’s life and death. He would have been sixty-three on the second. He wasn’t the only one I was thinking of, though. I was thinking of our nuclear family and added our parents, and I linked them to each other and to him. I also needed to link them to their biological families, and that meant I needed to add my father’s mother, Adrienne, to the site. I also completed the Keatley/Fleck family by adding Maggie, all alone all this time, to her family. There they all are: John, Jennie, Mollie, Emily, Frank, and Maggie. Together again. My grandmother, buried in Los Angeles, has been linked to her parents in Nebraska. All of these families have been reunited, and I imagine them as they might appear at a family picnic or sitting around a holiday meal. They’re gathered together as if for a family portrait. Everyone’s smiling.

The name of the site is findagrave.com, but it is an excellent resource for finding families. I look forward to many more years of contributing to its legacy.