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Local History in the Classroom: Connecting Community & Curriculum

A brief guide to linking local history & community heritage to curriculum topics.,focusing on the Mid-Hudson area of New York State, by S. Gardner 2023

USING FINDAGRAVE.COM

Cemetery records link not only to individual life stories, but also to Global history through the lives of veterans.  

Findagrave is a comprehensive database of cemetery stones that is searchable to find some of your community's famous people, veterans, immigrants, etc. whose lives key to the wider world.  Also valuable for finding those under-represented in the written record: women, immigrants, persons of color, etc.

FINDAGRAVE ACTIVITIES

  1. If you do not have a local cemetery in mind, enter your zip code or town name in "Location."  If it doesn't find your town, use the name of one of the hamlets or villages in your town.  Sometimes the Findagrave volunteers do not include the Town in their listings.
  2. You will likely get a huge list of gravesites.  Click "refine search" and choose one or two of the facet boxes to narrow it-- i.e. "famous" and "veterans."  If you still get no hits, uncheck those boxes and check "flowers"-- these are graves that someone has likely entered more information into the listing.
  3. You can then Google that name "in quotation marks" to search it as a phrase to see if there is more information, or do a phrase search for the name in HathiTrust.org (millions of digitized books), and add location name if necessary, to find them in history books.
  4. You can also click on the cemetery name in a hit list to see all the burial that have been recorded there.
    1. Are there women listed?
    2. Are there persons that based on name or other information, may be persons of color? (example: for Civil War, these are graves that have U.S.C.T. markers or notes-- U. S. Colored Troops).
    3. Are there persons whose birthplace is another country?  What is their story?
  5. Back-door keyword search:  You can search keywords in the listings by using a "site search":
    • type into the search bar of Google:  site:findagrave.com (space) keywords.  
      • Example:  site:findagrave.com warwick "new york" revolutionary
      • Example: site:findagrave.com warwick "new york" "world war"
    • Then you can further research one of the veterans' service in free sources such as the National Archives Catalog, U. S. Census Records on Familysearch.org (requires you to create account, but it is a free resource).
  6. Hidden History Activity:
    • Where are the graves of African enslaved?
    • Where are the graves of Native Americans?