* Look up missing burials on findagrave?

[kimgroothuis]

Does anyone know if there is a plug in to identifying missing 'burial' facts in a project and look them up on findagrave.com? FAG seems to be updated quite often, but as the entries are user-submitted I can't see a way of knowing what new records have been added (unlike, for example, Ancestry or FMP which will tell you which sets of new records have been added).

[tatewise]

The Lookup Missing BMD Records plugin goes some way in that direction but does not include FAG.
That is something I could look at the next time the plugin is updated, which is somewhat overdue.

[kimgroothuis]

Many thanks, Mike. That would be really useful.

[tatewise]

Try the attached prototype Lookup Missing BMD Records plugin Version 2.6.1 Date 26 Jan 2023.

Set Choose a set of BMD Records to review to any Death/Burial Records option and enable Choose FindAGrave lookup website.
Then the lookup web page includes a link to findagrave.com that you can investigate.

Bear in mind that the plugin only lists Individuals with missing Death/Burial details. i.e. No explicit Date or no Citation.
So if a Death or Burial or Cremation event has a full Date and a Citation then that person will not be listed.
If it is important that you still want the FindAGrave option even in those cases then it may be possible to modify the plugin.

[kimgroothuis]

Many thanks, Mike, I will do that today and let you know.

[kimgroothuis]

I tried this out on a few and it seemd to be working as expected. I didn't find any new ones on findagrave, but that's because they weren't there, and it did list entries which were perfectly possible but turned out not to be the right ones.

It did also return a 'missing' result for someone who did have an exact burial date (Matthew Lawson, buried 12 Feb 1887, so I had shown the date of death as Feb 1887, and no citation).

For me personally, if I already have a burial date I would not need the FAG results to be returned (although if they are included that's no problem), but if I had an exact death date (for example because I had it from the certificate, or a newspaper, or probate etc) and a null burial event I would want to have the FAG results.

Thanks again.

[tatewise]

This is the way the plugin currently works:

If there is a Death event with no Citation it adds person to 'missing' list and does not investigate Burial or Cremation events.
This is what you are seeing.

If the Death event has a Citation and an inexact Date then it checks if that same Citation exists against a Burial or Cremation event with an exact Date. If so then that person is not added to 'missing' list. Otherwise, they are added to 'missing' list.

If there is no Death event, only then is the Burial event checked and if it has no Citation or an inexact Date then the person is added to the 'missing' list.

So it would need to change to detect the case of a Death event with Citation and exact Date but no Burial event details to add the person to the 'missing' list but just for the WAG URL search.

[kimgroothuis]

Thanks Mike.

I don't use citations. (I probably should, but I don't.) I've no idea how common that is among users. If nearly everybody uses them then clearly I'm the one who needs to fall into line!

For me personally, the 'if there is no Death event' part would work fine, I think. If I have a Burial or Cremation (even if it is not an exact date) I would always add a Death event showing the month or 'abt', so if the plugin adds to the 'missing list' records with no Death event and no citation for a Burial or Cremation event it will pick up all the 'no Death event' ones that I need it to.

All of my records that have Death events would fall into the category of 'Death event with no citation' so the record would be added to the missing list, and (as I understand it) the plugin would not investigate Burial or Cremation. To work for me, it would need to add all records that have a Death event but no Burial or Cremation event to the 'missing' list, whether they have a citation or not. But if I'm in a minority in not using citations, the logic clearly shouldn't be based on what I do.

Hope that makes sense.

[tatewise]

This discussion could go off-topic if we start discussing citations too much but I am a little mystified.
I believe the majority of FH users do use source citations.

You say you don't use citations. So how do you record the evidence that your recorded fact details are correct?
The primary purpose of this Lookup Missing BMD Records plugin is to find records to use as citations to prove your data.

Earlier, you said you might have an "exact death date (for example because I had it from the certificate, or a newspaper, or probate etc)". Where do you record such certificate, newspaper, probate, etc, evidence, so in the future you know where that Death information came from?

Having discovered a FindAGrave memorial how do you record that in FH?

[kimgroothuis]

I migrated to FH from a programme that didn't have citations, so if i had started using them I would have had a lot of backfilling to do. I use detailed notes to record my sources and always refer to them in the same way, and in chronological order, so I have managed so far to identify gaps by running queries (such as 'exclude if note contains findagrave'). It might not be very elegant but it has served me well so far.

You may very well be right that we could go off topic, but I would be interested to know about citation usage so I would be happy to post a separate thread. Would that be OK?

[tatewise]

Yes, start a new thread because citations are fundamentally better than notes.

[kimgroothuis]

Will do.

[tatewise]

The Lookup Missing BMD Records plugin Version 2.7 Date 23 Feb 2023 is now in the Plugin Store.

All prototype plugin attachments will shortly be deleted.

[David2416]

While I have found some useful information on Find A Grave, I word of caution: I am finding that there are some bulk uploaders whose information I find lacks meaningful sources. The attached are, without naming names are examples - the volumes I think are cause for concern (just my opinion though).

Screenshot 2023-02-23 172227.jpg

Screenshot 2023-02-23 172205.jpg

[LornaCraig]

David, see the discussions in this recent topic for similar comments Kent Family History Society (KFHS) copyright breach! (21531)

[David2416]

Thanks, I'd forgotten I'd seen it here.