Thanks for doing this. It might be just a name on a headstone to many people, but I bet to somebody/somewhere it is a real touchstone to the past. Very touching some of the ones you captured. They almost weave a family quilt with their info.

Thanks :)

Thanks, Linda. I started doing this after finding photos of two of my great-great-grandparents online. I was so grateful to the anonymous person in England who had taken the time to do that, and decided to do what I could here.

I know several others at the KT started taking gravestone pictures at one point. Hoping to hear from them....

This is fascinating! Thanks so much for sharing.

My paternal grandparents are buried in Texas, and their gravestones have their photo on them. I think that's a nice touch. My grandfather died at 48; my grandmother was 72, so it looks as though my grandfather was married to a much older woman (until you look at the dates)!

My grandfather made marble and granite tombstones for a living--he owned his own company in Dallas. During the Depression, people often didn't have the money to pay him, so he took whatever was offered in exchange for the tombstone...anything from food to land.

I find old gravestones very interesting and like to walk around old cemeteries. Do you just take photos of tombstones that someone is looking for? Have you ever taken photos of all the stones in a small cemetery?

I'm enjoying looking at all your photos and not just the gravestone ones, hope that's okay. :) Thanks for sharing!

All my Flickr pictures are public, Lydia. Glad you're enjoying them!

I usually go to a cemetery carrying a list of photo requests. If it's a small cemetery, I hope to find the requested gravestone on my own. I did well this time, but this doesn't usually happen. It helps to contact the cemetery manager. Quite often I suspect a very old stone has fallen over, or sunk, or become so smooth with age that the text is unreadable.

So while I'm there, I wander around and take pictures of old gravestones at random. Then when I put them on my monitor I look to see if FindAGrave needs them or not. If the deceased person is not listed on FindAGrave for that cemetery, I create a memorial and add the photo. If a memorial is already on the website, but needs a photo, I add mine. If a memorial exists with a photo, I don't do anything with mine.

Yes, I can think of two, possibly three, small cemeteries where I photographed every stone in the place.

This time I found several stones that disagree with the information already posted for those persons on FindAGrave (different dates, different spellings). I'll contact the people who manage those memorials and point these things out to them.

Here's a link to some beautiful shots of cemeteries in and around NYC, by one of my favorite photographers, Dez Santana.

I've never seen graves as close together as they are at Mt. Zion Cemetery, pictured here.

Dez Santana's cemetery photos

I mostly lurk and have only been registered with Find a grave for a few months. I did so after finding my 2nd great grandparents grave in Colorado on their site.I'm in Florida and so far I have filled 7 requests so I have a long way to go to catch up to you. They have all been for the same cemetery and I was about to ask you tips on how not to bother the "look up" guy. Then I thought "cookies"! That seemed to do the trick because he had no problem helping me with 4 look-ups.
I didn't know we could create memorials. I will have to look into that.

I noticed one of your photos was of a young man's grave from the Civil War. He was lucky to have been identified and brought home for burial.
Did you get to see the PBS special on Death and the Civil War? Fascinating.