Reading time: 5 minutes 

What’s with all the interest in cemeteries? Is cemetery tourism really a thing? Isn’t it bad mojo to tromp around where you don’t belong? And why are cemeteries so interesting as to inspire memes about hanging out with dead people and bumper stickers like, “I brake for graveyards?” Genealogists must have seriously healthy senses of humor about their research sources and habits. 

Not being a genealogist or historian, I’ve never quite understood the passion some people have for taking road trips to cemeteries where family are buried, never mind stopping at random ones you may come across.

I can think of three excuses, aka reasons, most of us visit cemeteries: a funeral ceremony, a history lesson, and morbid curiosity. 

A Place of Ceremony and Reflection 

My grandmother died when I was four. My memory of the day is hazy. I remember better the feeling of watching her casket exit the church and thinking how sad it was I wouldn’t see her again. Many people visit cemeteries to remember their loved ones and to take the space they need for conversation, prayer, and thought, honoring those whom they’ve lost.

The power of reflection can make folks do funny things, too. My mother once told me about visiting her parents’ gravesite with one of her siblings. Her normally rather stoic sibling proceeded to lie on the ground next to their parents and ask, “How do I look?” How can you not laugh, even if in a cemetery, about that?

A Place of History and Community 

I remember much better the solemn awe of walking on a guided tour through Arlington National Cemetery when I visited Washington D.C. on a school field trip. The sheer scale of it and all that it implied registered even with my 14-year-old self. I took a few pictures, now scratchy because the negatives sat for decades in bins. Take my advice: Digitize sooner than later, but first read about my experience!

On that visit, there was something unique that I captured – the tiny green temporary placard that marked the grave of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She had passed away only weeks before our trip, and her resting place beside President John F. Kennedy was a stop along our tour.

Simple Curiosity 

I visited a local graveyard once in high school: St. Patrick’s Church cemetery in Askeaton, Wisconsin. We were curious which were the oldest of the crumbling tombstones. Obviously, there was no choice but for the oldest to date to the 1850s when the church was founded by Irish immigrants, but we knew nothing of that history. We were teenagers!

Nowadays, a variety of genealogical, historical, and lineage societies, among others, help preserve and document cemeteries. Websites even exist specifically for collective recording of grave markers for others to use to unlock family mysteries and reconstruct community histories. (More on that below!)

Curious, even a little, about visiting a cemetery or graveyard? Wondering what use a graveyard visit may be to you? Read on!

Unlocking Family Mysteries and Continuing Family Storylines at Cemeteries 

For the curious, grave markers provide an abundance of opportunity to play detective. Whether measured in days or decades, that dash between birth year and death year represents a life lived.

The grave markers themselves convey a lot about a person:

• • • Where is the marker – What city? A public cemetery? A churchyard? What faith and denomination? Where within the space, relegated to a dark corner or a prime position? 

• • • What type of marker is it – The material, style, and size can provide clues about wealth and status and also culture. 

• • • What is on the marker – name, date of birth, professional titles, next of kin, cause of death … so much potential. And don't forget to look on the back if it's double sided! Sometimes you’ll find adornments, such as pictures and symbols to puzzle out, too. Our friends over at Legacy Tree Genealogists recently published an article about tombstone symbols. Check it out >

• • • Who is nearby – It may be that you discover relatives nearby that you had not yet discovered or are shocked are directly next to the person whose marker you’re interested in.  

One Arti Community member shared a fabulous historical tale with us about the hero who she found buried next to her grandfather. Click the image to listen in! 

Planning a Visit to a Cemetery

Cemetery tourism like my trip to Arlington National Cemetery aside, if you’re planning a personal visit, we’ve collected tips to make your visit more productive and pleasant.

“Google” first. 

All we mean is do your online research first so you can validate as much information as possible about the site and avoid wasting time on your journey or the day you visit. Popular starting points are BillionGraves (find in AppStore and Google Play), Find a Grave, which also offers a cemetery search (find in AppStore), and Cemetary Census, covering a handful of states.

Reach out to local genealogy and historical societies as well as public libraries, too. You’ll meet hobbyists and professionals alike who delight in helping break through family mysteries and brick walls. 

Call ahead. 

Please, call! You need to confirm the public access hours, details about any temporary or permanent off-limits areas, whether they permit rubbings, and if they have historical records on site you can browse, too. (Bring gloves for safe handling!) While you are at it, ask if they offer maps and guided tours. Some even have mobile apps. 

Bring a small kit. 

A soft paintbrush to gently brush dirt off a marker, a grass clipper to reveal hidden areas, and a blanket or pad to crouch down onto for more comfortable access should suffice. Plus rubbing supplies, if permitted.

Think about the time of day. 

Be mindful of lighting during the season and time of day you plan to visit. Age and material can make it challenging to read, never mind photograph, a marker even if you plan to use photo editing software later. An umbrella can help with glares, and of course protect you and your work from the elements. 

Be careful what you ask for. 

We all know history can be ugly. And if it’s family history you’re tracking down, deeply personal, too. Do you really want the answers? Are you prepared to learn Great Grandma did not get buried next to Great Grandpa, but someone else lies between them? What about discovering a child no one ever mentioned? A false or conflicting date of birth or death? And do others in your family want to know what you find? Tread carefully.

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© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Let's face it, when it comes to preserving family heritage on a daily basis, you have advantages if: 

• • • You have family you still speak with in your “home” country 
    • You are living among people from your native culture in your new country 
    • Someone, anyone, was the family keeper and held onto photos, videos, and heirlooms. 

Likewise, closely related is preserving your family genealogy. Here, too, certain advantages exist, such as if:

• • • You have a genealogist in your family, amateur or professional
    • You have retained the ability to speak and read your familial language even if you have emigrated 
    • You are from a country that has maintained the same political national boundaries for generations. 

As we admired the work and beauty of the Instagram feed at @Greek_Ancestry, we wondered what it’s like for people from a country like Greece, now living far from home, and trying to preserve bits of family history, heritage, and genealogy.

So, we asked!

Enjoy our discoveries in this fun cross-over event with Greek Ancestry and Artifcts advisor Georgia Mavrookas.  

Discovery 1. Family heritage is easier to carry forward when you make it a part of daily life. 

Saving your pieces of cultural heritage only for special occasions, or relying only on certain family storytellers, creates a lot of risk of those memories and moments slipping by.

Discovery 2. Political boundaries add wrinkles to research.

The area of Macedonia where Georgia’s family is from only became part of Greece in the 1910s and therefore fewer records are available and accessible for a genealogical deep dive. So noted! When seeking some early 'wins,' you might delay that research thread for another day.

We shifted gears and decided to check out Georgia’s husband’s side of the family instead.

Discovery 3. Original handwriting is fascinating.

It's more fun (and engaging) to look at cool original documents than typed up notes. And while we appreciate the advantages of creating altered images to help better see and/or translate faded script, never lose your original image. The coloration and distress you can observe in the script and the paper provide visual clues to our brain as to the age and conditions (humidity etc.) of the document that add to the mystique of it all. It also made us wonder how it is that penmanship has evolved so much over time. Really beautiful.

Discovery 4. Never hurts to have professional archivists & genealogists on speed dial.

If not for Greek Ancestry’s own archival collection and the Archives of the Holy Metropolis of Monemvasia & Sparta, whose records Gregory Kontos and his colleague Carol Kostakos Petranek of Greek Ancestry have digitized, we could not have traveled back to the late 1800s and early 1900s for original documentation with the relative ease and speed that we did. Instead, it would have been a costly endeavor to locate, access, and translate the records. And such diversity of records! This small research task benefited from Greek Ancestry’s collection of:

• • • Birth & baptismal records 
    • Marriage records 
    • Male register records 
    • Voter lists 

Now what?

Maybe you hail from Ireland, Paraguay, Croatia, or the Philippines. The point here is, whether you have a single burning question about one part of your family tree or history or you want to uncover everything there is:

1. 1. 1. Start on your own home front (try our Genealogy Gems checklist).
      2. Then explore any family tree(s) already created online (but watch out for errors and assumptions).
      3. Seek out professionals to help you along the way. They can bring so much history and experience to bear to guide you toward the right resources, even the right questions, to bring your family history to life!
      4. We'll see you back here along the way as you Artifct your discoveries so it can all live on with all the family lore and fun for generations to come!

We are so thankful to Gregory Kontos and his colleagues at @Greek_Ancestry for diving into Greek family history with Artifcts. We hope you all enjoyed and gained some inspiration for your own #FamilyHeritage research and conversations!

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© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Reading time: 3 minutes

In a humorous turning of the tables, after our story earlier this month, “What is a Family Keeper, and Why Should I Care?” we heard from a lot of family keepers who said, “So what do you recommend I do?”  We know how you're feeling. You don't want the memories and history lost; you don't want the people behind it all lost.

The answer is not to throw it all away because you don’t know what to do with it. Instead opt for the good – better – best solutions that make sense for your life, your family, and your collective goals. There's simply no one or right way.

We suggest starting by thinking through these four questions. 

1. 1. Do you want it? Any of it? 
   2. Do you know if anyone else in the family wants any of it? Have you actually asked? And, if so, and any of it is of historical value to you or your family, or perhaps has an amazing story, do they know that? It could change their feelings about the items. Check out “Storytellers, Beware!”
   3. Do you know if any of it has financial value? You can always choose "What's it worth?" for special items you've Artifcted and find out! And, if so, do you have immediate or pressing needs to sell it and invest the cash in other ways in your life? Do you know the provenance of the items and do you have that documented? Get tips from a master, Lark Mason, of Antiques Roadshow.
   4. Do you have an immediate need to get rid of some or all of it? Or are you more interested in slowly downsizing the collection and re-homing or selling pieces of it? Factor in costs to store it and the stress of more clutter than you (or those who you live with) want to put up with! 

Good – Better – Best 

Sometimes we’re up against the wall and we simply do the best we can. Other times, time is on our side, maybe our personal interests/hobbies, too, and we can take the time to give more care not just to the ‘stuff,’ but to the people who it once belonged to and the people of today and the future who may value it as well. Here’s our good-better-best solutions for family keepers: 

GOOD.

If you truly must get rid of it, take photos and share them, pronto! Then you have never lost anything completely. You’ll at least give your family and future generations a clue about the people of their own past. 

BETTER.

Take the photos, but then get on a group call with your extended family (or invite them over if local), tell them about what you have, what your intentions are to keep, sell, donate, or rehome. Have a real conversation. Share stories. Learn what interest, if any, your family has for specific items.  

Think broadly about “family.” You know the people who were “like a second mother” or the neighbor who was practically family? Don’t forget them in the sharing. 

BEST.

Artifct collections of items – e.g. all the silver, a stack of family bibles, a collection of statues, precious textiles … – and individual items for which you know ANY supporting details or stories or you simply love for any reason at all. If you don’t, all those photos you took and what you do know could get lost forever and will not help anyone to make good decisions about what’s next for it all. 

• • What person and/or side of the family did it come from? 
  • How did you come to have it? 
  • What is it? Sometimes it’s not obvious!
  • Any stories or related photos, documents, or video you have for it. 
  • Then, create an invite-only circle on Artifcts and invite all of your family members to join (for free!). Share your Artifcts with the circle so they can once again see all the family heirlooms. Invite them to share with the circle any they may have, too. Perhaps you’ll discover answers to each other’s family history puzzles or matches/pieces of a collection. You never know.

If you have additional good-better-approaches to share, reach out to us at Editor@Artifcts.com, and we'll help spread the word. You can also follow us on social media and join the conversation there, too!

Happy Artifcting!

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© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

We’ve all seen recent media articles of Baby Boomers confronting how their possessions should be handled after they’ve died. While the topics of “Swedish death cleaning” and “tidying up” are at the forefront, few articles discuss how “family history” should be passed on, too, so that it contributes to a family’s legacy. 

Even if you haven’t self-published a family history book, researched your roots for years, or even built a family tree, you’ve likely been a “steward” for at least some stories, heirlooms, and “stuff.” 

Family Keeper vs. Family Steward 

There is a big difference between a “keeper” of a family’s history and a “steward” of items which make up that history. Different mindsets seem to govern how each person approaches their possessions.  

A keeper often has a protective sense of ownership of items and sometimes becomes defensive when asked to share them. You may have encountered an aunt or an uncle who is sitting on family photo albums, boxes of heirlooms, etc. They tend to treat these items as “holy relics” and have a wealth of stories to go along with each item. And when you ask them how they plan to pass those items on to someone else in the family, often they evade the topic or are at a loss for words (and plans). 

A steward takes a very different approach, like someone tending a garden. Not only have they taken the time to preserve photos and heirlooms against damage and loss, but they’ve also documented the stories that bring those items to life in fixed form, not just in your memory. And after years of cultivating that family history “garden,” they are willing to pass the items to a younger generation of stewards who can continue to preserve the family’s legacy. 

Cultivating Your Family History Garden 

Going from keeper to steward can be challenging. Here are some tips and tricks on making that journey:

• Take a deep breath. If you are in possession of years of photos and other family items, start with small mini-projects to avoid becoming overwhelmed. This could mean simply sorting photos from slides and negatives. The next project would then be to decide what gets scanned and how to scan them. Then move on to the next project, and the next project, and so on. 
• Create a stewardship plan. If you find yourself jumping from project to project without making any progress, create a simple plan. Name the task, write a short description, enter a start date and desired end date. Add a notes section so that if you do jump to a new project without finishing the current one, you note where you left off. 

• Set priorities. Some stewards will “rank” their projects using a “1, 2, 3” method. A 1 signifies high priority projects such as interviewing the oldest relatives in the family. Use a 2 for medium priority projects such as documenting family stories and getting them in a fixed format. And finally, 3 is for low priority projects such as file renaming of scanned photos. 

• Leverage technology. Today many tools are available to assist with completing those family history projects, and it can be difficult to determine which tools are the best. Look for tools that help you document family stories and heirlooms—like Artifcts—and allow you to share that process and results with other family members.  

Artifcts can help you build a virtual “family history library” that is easy to pass on to others in the family. Consider using the QR code available for each Artifct you create and place it on or near an heirloom. The next time family members visit, sit back, and wait for the younger ones to scan the code with their mobile device to learn more about that heirloom. I also recommend printing the QR code for your entire Artifcts collection and including it with your important documents, like your will, deeds, and insurance policies. 

Conclusion

We all want to be good caretakers of our family history, but the mere idea of passing away can cause the work of stewardship to be delayed. Remember, you don’t have to go it alone. There are so many products, tools, and services that can help you go from keeper to steward.  

And there’s no reason why you can’t involve the younger generation NOW rather than waiting until it is too late. Create a series of family projects using Artifcts to document family heirlooms and to share their stories so those precious items finally have a voice and can be heard. 

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If family history and genealogy are on your mind, we have additional ARTIcles by Artifcts that might interest you!

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© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Reading time: 4 minutes

It’s family history month, and if you had to, could you tell your family history in five Artifcts or less? Sound impossible? We weren’t sure, so we decided to put it to the test. 

We reached out to one of our super Artifcters, @Grandmom and asked her, if she had to choose just five Artifcts to tell her story, could she? And if she could, what five would she choose?  

Thankfully, Grandmom was up for the challenge, although she did preface it by saying “Are you sure, just five? That’s all I get?” Yep, that all you get, at least for this ARTIcles story. “Well, good thing I have my timeline, at least I know where to start!”

Over to you @Grandmom to walk us through your family history, Artifct by Artifct. (The below excerpts are from an interview we did with Grandmom; the words in quotes are direct from the source!)

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GRANDMOM'S FAMILY HISTORY IN JUST 5 ARTIFCTS

Artifct #1: The Beginning

The Milking Chair My Grandfather Built

“Well, I guess I better start at the beginning, sometime in the 1860s. One of my oldest Artifcts is the milking chair my father’s father made his wife. They lived on a farm in southern Georgia. He built it for her because she was so short, that none of the regular chairs were a good fit. He built it right after the Civil War, I don’t think he used a single nail, only pegs. You don’t see that these days.” 

Artifct #2: Childhood in Rural Georgia

Mother's and Grandmother's Wash Boards

Next up? “Well, that would have to be Mother’s and Grandmother’s wash boards. I still have them after all my moves. We grew up in rural Georgia, and we didn’t have much back then, but Mother always made sure we were well dressed and presentable. I still remember her using these boards to do our laundry. I even used them when I was younger! It’s just what you did back then. I can’t imagine what the kids would do today if they had to use washboards. I can tell you; they probably wouldn’t do laundry!”   

Artifct #3: Traveling Far Far Away

Snake Tales

“The next one is one of my favorites—my snakeskin! I still remember [my friend] Shirley’s reaction, ‘I’m not going to do it Martha, you do it, you shoot the snakes!’” What makes the snakeskin so special? “It reminds me of all the crazy adventures and travels that Bobby [my husband] and I had when we were first married. I never could have imagined living overseas, or going on safari, or doing all the crazy things we used to do. I was telling [my granddaughter] about what we did back then, and she didn’t believe me at first. I had to show her the pictures AND the snakeskin. I was something back then!” For the record, we still think you’re something @Grandmom!   

Artifct #4: Family Time

Our Trusty Station Wagon

“I guess my next Artifct would be our old station wagon, and the photo of the three boys [our sons] in the back. [It's a private Artifct.] Back then we didn’t use seatbelts; I’m not even sure if we had them in the way back! But man, those boys loved that station wagon; Bobby and I did too! We took it everywhere—Brazil, Europe. I still remember I once got a speeding ticket in Rio while driving the station wagon. I had never gotten a ticket before in my life! So many memories. I can still hear Bobby yelling at the boys to quiet down back there or else. The boys remember too!”  

Artifct #5: Small Momentos of a Life Well Lived

International Spoon Collection

Sounds like travel and all your adventures overseas are a big part of your family history and story @Grandmom? “It was our life back then. We didn’t think twice about it when we were doing it, but it was what our family did. It’s what our boys remember. Living overseas teaches you so much. So, I guess my last Artifct would have to be my spoon collection.

I have one from every place I’ve ever lived or visited! I have at least two hundred! The one spoon I didn’t have until recently was Monrovia. I couldn’t find one when we were living there, but then Joy [my daughter-in-law] found one on Ebay and now my collection is complete! It’s amazing to think that had life been different, we could have stayed in Georgia. I know my boys are thankful we did not do that.” 

And there you have it! Five Artifcts; five stories; five memories of a life well lived and well-traveled. If you had to choose, what five objects would you Artifct to tell your story? You can write to us at editor@artifcts.com and let us know, we’d love to hear from you! 

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A very special thank you to @Grandmom for sharing her Artifcts and story with us. For those of you curious about this amazing woman, she is in her 80s, has three grown sons, 10 mostly-grown grandchildren, and has lived in six countries and traveled to well over 50. She was married to the “love of her life” for over 40 years and is proud to be her family’s keeper. Why does she Artifct? “To tell the histories and stories behind all my stuff. If I don’t the boys will have no way of knowing what is what.”

© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Have you heard of a “family keeper?” We meet so many through Artifcts that we discuss them quite often and with deep fondness. But it’s only recently that we discovered there’s more than one definition for a family keeper, and the definition you know may influence how you interact with the keeper in your family, too. 

In Artifcts parlance, a family keeper is a positive, warm concept. A person becomes the family keeper by default or by choice. By default are those who gain keeper status through (a) accident of proximity—living closest to a family member with items they wanted to pass down and the stuff had to go somewhere—or (b) by legal right as the heir. In contrast, by choice are the keepers who are sentimental, family historians or genealogists, or perhaps simply collectors. 

How do you recognize a family keeper? They are your family members who save the old photos and heirlooms, write down the stories, and create (or suggest) the family cookbooks and scrapbooks. Who is the family keeper in your family? (Maybe thank them with a gift membership to Artifcts.) 

Now, a family keeper from the viewpoint of genealogists can be a bit different. As it turns out, many professional genealogists view family keepers as more like overly protective stewards who attempt to control the fate of the family’s heirlooms, historical research, and the like.  

Professional genealogist Thomas MacEntee, that "Genealogy Technology Guy" and founder of Genealogy Bargains, explains it best this way: “[Family keepers] think they ‘own’ their ancestors and don't tend to work well in collaborative environments such as FamilySearch where anyone can modify a family tree.” 

So why again should you care about family keepers? 

No matter how one defines a family keeper, as a group, keeprs are under a lot of pressure, and we guarantee you that they feel it. When we ask folks, “Got stuff?” family keepers are quick to say, “Oh, yes, more than you can imagine.” And that’s typically followed with something like, “And I don’t know where it will go next! I don’t know who cares. I can’t get them to listen.” 

Listening in this increasingly digital age is really challenging. It’s partly what inspired our piece “Storytellers, Beware.” Digital life complicates matters in a variety of ways, but topping our list are these two key points:

1. We are printing out fewer documents, photos, newspaper articles and the like.  

Remember what it was like to sit and chat through someone’s photos from a recent trip? Or to share the story behind a collection of family photos that caught your eye? That’s how family stories lived on: access and repetition.  

2. We consume information differently than in the past.

Why do the algorithms that make and break “influencers” thrive on video content? The youngest generations are subsisting on sound bites, DIGITAL sound bites, that they can access on a daily basis when and where they please. That simply is not a photobook, scrapbook, or any trove of physical documents or photos. It’s just not. Family keepers have to adapt and meet their loved ones where they at … in the digital universe.

If family keepers are left hanging, the likelihood that family stories and history and the family heirlooms will disappear forever increases dramatically. And then you’ll have to wait for the next family historian to come along and do their best to recreate it all, all being the stories and maybe even the genealogy. 

The heirlooms? They’ll be long gone. And with them could be a surprising amount of generational wealth, too. One Arti Community member told co-founder Ellen Goodwin recently that growing up he pushed his parents constantly to declutter. He went so far as to haul off items that in his view were unused, uncared for, and or broken beyond reasonable repair. One day he got rid of a wobbly table that his father refused to fix. As it turns out, repairing an antique table from a famous designer is costly and hard to come by. So his frustration wiped out not just the family history behind the table, but several thousand dollars from his one-day inheritance. Ouch! 

Now that you know, what will you do next?

If you're a family keeper, Artifct to preserve and share all those stories and all those items. Give family members the opportunity to surprise you with both what they may know and what interest they may have in the items for “someday” when you may not want to hold onto them anymore. Or maybe they can borrow them!

If you know a keeper, introduce them to Artifcts to ensure the family history lives on. Don't want to pay for yet another app? At the bare minimum use your five free Artifcts to tell your family story using a few choice photos, heirlooms, snippets of family videos, … the possibilities are endless.

Happy family history month. Happy Artifcting!

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Eager for more? You might also enjoy:

Additional ARTIcles related to Genealogy & Family History

Artifcts Genealogy Gems Checklist

© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.