A Random Act of Genealogical Kindness
Today, I had the opportunity to do a favor for a fellow genealogist. Last fall, I met a gentleman at a conference I was speaking at in Connecticut. He asked me if I would be willing to look up a tombstone in a cemetery near where I live. I agreed. We had a bad winter so I did not get a chance to visit this cemetery until today. The cemetery is no longer an active one and sadly many of the stones are faded, cracked, damaged, etc. and I wasn’t optimistic about locating the particular stone. However, as luck would have it, a bit of overgrowth kept the stone from weathering from the elements. I had to brush off a good bit of dirt, but was able to read the stone. I took some digital photographs and sent them to my fellow genealogist.
Grave stone for Prince Duplex. died 1825
In addition, thanks to the Internet, I was able to use the US GenWeb to find out some additional details about the graves in this particular cemetery.
It felt good to help someone else obtain a key piece of information about his ancestor. If you would like to offer your help to another family history researcher, check out the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Web site to connect with someone to assist.
What a terrific old tombstone! And how kind of you to find, clean and photograph it! It would be great to add it to Find A Grave, if there isn’t a memorial page for Prince there already.
Recently, our family association attempted to locate and photograph about 200 graves from the late 1800s and early 1900s that were spread all around the country. Thanks to volunteers like yourself (and especially from findagrave.com), we have had tremendous success. I’ve been amazed at how willing other genealogists (complete strangers!) are to help! Thank you!