WHAT'S NEW?

SITE OF THE WEEK

It's a morbid concept, but a handy web site. If you're looking for famous dead people, this is the place. Ideal for researchers, genealogists, writers, historians -- and people who love creepy things.

VISIT the FIND-A-GRAVE web site

VISIT our Seacoast Cemetery web section
VISIT the GRAVE SITE

Last week, while writing about endangered local cemeteries for this newspaper, I visited an old friend. Aptly named, Find-a-Grave is an online database that tracks celebrity tombstones. I've used it often over the years to confirm the burial locations of historic figures. Each time I go back, the site gets better.

Currently over 20,000 famous figures are listed with photos of their grave stones. Because this is a database, visitors can search for the dead by name, by burial location, by birth and death dates, even by the person's "claim to fame." Often there are short biographies or celebrity photos too, most turned in by registered members, a technique used by many sites to control the quality of data. Members who submit a lot of data and photos, get to put up their own personal pages. At least one Find-a-Grave member has submitted over a thousand entries. Hey, whatever turns you on.

Even though members are screened, their submissions are not posted directly, but approved by the webmaster. Unlike a lot of specialty databases, submissions to Find-a-Grave seems to appear online quickly. Senator Paul David Wellstone and actor Richard Harris were listed within hours after their deaths recently. The database lists the name of the cemetery. In the case of Harris, who was cremated, the database notes that his ashes were scattered at his home in the Bahamas.

Fame is a pretty fuzzy concept. Not everyone submitted makes the cut. This week the most-clicked on names (besides the two above) include Doors singer Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Dorothy Stratton, Marilyn Monroe and former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Michelle Parma. Amazingly, Fountain of Youth explorer Ponce de Leon (1450 - 1521) rated number three in the Top 10. Now that's celebrity staying power.

The best databases know how to recycle info to keep readers coming back. A clever new Find-a-Grave feature allows visitors to attend "posthumous reunions". Eleven members of the cast of the TV show "Bewitched", for example, have passed on. One click assembles them all -- including Paul Lynde, Dick York, Elizabeth Montgomery, Agnes Morehead, Dick Sargeant -- and a picture of each tomb. Eerie. You can do the same for the six ex-cast members of "Bonanza", 25 Watergate celebrities, 63 victims of the Titanic, nine deceased Stooges, 12 Kennedys, 59 signers of the Declaration -- and on and on.

THE WEB SITE MAKERS

The webmaster's name is Jim Tipton. That's all I could figure out from the web site. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, home of the most amazing dead database of all -- FamilySearch.org -- the web site of the Mormon Church. Maybe there's no connection. That site is so popular with genealogists and family-tree enthusiasts, that it got knocked offline within minutes of its launch a couple of years ago by the sheer volume of reader traffic. Genealogy online is hot; I could write a weekly column just keeping you folks appraised of web sites popping up in that field.

Members of the Church of Latter Day Saints do genealogical work as a service to deceased family members. According to FamilySearch.org, "When we die, our eternal spirits go to a spirit world, where we continue to learn while we await the Resurrection and Final Judgment." Church members make covenants, on behalf of their ancestors, by collecting genealogical information, and making that data available. For historians, it’s a heavenly service too.

A new feature of Find-a-Grave now allows readers to search the grave records of 3.8 million people who didn't make the celebrity cut. Readers can add burial data, photos and "virtual flowers" with upbeat messages. Negative messages are screened out.

As always, funding is the big problem for independents. The bigger the site grows and the more visitors it attracts, the more it costs the owner to host. Find-a-Grave has one of the coolest logos on the Web, a tomb engraved with a large question mark. Readers can buy logo T-shirts and the usual array of items. Unfortunately, that income doesn't pay the bills, and the site now employs those large annoying advertising consoles that have to be constantly clicked away. Too bad. If every regular user sent in $10 a year, the problem would likely be solved. But so far, this incredible site remains free to everyone.

THE UP SHOT

The great thing about a virtual cemetery is that the data, like the people it tracks, tend to stay put. People, as the old joke goes, are dying to get listed here. The longer the site manages to stay alive, the more powerful it becomes as a search engine. Incorrect data sometimes has to be repaired, but nothing has to be deleted.

As the web evolves, more and more death and burial information is available. In addition to millions of records in FamilySearch.com, genealogists and churches and towns and volunteers are pouring data online. Lane Memorial Library in Hampton, for example, allows readers to locate grave records of all its key early cemeteries. Genealogy sites like Ancestry.com and cemetery record sites like Interment.net act as clearing houses for this data worldwide. With readers checking in to offer corrections, web listings are becoming more accurate, in some cases, than the cemetery records themselves.

And there is no end to specialty grave web sites. In one of them, Dead Presidents, a character named Manus Hand has gone around the country photographing himself standing in front of the graves of every American president. Um, okay. Meanwhile, the sophisticated PoliticalGraveyard.com includes a database of every known dead politician. A new site called A Very Grave Matter (www.gravematter.com) is an evolving pictorial guide to Colonial cemeteries and tombstones in this area.

What makes Find-a-Grave special is that it strains the mass of humanity through a sieve of celebrity. Just who is and isn't famous is up to the webmaster, not the army of data entry people. It has a leader, Jim, anonymous as he may be, who shepherds and guards the data provided by his expanding flock.

Unfortunately, except for politicians, Civil War and Revolutionary War veterans, we don’t have many. Poet Ogden Nash was buried in North Hampton. Other than three signers of the Declaration, including the original Josiah Bartlett, this region isn’t exactly brimming with celebrity dead. Find-a-Grave lists 55 names currently in its New Hampshire database, but you’ve probably never heard of most. Authors May Sarton, Willa Cather, Grace Metalius and Thornton Wilder top the NH list, just below astronaut Christa McAuliffe and President Franklin Pierce. Self-mutilating punk rocker GG Allin and actor Claude Rains pretty much wrap up our meager list.

Think you know more famous locals? Get your camera. Send them in. We need all the help we can get around here.