Take your smart phone to the cemetery!

I was on Long Island in New York the other day, preparing to give a lecture, when I realized that my aunt Rika Singer was buried only a few miles from where I was to speak.

I decided to go a little early and pay my respects.

Thanks to GPS, I arrived at the cemetery with no problems. Soon I found the section, block and area.

But as I began counting rows and tombstones, I realized I had problems. According to the cemetery website, my aunt was buried in row O.

Was that a zero or the letter O?

It’s easy to have a row zero in some cemeteries - they may have had to add a row before the original first one to make space - but she wasn't there. Did I count the rows in the wrong direction? She wasn't there. Then I tried to number the rows by letters, so I started A, B, C, D ... That didn't work either.

By now, I was getting worried and decided to review my data. Out came my new iPhone, found a Wi-Fi connection and went online to check my family tree data. Yes, the information was correct. I checked the cemetery website again - the information was the same - but my aunt wasn't there!

Could I do a reverse look up on the cemetery database? It seemed easy. There was the name of the person in front of me, and the database should give me his location. I did that a few times but all the names had numbered rows. If my aunt was in Row Zero, I was in trouble.

Amazingly, the phone also can be used for its original purpose - to make calls! I rang the administration office and spoke to a very kind lady who confirmed that I should be looking for the letter O and not zero. She explained that the area is divided in two - one with lettered rows and the other with numbers. With that information, I moved over to the left section and walked a few rows to the front and found Aunt Rika in the same spot she had been in for nine years.

I then turned on the camera feature to take pictures of the tombstone, and turned to Google maps to get the exact coordinates of the place where I was standing at the moment with the "Show my location" feature (image on the left is just an example as Long Island is in New York, not Oregon!). After all, I didn’t want any other relatives to walk around for hours as I did to find our beloved aunt.

I finally sent the tombstone image via email to my cousin - on the other side of the world - to show him my findings.

What did we do a few years ago when we didn't have Smart Mobile Devices with Internet, GPS, cameras and phones?

New York: Cemetery research, Nov. 8

Readers in New York may be interested in this upcoming Westchester County Genealogical Society meeting at 10am, Saturday, November 8.

"Gravely Speaking: the Who, What, When, Where & Why of Effective Cemetery Research" is Jo Heffernan's program. While not focused on Jewish cemetery research, the session seems to offer methodology that can be transplanted to cemeteries of all religions and ethnicities.

She is the author of several articles for both Italian Genealogical Group (IGG) and the Hudson County Genealogical Society of New Jersey. A teacher, Heffernan also served on the IGG's board for 10 years.

The meeting is at Aldersgate Methodist Church, Dobbs Ferry.

Check the society's homepage for more details of the meeting as well as other interesting future programs on such topics as City Directories, Censuses, Immigration, and the New York 1890 Police Census.