Strangers are photographing America’s graves for free, and 740,000 families got a picture last year
Your loved one is buried far away, and you can’t visit. A volunteer down the road from that cemetery will go for you. Here’s how to ask, or how to do the favor for someone else.
🤯 WOW! Last year, volunteers with Find a Grave fulfilled more than 740,000 requests for headstone photos. That’s more than 2,000 families a day getting a picture of a grave they couldn’t reach themselves. The volunteers are strangers. They do it for free, on their own time, with their phones.
The Short Version: If someone you love is buried far away, a volunteer can photograph the grave for you at no cost. Learn how below.
📖 Read time: 2 minutes
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Grandma is buried in another state many miles away. You haven’t been able to visit in years. Then one morning, a photo of her headstone shows up on your screen, taken by someone you’ll never meet.
That’s what happens on Find a Grave thousands of times a day.
🪦 An army of kind strangers
Find a Grave started in 1995 as a hobby site about famous graves. Today, it’s a free, volunteer-built record of everyday Americans, owned by Ancestry.
Here’s what you need to know:
- The site holds about 190 million memorials and more than 80 million headstone photos.
- In 2024 alone, volunteers added over 21.5 million photos.
- They fulfilled more than 740,000 photo requests. That’s roughly 2,000 families a day getting a picture of a grave they couldn’t reach.
Volunteers call themselves “gravers.” Most are retirees, history buffs and family-tree fans who think a quiet walk among the headstones beats the gym.
Meet Eileen Mayberry, a retired florist in McLeansboro, Ill. She started out looking for her own family’s stones. Then she spotted 150 photo requests for a single cemetery and got to work. She has photographed 86 cemeteries and added more than 38,000 photos. Her husband drives her to the remote ones and waits in the truck.
Her reason will stick with you. Old stones wear smooth, sink or vanish. “If we don’t take them now, next week or next year, that stone might not be there.”
In Kansas City, volunteer Deb Wade showed up at a cemetery dating back to 1837 with 88 names on her list. One was a baby who lived only four days. The relative who asked for that photo is 70, lives in California and may never make the trip. Now she doesn’t have to.
💐 How to use it or give back
Request a photo for someone you love:
- Search the name at FindAGrave.com and open the memorial.
- If there’s no picture, tap Request Photo. A free account is all you need.
- A volunteer near that cemetery gets the alert.
You can also be the stranger who helps out. Sign up as a photo volunteer, and pick cemeteries near you. It’s exercise, history and a good deed in one afternoon.
People find long-lost friends, half-siblings and great-great-grandparents on this site. All because someone took a few minutes with a phone.
📩 Send this to someone who has a loved one buried in a town they can’t get back to.