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Find-A-Grave is certainly not a fun or reliable place to be. Use this site as you would any other source, question it, but in the case of Find-A-Grave, question the validity of the information even more than other records you may find.
From it's onset, Find-A-Grave was set up to be competitive and it's fanatic contributors became very territorial.
In November 2010, I traipsed through foot deep wet leaves in the 38 degree drizzle of upstate New York to obtain photographs of my ancestors and relatives gravestones for three days in 5 cemeteries. I thought that I would be contributing to what I thought was a great project. Within two days, I was attacked by someone who is probably a 10th cousin (I had to go back over 300 years to find a common ancestor). This 10th cousin sits in the middle of a cornfield in western Nebraska and professes to know more about where my ancestors are buried than I do (the cemetery has a website listing burials). The problem is that she also made assumptions that perhaps the next older generation would also be buried there too, and listed them in that cemetery.
When I challenged this Monarch of the Nebraska cornfields about this, I did not get a reply. Instead I was banned from Find-A-Grave. After-all, I was a newcomer, and even though, my challenge did not happen until 4 years after her initial attack, she was far more established with thousands of records, compared to my few hundred.
Nevertheless, I had to reinvent myself with a new email address and username, which I used until this year.
I noticed one day earlier this year that a 3rd Great Uncle's (that was in the Civil War) memorial that had been under my original username, and when I was banned it went to Find-A-Grave (8) for stewardship. I noticed that Find-A-Grave had transferred this to another party.
This was it for me with Find-A-Grave. I deleted everything under my control with my current account.
I then took on Find-A-Grave and got every photograph deleted from my first account (the one that Miss Cornfield got banned). Find-A-Grave refused to delete anything else from my first account with the exception of my name. I had $5 each to have 20+ memorials that I sponsored to remove the advertisements.
All that they did was to remove my name from these memorials.
When I inquired, their answer was "Your name has been removed."
I then responded with "Did you sell my 3rd Great Uncle's Memorial to someone?' No response.
Today, I checked, and my Paternal Grandparents and Paternal Uncle's memorial has now been transferred to yet another third party with over 12,000 memorials. I call these people "collectors." It's all about the numbers, and not the quality.
I urge everyone today to never supply Find-A-Grave with any information about a loved-one. This is a public site and they do not care about anything but amassing more data, whether accurate or not.
In summary, I would not recommend Find A Grave to a friend.
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