You’re Welcome. If you can, visit the visitor center. Although it was a holiday, they arranged for us to visit the archives. There is a lot of information on the Van Metre family. My only regret is we just didn’t have enough time. Safe travels and enjoy your visit.

I will use as much information about the place as I know, starting with the smallest area. For example, “town/city, county, state, USA”. The more information you have will help in future research. If the event happened outside of the town, then I’d just use the county, however, you might want to add a note that the location is “at home just outside of said town”. In the early 19th century. Homesteads were in townships. So, for example if you were married, or born at the home farm, I would use the name of the township (and section # if known), not the town. If you don’t know what township they are in, you can easily google search “Townships in the state” you are working. Some states, like Louisiana, call them Parishes. I’ve done a post explaining Townships and Precincts maps at https://patburns.com/township-and-precinct-maps/. I hope this helps. Feedback welcome!

When an event such as a birth, marriage, etc takes place outside of a town/city, should the place include the town/city of the location or just the county? e.g. A birth takes place at home instead of a hospital in town, should the place only include county and state?

Hi Anthony, sometimes getting memorials transferred is difficult. You are dependent on the person currently managing the memorial. I would try again, and point out the Find a Grave policy. They clearly state that they prefer a family member to manage a memorial over a non family member. Here is a link to their policy: https://support.findagrave.com/s/article/Request-to-Manage?r=387&ui-knowledge-components-aura-actions.KnowledgeArticleVersionCreateDraftFromOnlineAction.createDraftFromOnlineArticle=1 (I hope this link works, if not copy and paste it into a browser.)

It clearly states “they must transfer.” You can also point out that by merging your family memorial, it transferred the other one to them and you want it back. Review the above FAQ and hopefully that will work.

If that does not work, I suggest contacting Find A Grave, but that’s never guaranteed either.

Good Luck.

Hi Anthony. You can only add parents and spouses. So, if you add the parents to the half sibling, that should do it. Hopefully this helps.

Pat 🙂

It may very well be that the person who manages the memorial is no longer around. As for why Find-A-Grave itself doesn’t answer, could it be that they just don’t have the staff since all the COVID madness?