Are Find A Grave and Billion Graves reliable sources?

Question

I want to know if find a grave and/or billion graves are reliable sources for profiles.

Comments

If you collect data from FindAGrave, FamilySearch, Ancestry or anywhere else, you should include a link as the source for your information. There will be errors because all records are made by humans that make errors.  Still, we want to be able to view the source for your information.

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Thank you!

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There is a help page specifically about using Find A Grave on WikiTree here: Help:Find_A_Grave

Answer 1

They are if they have images of graves, with birth and death dates, which usually means after about 1850. But all too often, especially pre-1700, they are copies of trees from ancestry and family search.

Comments

Sometimes even the information on a tombstone can be incorrect. So I still take it with a grain of salt.

Answer 2

I have been researching hubby's grandfather, who no one knew as they separated long ago, and he died young.

I have found him and 5 or 6 other of his relatives on FG, with two profiles each.  They are all buried at two different cemeteries, but one of the cem. has photos, and the other doesn't.

I have the actual obituary cut from the newspaper, and it says he was buried at Cimetiere Mont-Royal, but the photos show all the family headstones at St. John's Cemetery!

So no, I would not necessarily believe them, unless of course they have photos, and you know that the picture-taker didn't mix them up!

Answer 3

With photo it's a reliable source of a memorial marker, I did one last week that had three different entries in as many locations and was actually lost at sea.

 If consistent with other records there can be valuable information, eg day of death if you only have month and year in a death registration.

Comments

Find a Grave frequently gives the funeral date instead of the death date. Sometimes this is noted, but sometimes not. Find a Grave is not a very reliable source for death date in the absence of stronger evidence.

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Agreed, but if the only evidence of a full death date is the grave marker that is still better than no information at all, and even death registrations can be wrong, my father's death is registered as July 2018, I know he died in June, July was when the death was registered.