A valuable resource, The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide: How to Find, Record, and Preserve Your Ancestor's Grave, will be a must have in your field bag. Easy to reference and filled with intelligent information the guide would make a wonderful gift for the genealogist in your life. Full Disclosure: I was allowed to read a copy of this book for free as a member of NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review. The opinions I have expressed are my own and I was not influenced to give a positive review.

An excellent guide for the family historian or local historian. Any one who likes to walk through cemeteries can enjoy learning more about the symbols and history of the stones they are walking past. For anyone trying to research their family history, this provides good advice for how to approach cemetery offices, or city records and offers insight into the burial practices of the United States. As a Canadian who has gone through similar adventures trying to locate cemeteries and city officials, the steps are similar to what I experienced, but obviously slightly different. Reading this book may give you a new idea to pursue for your own research, or just give you an informative look at the history and symbols lying forgotten in your local area.

Journalist Joy Neighbors turns her attention to cemeteries for this title. Neighbors provides rudimentary information on abbreviations and symbols often depicted on markers. She discusses the materials from which markers are made. She provides tips to prepare for a graveyard visit and for photographing stones. These tips include cautions about ways genealogists and others tried to make stones more legible in the past and their harmfulness. She included information on Billion Graves and Find A Grave. The book's organization did not work well for me. Some topics seemed to be treated in sections scattered throughout the book. She introduced topics and then said, "We'll talk about that later." It is unfortunate the book went to press when it did instead of waiting just a few more months. She included information on locating cemetery deeds and types of cemeteries as well. The content is already dated due to Find A Grave's web site redesign. She included multiple screenshots which bear little resemblance to what users are now seeing. A note about the pending redesign was included, and she mentioned the "beta" site was now available. It seems screen shots should have been captured from the beta rather than the "old" version. Sentences felt "choppy" to me. At times I felt the author was "talking down" to readers. In an effort to make her content fill more pages, the author added related content such as death certificates, funeral home records, and obituaries. However, she didn't stop there but went on to include a section on basic genealogical research with checklists. This information, while possibly helpful to a beginner, was unnecessary to meet the book's purpose and wastes paper and the consumer's money, since the purchaser pays for those extra pages. She omitted grave markers made from pottery in her discussion of marker types. These are popular in some parts of the South. They tend to break at the base, but they remain quite readable. Many of the checklists and forms in the book are useful to genealogists, but a similar form can usually be found freely available on the internet. While the book is useful to some beginning researchers, most intermediate and experienced researchers would be better served by purchasing Douglas Keister's <i>Stories in Stones</i> or <i>Forever Dixie</i> and picking up information on preservation and other topics via articles in <i>Family Tree Magazine</i>, <i>Your Genealogy Today</i>, or on a blog post. The publisher provided an electronic galley of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide is a step-by-step guide on how to track down your ancestors and the best ways to do so.

It is full of vital information to get the job done – and provides a lot of facts about cemeteries and the like along the way, including the types of graveyards, common symbols and their meanings as well as the type of stone used for some and what this could signify.

As someone who is very interested in finding ancestors and learning more about cemeteries, this was an insightful and informative read.

The book is quite U.S centric however, talking about U.S records, people, history etc and became a bit confusing to me (as an Australian.) Would be great if an international section were added to make up for the differences in culture and what different steps should be taken.

Rating:

Content: 7/10

Cover: 9/10

Overall: 7.5/10

An interesting book with some useful basic pointers on using cemeteries for your genealogy / family history research.
Please note this is only really relevant to the US, not the UK.
i would have preferred better, higher quality images, and a more stylish layout, but that may be me being picky, it doesn't affect the actual information given.

As a professional archivist and researcher for a quarter of a century I have never come across a book that is so comprehensive about an aspect of genealogical research. A good alternate title for this would be "Life from the Grave". Literally there is nothing outside of this book left to say about researching a graveyard for genealogical information.

This is not a dry and pedantic read either. It is an easy read with a lot of great anecdotal examples and pictures that illustrate the specific aspects that Joy Neighbors has so well articulated.

This book is a great tool to use for genealogy whether you are a beginning or an expert. There are no drawn out explanations about each topic. The author is very knowledgeable and gets straight to the point. The handouts and websites will come in handy. I've been an avid genealogist for quite awhile now and this book was a great refresher course for me.

First line: Cemeteries are usually viewed with reservation.

Summary: Filled with helpful tips on how to plan, research and preserve information that can be found at cemeteries. This book describes different symbols, types and information about gravestones and their meanings. It also walks the reader through websites and online tools that can help a novice or experienced genealogist on their journey of discovering their family history.

Highlights: I loved seeing the different types of stones and the symbols with their meanings. I never considered that the type could tell you about the finances or social status of my ancestor. All the hints and tips about ways to search for information were helpful. As I was reading, I would open a browser and try them out on my tree. I have a few illusive ancestors and I tried using the tips to discover more about them. I still have not found their death dates but I have learned other little tidbits about their lives. I hope to continue to find more with time.

Lowlights: There was a lot of information that I was familiar with so it was a little slow going through that but at no fault of the author. I like that they walk the reader through the process of signing up and searching.

FYI: Perfect for any genealogist.

A neat collection of cemeteries and guiding markers.