Based out of Southern Indiana, the Cemetery Hoppers are a group that visits, or "hops," old abandoned cemeteries and hard-to-find cemeteries to try to honor and visit the forgotten souls. (A cemetery hop consists of visiting a cemetery and finding unique grave stones.)
Their Goal: "We enjoy a good challenge and hope to visit every cemetery in our local area, over 170 in our county alone! We aim to have no lone stone forgotten."
Find A Grave is the "world's largest gravesite collection" and acts as a database for gravesites, cemeteries, and memorials all over the world. Established in 1995, they are a community-run website. Their collection is always growing, and this can be a good place to find photos of your ancestors, or more source material to look into.
However, this website is primarily run by anyone who signs up for a free account to contribute information. They do monitor some aspects, but nothing is too heavily enforced, and a lot of times the information they have is wrong or slightly off.
(Take the information from here with a grain of salt when applying it to your own research...treat it like a Wikipedia page.)
If you have an account on Find A Grave, and manage your own memorial pages, use this RootsWeb post for tools and coding that can help you make your memorials look clean and easy to read.
Host Site (external link): RootsWeb Free Pages
Page Author: Dorsey Barnes Drane
Here is an article that walks you through utilizing Find A Grave's search engine.
Host Site: Family Tree Magazine
Article Title: "Find a Grave: Optimize Your Search Results"
Article Author: Sunny Jane Morton
From the Website: "Our goal is to preserve precious records found in cemeteries throughout the world. We use modern technology to capture images of headstones with their GPS locations so users worldwide can access those records anywhere. BillionGraves strives to do just that: preserve at least one billion graves. And we won't stop there!"
BillionGraves Team: Hudson Gunn, Brian Moncur, Casey Moncur, Melyssa Stratton-Webb, Anna Young, Cathy Wallace, and Savanna Sorensen
BillionGraves also has a blog that includes interesting articles relevant to cemeteries.
This website lists information about Indiana Hindostan whetstone, especially in regards to grave markers for cemeteries.
From the Website: "Hindostan whetstone is a thinly layered siltstone that was quarried in southern Indiana throughout the 19th and 20th centuries for use as sharpening stones and grave markers. Produced exclusively from northwestern Orange County, Indiana, this abundant material supplied the state’s first mineral industry and was exported throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia."
Website Host: Indiana Geological & Water Survey (Indiana University)
Authors/Leaders: Polly R. Sturgeon, Richard L. Powell, Barbara T. Hill, Rebecca A. Meyer, and Matthew R. Johnson
Motto from Website: "Here to help you through the loss of a loved one."
This site has a lot of interesting articles and guides that revolve around the death and burial processes, like "Grieving the Loss of a Pet" and "How Does the Embalming Process Work?". They have information about both human and pet deaths and burials. Definitely worth checking out!
Article Title: "Gravestone Symbols and Their Hidden Meanings"
Article Author: Courtney Henderson
Host Site: Family Tree Magazine
Article Title: "Headstone Symbols and Meanings: A Guide to Cemetery Symbols"
Article Author: none visibly listed
Host Site: Memorials.com
Article Title: "Gravestone Symbols and Carvings- Meaning and Inspiration"
Article Author: Fergus Wessel
Host Site: Stone Letters
Article Title: "National Cemetery Administration: Emblems of Belief"
Host Site: US Department of Veterans Affairs
Article Title: "Headstone & Memorial Symbols and Meanings (FROM ACROSS THE U.S.)"
Article Author: none visibly listed
Host Site: City of Grove, OK