John M. Higbie 1804-1887 of Exeter, Otsego County, New York

It was over a year ago that I learned about a web site named Find A Grave.

Now, at first blush, you might not think that Find A Grave is some place that you want to visit.

I mean, who wants to go looking for a grave? What plans do we have? Do we need to be searching for a grave today?

Find A Grave doesn't help you find a grave for yourself or your relatives.

Instead it helps you find the graves of your relatives or anyone else that you think you are interested in knowing more about it/

I found the site when looking for information about my ancestors and found photos of graves that I never saw even though I grew up less than 25 miles from that cemetery. Here's the link to more than 65 million graves. Some have photos. If you would like to visit a local cemetery you are welcome to take photos and add them to the resources on the site. Joining the site is free. Your contributions will be shared freely on the internet.

http://findagrave.com

Beyond doing that you can find more information about the deceased and share it with the families who are looking to learn more about their ancestors.

I grew up in South Jersey, but I now live in upstate NY. Via findagrave.com, as a member, I have had a number of requests for headstone photos in my area.

I recently visited Wolfen Cemetery in Burlington, Otsego County, New York and took a photo of the grave of John M. Higbie. From other research I learned that http://fultonhistory.com has scanned searchable pages of upstate NY newspapers. Over 15 million pages.
Searching that resource I found something very close to an obituary for John Higbie. I put the headstone photo below and attached the scan of the newspaper page. The information about John Higbie is in the first column under Exeter - you don't have to read very far to find the information about John Higbie.

I also added that tribute to John M. Higbie to his memorial page on findagrave.com. To see it follow this link.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=52351750