Hi all, Happy Memorial Day to you and your loved ones. I spent the day visiting Calvary Cemetery, which is just down the street from where I live in Sunnyside, Queens (NY). As I was walking through the absolutely massive cemetery grounds (over 3 million burials) - it dawned upon me that it might be worth bringing the cemetery to the list's attention. Though I'm sure many of you are already familiar, it might prove to be an untapped resource for others. Before I dig in to the relevance to the NY-IRISH list, I had a truly extraordinary thing happen to me when I first visited the cemetery this Easter - you can read more about that here: http://michaelcassara.blogspot.com/2010/04/easter-2010.html But in getting to know the cemetery over the last few months, it's really a goldmine for genealogists - particularly those of us with NYC-Irish roots. Many of the monuments include detailed genealogical information - and many of the Irish monuments include information on the deceased's birthplace. While there's by no means a guarantee that your ancestors gravestone will include such information - it's certainly worth looking into - particularly for those of you who have hit brick walls in terms of finding your ancestral County, etc. Calvary served the Catholic communities of New York City (Manhattan, Queens, etc.) from the mid-19th Century through the present day. Irish and Italian names make up the grand majority of interments. The cemetery office can do lookups over the phone, but they do NOT have a computerized database, or an index by surname - so you must have the date of death so they can search their chronological files. Should you find an ancestor buried there, one option to get more information is to get the detailed plot location from the cemetery office and create a memorial with FindAGrave.com. Once you've created the free memorial on FindAGrave (including plot location), then click on "Request A Photo". There are many of us in the immediate area who volunteer and take photographs (for free, of course) on a regular basis - perhaps it will lead to a genealogical goldmine! All my best, Michael Cassara cassara.genealogy@gmail.com