Have you ever tried to find a cemetery using an old map and a feeling that it’s there? If you’ve trekked through the wilderness or driven down old country roads in search of the elusive grave of an ancestor, you might consider trying one of the new generation of Global Positioning System (GPS) handheld devices.

Since the government lifted the Selective Availability restriction on the satellite signals received by a GPS in May, you are now able to determine your position on the earth within about fifty feet. The offset was previously about the length of a football field, or three hundred feet. If you’re interested, you can read more about GPS online.

I’ve used two different GPS systems and can recommend both, but before you buy a GPS you have to make sure you know what you’re going to use it for. If you’re going to pursue those gravestones, you might consider the handheld or dash-mounted Garmin GPS III Plus. The unit fits in the palm of your hand and can be programmed with latitude and longitude information, or you can use the preprogrammed information to find the location you’re searching for. When the unit is mounted on the dashboard, the black and white LCD display can be hard to read with sunlight shining on it. The display is also small, so drivers would have a hard time using it as a primary navigation tool.

However, when you take it off the dash and walk through the woods with it, you’ve got a wonderful tool for finding those elusive graves. You can program in up to five hundred waypoints, if you’re making stops along your route. The four AA batteries can last up to thirty-six hours, plenty of time for that backwoods hike. The unit’s suggested price is $571 on the Garmin Web site, but we bought the unit for about $425 from a local retailer.

If you’re looking for a navigation aid, driving from one genealogy conference or research site to the next, I highly recommend DeLorme’s Earthmate GPS Receiver. It differs from the Garmin unit because the receiver is just a receiver and does not have a display on it. The receiver needs to be attached to your laptop or handheld Palm or Windows CE device for you to see where you’re going. With the Earthmate GPS attached to a laptop, my friend and I were able to drive from Detroit to Providence, Rhode Island, through Canada, and back through the United States without any maps!

The display on a laptop is much better than the small display on the Garmin unit, and you can see the route you’ve chosen and the roads you’re supposed to turn on. If you plug in a tape adaptor, you can even have the machine tell you when you’re supposed to turn, although that’s a bit unnerving when the computer voice activates after you’ve had silence in the car for a while.

I particularly liked the fact that we were able to plot our course, including waypoints, and the Street Atlas program that comes with the unit highlights the road and shows you your progress. I sat dazed in front of the monitor for many miles watching us move on a map. On the Garmin, you plot your points, but it shows you the route you should take as the crow flies, not as the road turns.

The Earthmate GPS Receiver is not a portable unit, unless you attach it to a Palm or Windows CE device. There are adapters available for connecting the units, and you’ll have to download the necessary software into the handheld device. You’d still be carrying two units, however—the Earthmate Receiver and the handheld device. If that works for you, I feel you get much better interactivity with the DeLorme systems than you do with the Garmin.

The DeLorme Earthmate GPS Receiver retails for $179.95 on DeLorme’s Web site, but I’m sure it can be found for less than that locally or elsewhere on the Web. DeLorme also has a Mac version for the same price. Earthmate Road Warrior for Palm computers and Windows CD devices sell for $199.95.

So figure out your needs before you buy, but if you get lost frequently, don’t wait too long to get your latest gadget—a GPS!

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, is the managing editor of Genealogical Computing, editor of the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ newsletter OnBoard, the creator of Clooz—the electronic filing cabinet for genealogical records, and a frequent contributor to Ancestry Magazine. She can be reached via e-mail at liz@ancestordetective.com or gceditor@ancestry.com.