My husband and I conducted gravestone studies in southeast and southwest Virginia (our respective home regions) in graduate school. We came across countless misspellings, backwards numbers and letters and other writing mistakes on "homemade" gravestones. These were either field stone with letters and dates scratched on them, 20th century poured concrete markers or, on rare occasions, wooden markers. These were all in very rural, economically challenged areas of mixed demographics. We did not find any specific trends for the misspellings and concluded that it was a literacy issue. Many of the ones from SWVA were modern, 1950s-1970s, including those of my own great grandparents who could not read or write.


Debbie


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From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Pete Regan <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2017 9:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Backward Lettering on Gravestone

Thanks for the insight, Daniel, I'll look into it. I too found the trappings of treasure hunters when initially looking into this, and I have no intention of steering in that direction. I had also assumed the lettering was probably a product of partial literacy, but wanted to look into any other lines of reasoning in case there was something obvious about this to a gravestone expert that otherwise escapes me. Again, I'm grateful for the advice and I'll re-post if I come up with anything interesting.