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.