Terrific Tombstone Tuesday

Tombstones are an excellent source of infomation.  Sometimes it maybe the only source we have on some information.  Like a birth date for example.  Sometimes we have an approximate year and usually a tombstone at the very least will give a definate year.  Sometimes it will give us a death date and an age.  If you get lucky they will have put the age in years, months, and days and you can calcuate from there.  That really helps.  Of course the information is not always correct.  But its something to work with.

Here is one of my tombstones.




Ettore Colovi  1890 - 1967

This the tombstone of my great grandfather, Ettore Enrico Antonio CALOVI.  Now there is not much information on this particular stone but right of the bat the last name is spelled incorrectly.  That was my families doing.  Ettore came to America in 1909 from Italy, so my guess is when he was asked to spell it that is how it sounded.  I know when he signed his name you can tell the A from the O.  I have also been able to have contact with living relatives in Italy that did advise me of the correct spelling. 

But the misspelling is not a bad thing. (at least in this case) since pretty much every document I have been able to find has the name spelling this way.  Also if I did not know anything about him I could use this infromation to begin my search. 


Here is another stone.



 

 

This is the stone of my grandfather.  As you can see this stone has a little more than normal information about him.  We have the day he was born and died, also a piece of information about his military career.  This is a great stone because it tells you to look in military records as well as any other records you may have planned on searching.

 

 

 

So how about someone shares a headstone.  Also let me add that if you do take pictures of your family's tombstone please visit findagrave.com  See if their burial information is there and share the pictures as well.  It is a great resource for those who are not able to travel to see the stones themselves.  It is also a great resource to help those find out where an ancestor may be buried if they are not totally sure.