Photo of The Day: Set In Stone

To err is human, to forgive divine, but I would have had trouble with this one.

I came across Charlie Tulbert’s marker today recording some stones for Find A Grave.

I can only imagine the family gathering to mourn the passing of a loved one and realizing that the mason botched his name. I don’t know, maybe they took it in stride and it provided a little levity on a difficult day. Maybe (hopefully) they got a discount for the stone.

The phonetic spelling of names has caused a lot of problems for people doing genealogy and other kinds of historical research, especially in old census documents where people were being asked their name and some couldn’t spell it themselves.
As an example, Charlie Tulbert’s parents are listed as “Tolbert” in records. So maybe the mason who inscribed this stone can be forgiven.

But was Charlie’s name Talbert, Tulbert, or Tolbert?

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