>Why wouldn't they have put up a stone to the man, any idea? Too poor? Lynn, I have an ancestor, Robert CARTER, that in the debts due from the estate show 2:5:0 paid for a coffin, but there is no marker. The probate does not show any money included in the estate, just personal items. No one has ever found his marker--at least not in Connecticut. Same thing with Robert's great, great grandson, Samuel Orvis CARTER. I have his probate record with a payment made for a marker and it is not there in the cemetery where he was buried. In that cemetery, the sexton even checked the space next to his wife, and yes, there is a man buried next to her. It was not for lack of money. Could be that there was no one to make the marker or the man that made markers fell behind or died and the family never got around to having another made. If you look at the marker for Hannah CARTER (on Jane's site), Robert's first wife, you will see it is a fieldstone and very roughly cut at best. If you did not know it was for Hannah CARTER, you would pass it by--not even her full name, just initials placed on it. Having walked over a few of these really old cemeteries in CT, MA, and NY, some of them give me the shivers because there is so much "open space" between markers. Chances are, this is not "open space" but burials that never had a marker or the marker was lost. One of the best reference books I purchased was "Your Guide to Cemetery Research" by Sharon DeBartolo CARMACK. An excellent resource--wish I would have read it before I went to Indian River and the other cemeteries there on the East Coast. I love cemetery research and am always looking to learn more about it. Janece

In CT, after spending the last 4 years visiting cemeteries in Middletown, Portland, CT and Columbus, OH, the brownstone ones I saw the first year, some are dramatically worse. Water gets in a crack and a little bit of freeze and it breaks the stone. In Columbus, I found that they choose burial and a note of burial in the paper as an obituary cost money. Then they went without the stone. Some stones are missing especially the older stones or have lichen damage. I also found one guy with three wives around him. The 3rd wife outlived him and magically there is no stone about the other 2 women but one with him and her. The 1st and 2nd wives are still in the ground next to the husband that out lived them, they had died not divorced him. Mostly poverty in my family has cause them to have no gravestones. Tracy