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The more I think about it, the more confidence I have that the E.M. stands for eroded marker, and broken tap is right about the original being slate or soft limestone, which could have been damaged by lightning, a falling branch, frost spalling, vandalism, or a host of other things. The idea of going to the cemetery association to verify it makes a lot of sense. The mason who cut the replacement stone likely didn't have access to the records, may not have even known which cemetery was involved, was on a time schedule, and had to make a fast decision as to how to handle the missing info.
Just on a quick google search I found the following possibilities for "E.M." as a latin abbreviation:
emeritus -- a veteran soldier on a military pension equitum magister -- a master of the horse egregiae memoriae -- outstanding memory (?) erexit monumentum --
I'm having some difficulty finding translations for the last two. Maybe someone with more experience in Latin could help here.
Just on a quick google search I found the following possibilities for "E.M." as a latin abbreviation:
emeritus -- a veteran soldier on a military pension equitum magister -- a master of the horse egregiae memoriae -- outstanding memory (?) erexit monumentum --
I'm having some difficulty finding translations for the last two. Maybe someone with more experience in Latin could help here.
erexit monumentum... I think it means "this tower of stone"...
If you think about it, em 344 could indeed mean an early marker that was hard to read. The 1 could be missing altogether and the 8 could have been mistaken as a 3. That would make the right date of 1844. If a portion of the 8 was missing, it would actually read 344 right?
On the 1909 date, assuming the same thing, that EM stands for earlier marker, the 1 could have been missing as well and the 9 was mistaken as a 4 making for the right date of 1909. Again, if a portion of the 9 was missing, it would actually read 409 right? (My computer makes the 4 the digital way and not the other way of a vertical line to represent the left side of the 4)
This is the explanation that seems to make the most sense. Heaven only knows how many gravestones there are with partially eroded letters and numbers. The idea that someone would have carved the numerals 344 and 409 into that stone seems nonsensical, don't you think?
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