Great job!

Fantastic!!! That is great to learn the true picture!! Thanks for all you do for FindAGrave! I'm sure many people are appreciative of your contribution.

That new photo is great at showing more fine details. Isn't it nice when a mystery is solved instead of lingering! Bravo!

Hmmm, I wonder if there might be a tactful way to help the cemetery update their records with the additional information you have. Perhaps even your great pic for the record, in case the gravestone deteriorates in the future?

Wait, isn't there still a Charles Ames who died in 1842 in that cemetery? It's there on FindAGrave.

FindAGrave is kind of crowd-submitted, isn't it? It could also be in error.

Great!

Check out the dates on the Charles Ames. I didn't find one that appeared to be the same as Charles Anderson.

Excellent picture. Thanks for coming back to us with an answer.

I think Bpath is right--the Charles Ames memorial on FindAGrave is probably not accurate. The site contains some erroneous or duplicate memorials that could be weeded out. Many of the names are added by individuals, and I believe in this case the cemetery's information came from a person or persons who walked the cemetery and wrote down the names and dates. As we know, the names of Charles' parents were hard to read, so they assumed his last name was Ames as he was practically surrounded by the Ames family. And they put down the date as his birth date instead of the day he died.

Smiling, I'll see if I can contact someone at the cemetery and inquire about changing their record.

I hope I'll be able to locate FindAGrave memorials for Alexander and Eliza Anderson so I can link Charles with his parents. But I'm not super hopeful, as Anderson is a fairly common name and they could be buried anywhere. But meanwhile, little Charles has his very own memorial.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/218562359/charles-anderson

Interesting. I did a FindAGrave search for Charles Ames in 1842 and the memorial in this cemetery did not show up. I clicked on Alisande's link and looked at the Ames in the cemetery and it pulled up. I did it earlier and again now and got the same results so I don't think I spelled something wrong.

Adella, I think their search engine could be improved. I always search a cemetery to see if a given photo is needed on an existing memorial or if it needs a new memorial, or neither of the above. And yet sometimes it'll say there's no record of that name but when I make a new memorial it'll pop up with the information that they already have a memorial for that person.

That may be the problem.

My experience with 'find a grave' is that it is difficult to get an error changed. Most errors I have encountered were in the text information. The person who posted it may not admit, or believe its an error, or they do not return to that site and never see the correction.

I have seen an error posted on the internet and others picked it up and repeated it. It involved one of my early ancestors. Once that happens, its tough to get it straightened out.

The error: A man, a Scot, married a Franklin, and when the Franklin(s) removed to North Carolina after the Revolutionary War, the man embarked on an ocean voyage to Scotland as he supposed he might have had some inheritance coming to him. He and the ship was never seen again and supposed lost at sea. After this event, someone assumed that the oldest son was her husband and put in their genealogy file. He might have been recorded as "head of household" in census records after the Father was lost. The information about the Father being lost was very obscure and I ran across it by accident while searching library files.

One way to counter the error you have found is to post your photo on "find a grave" with correct data.

By the way, you new photo with a different lighting angle did wonders to bring out the lettering and you did not have to touch the stone. Congratulations on a job well done!

Good sleuthing. This latest photo is perfect. I had to go back to your original post to look at those photos to remember why it was so hard to read.

Yes, you can be sure I'll photograph the hard-to-read stones from different angles from now on!

Jem, you make a good point about genealogy errors being picked up and repeated. I'm told it happens a lot when people add to their family trees without verifying the information. The error gets embedded to the point where it can't be found and corrected.

I did touch the stone, but only in a careful way. I was wearing fleece gloves, and they were useful in softly brushing tree debris out of some of the engraving. I hadn't realized that debris filled some of the letters. It's rather dark under that tree!

I forgot to say great job with that photo!

I sometimes wonder about all the errors on the family trees. We all make mistakes. After it gets copied about five or six times, it becomes 'fact'. My family has one that really bothers me. We know my sixth great grandparents names, but there are two couples in the area with the same names and same approximate ages. Some folks have glommed on to the one couple because the wife's maiden name is known and this line traces back as a relative of George Washington. Realistically, we may be related to both sets of men, but we truly don't know which set is which. I cringe when I see this line extended past their names.