Died on 29 February 1849 With a Long Name

The tombstone of Rebecca Mullin in Delaware County, Ohio, has been mentioned in this blog before. But her tombstone (available on FindaGrave) in Delaware County’s Hope Cemetery reminded of two questions I have about her stone:

  • Did they spell her name “Rebeca” on the stone because there was not enough room for two c’s?
  • What part of her death date is wrong? Is it the day of the month, the month, or the year?

Of course the information on her stone should be transcribed as it is written. Use of a [sic] after the spelling of her name and the date may be a good idea–or could be used after the complete transcription to avoid an awkward looking transcription. If [sic] is not used a comment about the transcription should be made so that it’s clear the errors were not on the part of the transcriber.

Makes a person wonder.

Share

One thought on “Died on 29 February 1849 With a Long Name

  1. 1849 is not divisible by 4; hence no February 29 for that year! Difficult to say if it is the year or the day is incorrect — may be entirely wrong month, too.

Leave a Reply to Kat Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.