EDITS: Please send all edits and additions through the edit links in each memorial. This allows easy access to the precise memorial so the new information can be correctly added to it. If not sent through these links, or left in a digital flower, it probably won't be seen or addressed.
~~~~~
**Thanks to Findagrave volunteer ID 46605034 for this great advice:
1. Headstones can be very unreliable, a huge percentage are inaccurate, and can be proven as such.
2. Death dates are most accurate on a death certificate.
3. Birthdates are not as reliably accurate on a death certificate as the death date.
4. For birth months and years, the 1900 US census is a good resource, because if the person was alive at the time, they knew more than the people that filled out the death certificate or made the headstone.
5. It is very very common to see on headstones:
A. The initial of the woman's maiden name put in as the middle initial of her name.
B. Especially seen in earlier years, they put the year date closest to the year of birth, for example for a person born Oct 1875, it was engraved as the birth year 1876, that was the closest year. This is part of the reason you see so many headstones that disagree with family dates and death certs, census, etc. When just putting in the years and not months and days, on the headstones.
~~~~
Helpful tool:
To add a Findagrave-internal link within the text of a memorial biography, you need to use the following:

a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=XXXXXXX" target="_blank"NAME /a

(remove the spaces following the symbols, substitute XXXXXXX with the memorial ID number, and NAME with that person.

EDITS: Please send all edits and additions through the edit links in each memorial. This allows easy access to the precise memorial so the new information can be correctly added to it. If not sent through these links, or left in a digital flower, it probably won't be seen or addressed.
~~~~~
**Thanks to Findagrave volunteer ID 46605034 for this great advice:
1. Headstones can be very unreliable, a huge percentage are inaccurate, and can be proven as such.
2. Death dates are most accurate on a death certificate.
3. Birthdates are not as reliably accurate on a death certificate as the death date.
4. For birth months and years, the 1900 US census is a good resource, because if the person was alive at the time, they knew more than the people that filled out the death certificate or made the headstone.
5. It is very very common to see on headstones:
A. The initial of the woman's maiden name put in as the middle initial of her name.
B. Especially seen in earlier years, they put the year date closest to the year of birth, for example for a person born Oct 1875, it was engraved as the birth year 1876, that was the closest year. This is part of the reason you see so many headstones that disagree with family dates and death certs, census, etc. When just putting in the years and not months and days, on the headstones.
~~~~
Helpful tool:
To add a Findagrave-internal link within the text of a memorial biography, you need to use the following:

a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=XXXXXXX" target="_blank"NAME /a

(remove the spaces following the symbols, substitute XXXXXXX with the memorial ID number, and NAME with that person.