A Genealogical Mystery

Thought it would be fun to throw in a visual genealogical mystery!



My 3rd great-grandparents William M. Capps and his wife Martha Jane Adams are buried in Old Home Cemetery south of Eddyville in Pope County, Illinois. Their markers are rocks which appear to have been hand-carved with inscriptions. In the 1980s when I enumerated this cemetery, they were much more legible - unfortunately I didn't get pictures of them at that time.  Recently I re-visited the cemetery. 

I could plainly read the name and date of death on William's stone in the 1980s but it is practically illegible now. The date given was 16 March 1895 which coincides precisely with the date of death given in his probate at the courthouse in Golconda.

But his wife Martha's stone pictured here is the mystery. The top of the stone reads "Caps" with the "S" backward and the face of the stone appears to give her date of death (hence the letter "D") but to me the date looks like "1199". What is the meaning?

Martha Jane Capps was living with her widowed daughter Elizabeth Rector in the 1900 census of Jefferson County, Illinois. A family story given to me indicated she died in Livingston County, Kentucky (where the family had been found in the 1860s and 1870s before coming to Pope County). She had Adams relatives there. Her body was brought across the river at Golconda for burial in Pope County beside her husband. She is NOT in the 1910 census and has no death certificate in Illinois or Kentucky (they were quite incomplete at that time).

My guess is that the interpretation of "1199" is either January 19th, 1909 or November 9th, 1909. 

Any thoughts???  These are the mysteries that can drive us crazy as genealogists!