I can’t claim certain knowledge of the story of this particular stone, but based on what I see here and what I know of the family history and genealogy movement in this country, I’m going to make some speculation. This looks like the kind of stone that a descendant puts up to honor their family members whose headstones have been lost to time or were too poor to ever have tombstones in the first place. It’s a way of honoring the past. I think it is also an assertion that ordinary people matter – these people may not have discovered the cure for cancer or invented the next big trend, but their lives were still important enough to be honored by those who came after them. I like it, and it’s a pretty important trend to the cemetery preservation movement as a hold. It’s not universally true, but a lot of people I have met who are deeply involved in cemetery preservation got their start because they discovered a cemetery where their ancestors were buried in disrepair and neglect. Sometimes, that narrowly personal interest expands into a general passion to restore and maintain cemeteries in general, and from that springs clean-up projects, fundraising, and cemetery foundations.
A Grave Concern 