IN
Memory
of
ELDRIDGE PAULEY
Who was Born 10th
March 1824
Died July 20th 1837
The small gravestone of Eldridge Pauley in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana, was carved with a misspelling—a crucial mistake. Every journalist is taught that you at the very least have to spell names correctly in newspaper articles, and as it should be for stone carvers.
So, in this instance, Eldridge Pauley’s name was carved without the “u” in his name. What is a carver to do—start over? It isn’t like there is correcting tape for a limestone gravestone, and it is time consuming and expensive to start over. So, in this case, the enterprising stone cutter chose to carve a small “u” above and between the “a” and the “l” thereby adding the missing letter and correcting the last name.
One wonders, though, what the Pauleys thought of their teenage son’s gravestone having a correction for eternity?
Gravely Speaking 
No need to post this note, but…. I got a bit of a chuckle when i read this one, since the same applies to punctuation on a marker. Once carved in stone, everybody had to live with the end result, but in the case of a WordPress publication—for example–one could easily correct the surname “Pauley’s” to “Pauleys” in the last sentence. Since you are asking what the whole family of Pauleys might have thought of the carving error versus making this a possessive as in “Mr. Pauley’s thoughts…” I think so, right?
(But to the point of the article, I’ve got some good examples here in Maine as well with the missing letters inserted above and always love to find them… thanks for a good one).
Thank you for the heads up on the typo. Just goes to show you everyone needs a good editor. BTW, I mailed a check.