Historical Archaeology - 19th c tombstones

Connecticut has a gravestone association of some kind. I'll look for it

http://www.ctgravestones.com/aboutCGN.htm

There ya go. Maybe Ohio, or the town might have something similar

I used to have a t-shirt of theirs

Any time

One of your problems is what the tombstones are made of. In the midwest during the 19th-century it was common to make gravestones out of marble, which was more readily available at the time. Marble, however, weathers and corrodes rapidly, and marble grave markers more than a century old tend to degrade into illegibility. I grew up in Iowa, and am personally familiar with this. My father was an Odd Fellow, and when I was a kid, used to take me out to cemeteries on Memorial Day to plant flags on the graves of veterans.

Granite gravestones are far more resistant to weathering, but didn't come into common use in my home area until maybe the early 20th century. And in New England, gravestones made of slate were common in the 18th century; most of those still remain fairly legible (I've been to Boston and visited the historic cemeteries there).

caw.