A 1958 receipt for epitaph inscription work by monumental sculptor Denis McCarthy of Cork, Ireland
The people who put up headstones have many names.
Stonemason, stonecutter, lettercarver, sculptor, and monumental sculptor are a few that come to mind.
Sometimes, about 1% of the time, we find the stonecutters name carved on the bottom of the headstone. It'll say something like Fecit D McCarthy.
Which is latin for D McCarthy made this!
The best book on Irish headstones is Mary Timoney's Had Me Made and she traces the history of monumental sculptors across County Sligo. But that is a rare piece of work. We know very little about these craftsmen in Ireland.
If you think your ancestor may have worked with stone; may have been a stonemason; or a monumental sculptor then once again, the http://census.nationalarchives.ie/ is an excellent tool for searching for them, because you can search the census by occupation.
Here's a quick video on how to search the census by occupation.
Step 0 - goto the website
Step 1 - click on Search
Step 2 - Select your year
Step 3 - click on More Search Options
Step 4 - enter occupation in the Occupation field
Step 5 - set results list view to greater than the default 25 and examine your list.
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If you wish to support community groups to survey their graveyards then please consider making a donation to the project and write to john@historicgraves.com with any ideas you may have for surveys.
