I have to say, GC, your regular- and frequently quite to very much vintage- grave marker photograph posts are consistently fascinating. The fact that your attention to detail is so considerable that you post the name of the stonecarvers who created the piece of art and memorial of each of the ancestors of our distant past, when available is something thoroughly awesome, if I can say so. I'm wondering a couple of things here, and perhaps if the facts are not clear in your research, I might ask your opinion on it, specifically about this post and gravestone in your picture:

1) Is it the case, or do you suspect, if solid data is not available, that the name of the town where this burial exists today is called 'Carver' is based on the original settlers, or significant elements of their smithing class, were themselves stonecarvers (even potentially multiple generations of them, as you mention a family, not just an individual), possibly specific to burial monuments?

2) What is your opinion on the fact that this particular stone's 'death angel' is actually smiling (assuming the carver's use of the expression was intentional) rather than neutral or a 'grieving', downturned expression? I know that by the mid-to-late Victorian era (1850s to 1890s, up to the early 1900s at the very latest extreme) in England, such carvings (of a smiling, peaceful resting soul) on grave markers were not unusual, but certainly not this far back, and by no means in American post-colonial or earlier burial markers.

Again, a thoroughly fascinating post, along with its sister post around the same time today, and thank you for sharing another step in your journey of exploration with us!

-2Paw.

Louis Feinberg, ditto.