There is text below this image that is pertinant to this analysis. Look at this Find A Grave memorial page, and then scroll down:
The links shown in this screen-grab below in blue on gray are not active.
This is 'John Higdon Find A Grave Memorial #36716510’ and it shows us that we have John Higdon’s birth and death dates correct. From the Nelson County Kentucky Cemeteries, Vol. 4, p. 212 we know that Phillip and Nancy were his parents. Philip is the way his father’s name was spelled on his tombstone after Philip died, 41 years after his wife Nancy Rogers Higdon died. So Philip married Nancy Rogers. Now, let’s take a look at a post-processed close up of the above pictured headstone, captured about 2010 and submitted to Find A Grave by Colleen Sanders Broyles.
Again we have a set of letters highlighted to make focus easier. The older 1999 photo provided letters in shown below in black, the newer Find A Grave 2010 photo above provided letters shown below in red:
J on of
P HIGDON
Bo n May 184
1 18_4
If you compare these updated partial letters to the listing from the Nelson County Kentucky Cemeteries, Vol. 4, p. 212 with Higdons highlighted in pink, you will see a match.
John, son of
P. & N. HIGDON
Born May 5 1843
Died Sept 1 1844
There is only one Higdon tombstone above has that has a date of death that ends in a 4:
Once again our sources match: HIGDON, John, b. 5 May 1843, d. 1 Sep 1844 (son of Phillip & Nancy Higdon)
When Nancy Higdon (of Clinton, TN) captured this image in 1999, she copied down her ‘reading’ of this tombstone as:
John, son of PVN Higdon, born May 6 1843(?), died Sept 1 1844
An omnibus search of all records collections online at Ancestry.com does not reveal any records associated with PVN Higdon; from here on we will use P. & N. instead.
John, son of
P. & N. HIGDON
Born May 5 1843
Died Sept 1 1844
So from this comparison of two photo images of the same headstone and a survey of Nelson County cemeteries, we know from three different sources that we are indeed looking at the tombstone of John, a son who died at about 1 1/2 years og age. His father was Philip Higdon, and his mother was Nancy Higdon, who died at about age 44. Nine years later, Phlip and Nancy had another child, a daughter named Sarah Francis Higdon, who died at about 4 years of age. When mother Nancy died, she was buried in the same cemetery as her deceased young son and her deceased young daughter.
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