...the person's DOB was nonexistent? Im working on a possible new WIP and i have a character who has died. This person is also an "involuntary time traveler" (is accidentally transported from one time period to a different world, and then "put back" on earth in the present) and has been institutionalized for being crazy when she talks about it. She has no records. Nothing. Would her gravestone just say her DOD? Would it just have her name?
It would depend on who was responsible for having her buried, but either one of those are plausible. Here's a famous example of someone about whom literally nothing was known except for the DOD:
As luck would have it, I am revamping a program on gravestones that I do for OLLI. Plenty of headstones show name and date of death only. I've also seen stones with only a name, or a first name and "wife of (full name of husband and sometimes his occupation as well)." You might like to do a bit of research on paupers' graveyards or potter's fields. Laws and regulations vary from place to place, but folks without friends or relatives have been buried in common graves without any markers. Another possibility is for an unknown person to be buried in a common grave with several other people as opposed to a mass burial. Mozart did not, despite legend and the end of Amadeus, end up in a common potter's field. He was buried in a small plot with several other people, disinterred later, his bones crushed to reduce volume, then reinterred somewhere else to make room for new burials. This was a common practice in that place and time, and not a sign of disrespect. But I digress.
Ah, i came across paupers graves when i was looking i to the headstone/gravestone thing. Though they are unmarked, i need this person to have a headstone because i want to show the date/time period they are in. I figure ill have someone donate a stone. There was a body of a little girl that was found in real life a few years ago and people pooled together money to buy her a headstone. But i also read that paupers graves are temporary or en masse... So the headstone seems less likely? The person that died has no family other than her daughter, but the daughter skipped town before her mom died and shows up months after the mom was buried
Given the diversity of burial customs, you could probably implement any kind of stone or burial you need for the story, and find examples somewhere to back up the implementation. Maybe for the purpose of your story some church group devotes itself to providing stones to those with no friends and family?
In some jurisdictions the remains are boxed and buried on top of each other. (I think New Orleans does this with regular burials as well.) There is usually a marker with a lot number and a registry to expedite disinterments if needed. How about communicating with a coroner near your story location?
Not sure why but a Sunday past-time for my family when growing up was visiting old cemeteries. Like @Catriona Grace said, old gravestones often just record the name and date of death. I have also seen things like "Joe Hall, died of fever aged 4o", with no date. But by far the most common I have seen is "1889?-January 28 1934" when the date of birth is in question. Lots of the little lost cemeteries around northern Michigan are from immigrant German, Swede and Polish immigrants who came to work in the lumber industry. It was pretty common for their date of birth to not be known and for the next-of-kin to put their best guess on the gravestone. My favorites (can you have a favorite graves?) were ones that had "geboren" (German) or "fodd" (Swedish) for born and "tod"(German) or "dod" (Swedish) for death. My great-grandfather is one of the Swedish graves...he was buried overlooking Lake Michigan in a location he picked while out logging the same area. The grave yard only has about 8 graves, half of which are children under ten...life was a lot harder back then. It's quite a hike up into the hills but its always worth it.
I saw a grave of an early settler in Tennessee that was literally just a big pile of rocks. Edit: sorry for how irrelevant this post was I found the grave though Spoiler: grave photo
I grew up in rural New England, and we have no shortage of old grave markers in New England. I've seen both real gravestones and photos of gravestones for people whose date of birth was unknown. One format I've seen repeated takes the form of JOHN EBENEZER DOE b: [spaces] [spaces] d: January 12, 1743
