There is a distinct possibility that a VA marker could have been placed erroneously at the grave of a man who had a similar name. I have run into that situation time after time. It's due to sloppy genealogical research. The VA does not have the means to verify a Civil War veteran's identity. They rely on the applicant for a marker to do the research. If the name submitted matches a service record, they will issue the marker.

There are many, many erroneous markers out there, and it is an ongoing problem for military and genealogical researchers. Too many people fail to understand that two or more men per generation can have the same name. The problem has gotten so bad, that in my military research I ALWAYS assume that a Civil War grave marker could have been placed erroneously, and I will not enter the information into my database without other confirmation. I'm not being an alarmist about this problem -- I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 Confederate soldiers in my database, and quite a few of them are known to be buried in one place, while a VA marker has been placed on a similarly-named man's grave somewhere else. One veteran in my database has THREE markers -- at his real gravesite, and at the graves of men with similar men in other states.