This advertisement from an 1844 city directory shows us what was happening in the monument business in the rapidly growing Western city of Pittsburgh or Pittburg (it was just about equally likely to be spelled either way). Beginning in the 1830s, local stonecutters were displaced by a mechanized monument industry that produced much more professional-looking work—unfortunately in limestone (“marble” to the trade), so that the inscriptions erode much more quickly than the old craftsmen’s work in yellow sandstone.