A very odd Gothic monument, looking a bit like a squashed canopy tomb with a Gothic mushroom cloud erupting from the center. The cemetery records laboriously compiled by volunteers list a John Michael Rohman (so spelled, with one N) who died at 65 in 1924 and associate him with this monument. He might have been a son or grandson, but Father Pitt would be willing to bet a shiny new dollar that this is not a monument from 1924; if he had to guess, he would say it came from the 1880s.
Exceptionally fine lettering on a monument whose style old Pa Pitt will call German Baroque. The epitaph, unfortunately damaged, is a variation of a popular German epitaph found on many tombstones:
Here in this rose-garden
Will I await my wife and children.
…children, do not pass by
….that I am your father.
A set of rustic boulders, with a bronze relief depicting a weeping angel (Doctor Who fans will be pleased) overcome in the middle of his harp-playing. Unambiguously male angels are actually rare in monuments around here; and although this was probably a monument-dealer’s stock monument, the bronze relief is a fine piece of work.
The congregation began as a house meeting in 1793 and was officially founded in 1812. The current church, which replaced an earlier log church, was built in 1843 and restored after a fire in 1944. Families of early settlers are buried in the churchyard.
Father Pitt has never run across “Nazarene” as a male given name before. The stonecutter made some very elegant letters, but “May the 1th” was as wrong in 1839 as it is today.
These pictures are made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, so no permission is needed to use them for any purpose whatsoever.
A zinc or “white bronze” monument, still in very good shape (as they usually are), except that one of its panels is missing.
There is a small genealogical mystery here, and Father Pitt does not have the time to research the answer to it. The monument remembers John (died 1889) and Mary Margaret (died 1891) Wise, as well as Wilhelmina, “daughter of John Wise,” who died at 17 in 1865. But who is the little girl Mary Margaret Schmid, who died at three years old in 1879? Was she a granddaughter, born to another Wise child not mentioned here, and named for her grandmother? Perhaps the answer was on that missing panel.
