A stone hand-cut by local craftsmen and remarkably well preserved; this is still in the same tradition (conceivably even by the same craftsman, though the lettering style looks different) that produced the George Otto tombstone nearly three decades earlier. It is also one of the last of the locally made tombstones in this churchyard; soon mass production would take over.
Time and industry have not been kind to this angel, but in spite of her blunted features and precarious-looking angle she still points heavenward. No inscriptions are visible except the shield with “Mittenzwey” (so Father Pitt reads it) at the angel’s feet; there may well have been other inscriptions, but old Pa Pitt could not detect any remnants of them. The monument probably dates from the early 1880s; a John G. Mittenzwey was buried in 1883.
The cemetery site dates this to about 1860; it is one of the early half-underground mausoleums in the cemetery. The simple classical lines are enlivened by just a bit of ornate scrolling on the roof. The cemetery lists the original plot owner as Oliverette Wharton, a resident of East Birmingham (now the section of the South Side between 17th and 24th Streets).
Another well-preserved zinc monument. Although Christina and Jacob Lawall died in 1876 and 1883, the front of the monument bears the date 1902, suggesting that their descendants replaced an original cheaper monument with this zinc creation after nineteen years or so. Two of the sides are taken up with custom inscriptions, leaving two other sides for the installation of standard-order symbolic panels.
A zinc monument similar, but not identical, to the Butzler monument in the Union Dale Cemetery; probably it came from the same company, and was built with many of the same standard pieces. Mr. Hoehn was born in “Alsace, Germany.” Alsace was indeed part of Germany in 1906, though it had been part of France in 1831. It is interesting to compare this to the Kubler monument in St. Michael’s Cemetery, which insists that Mr. Kubler was born in “Lorraine, France.” Is the difference in the fact that Mr. Kubler was Catholic, but Mr. Hoehn (like the Prussian rulers of Alsace in 1906) was Protestant?
