Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Author: Father Pitt

  • Clergy Monument, St. Peter’s Cemetery (Arlington)

    Clergy plot

    St. Peter’s Cemetery is a small German Catholic cemetery in Arlington. (The German Lutherans have a cemetery, St. Paul’s, right behind this one in Mount Oliver, and they seem almost to have chosen their patron saints confrontationally.) This elaborate monument presides over the priests’ plot in the cemetery.

    Clergy plot
    Clergy monument
    Clergy monument
    The Good Shepherd
    Inscription

    “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God.” (Job 19:25–26, the English translation taken from the Douay-Rheims version.)

    “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 89:14 in the Vulgate numbering, or 90:12 in the numbering used by most Bibles today. The English is from the King James Version; the Douay-Rheims version, following the Vulgate, is quite different.)

    Clergy monument

  • Wilkins Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    Wilkins mausoleum

    Judge William Wilkins was the owner of the estate called Homewood, whose grounds are now the Homewood Cemetery. His mausoleum is the oldest in the cemetery, which was built around it, and it is a model of the original Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

    Wilkins mausoleum
    Captain John and General John Wilkins

    Older family gravestones are gathered around the monument, including the grave of Judge Wilkins’ father, Captain John Wilkins, who fought in the Revolution.

    Catherine Holmes Wilkins
    Wilkins Mausoleum through leaves
    Wilkins mausoleum

    More pictures of the Wilkins mausoleum, including transcriptions of the four inscriptions.

  • Moeslein Monument, St. Peter’s Cemetery (Arlington)

    Moeslein monument

    A big marble cross on a rustic base, with the inscription on an open book on the base. As with most monuments sold as “marble” in the 1800s, it was made from soft limestone that has eroded badly, so that the decorations on the cross are almost obliterated. The inscriptions are also weathering away, but right now they are still mostly legible. Meanwhile, the base, made of a different stone, still shows every chisel mark as sharply as when it was installed.

    Inscription on the Moeslein monument

    A. Moeslein
    May 13, 1824
    June 15, 1898

    Family
    L. B. Moeslein
    June 14, 1834
    Mar. 18[?], 1886

    A. E. Moeslein
    Apr. 29, 1858
    July 1, 1912

    Rose Moeslein
    Freb. 21, 1860
    July 17, 1931

    Moeslein monument

  • Bollenberg Stump, Homewood Cemetery

    Bollenberg stump

    The Woodmen of the World, still selling life insurance today under the name WoodmenLife, guaranteed every member a grave monument in the form, appropriately, of a stump. The stump program ended about a hundred years ago, but a number of these stumps were installed in Pittsburgh cemeteries. This one marks the plot of the Bollenberg family, with a separate log for Frederick Bollenberg and an unnamed infant son. Mr. Bollenberg died at the age of about 32, and it is possible that he and the child died from the same cause.

    Frederick Bollenberg, 1874–1906; Infant Son
    Bollenberg, gone but not forgotten
    Woodmen of the World seal

    The seal of the Woodmen of the World, whose local chapters were called “camps.” “Dum tacet clamat”: “Though he is silent, yet he cries out.” (The Woodmen usually translate this motto as “Though silent, he speaks.”)

    Bollenberg stump

  • Homewood Cemetery Maintenance Building

    Tudor maintenance building

    This maintenance building could use a bit of maintenance, which is surprising in a cemetery where everything is usually polished to a glimmer. But nothing is wrong that a bit of paint and stain won’t fix.

    Gable
    Gable brackets
    Maintenance building
    Homewood Cemetery maintenance building
    Lower level