DIED
Sept. 18, 1856
In the 56th Yr.
of her age
MARTHA
Wife of
JOSEPH McMURRAY
The influence of printing on grave markers in the 1850s is especially obvious in this one, which, in its broad variety of lettering styles—a different one for each line—looks very much like a printed poster from the same era. Father Pitt cannot quite read the epitaph.
GOODMAN Y. COULTER, Jr.
Died in N. Orleans
March 1, 1851
interred here
March 21, 1851
in his 21 year.
—
To the young
He being dead yet speaketh.
A good example of the style of the 1850s; it must have looked very modern beside the traditional tombstones of ten years earlier. “He being dead yet speaketh” is a quotation from Hebrews 11:4.
In Memory of
BILLINGSLEY MORGAN
Who departed this life
[Marc]h the 7th 1836
[in the —]th year of his age
Here is a pair of tombstones by the same extraordinary folk artist—and, because he actually signed one of them, we know his name: H. Savage. Both are badly damaged, but they form a pair side by side, so old Pa Pitt guesses that the illegible stone marks the resting place of Mrs. Billingsley Morgan. Unlike most Western Pennsylvania tombstones of the 1830s, these are handsomely carved in relief, much like the famous New England tombstones of the colonial era, but without the flying skulls.
Even this unusually artistic and ambitious stonecutter did not sketch out his lettering before beginning the inscription, so that he ran out of space for the name “MORGAN” on Billingsley Morgan’s tombstone.
Here is a stone inscribed by someone who obviously did not make a living creating tombstones. Yet the work is done well enough that the stone is perfectly legible nearly two centuries later.
The 1840s were a time when the old art of tombstone-cutting was dying out, and new styles came into vogue—styles that, in many ways, imitated the styles of engravings of the era. Here is a good example: a large tombstone from 1848 that looks very much like an engraved title page of the same era. It no longer has the handmade look of even the best local craftsmen’s work, and it is executed in more expensive stone that turned out to be much less permanent. With some difficulty, we can make out most of the inscription except the epitaph:
JAMES McKOWN
DIED
Feb. 25, 1848
In the 60th year
of his age
The surname “McKown” is damaged, but there are several other McKowns buried in this graveyard, so there is little question about the reading.
