A classic Ionic temple with rusticated walls.
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Laughlin Tombstones, Allegheny Cemetery
There was a brief revival of early-nineteenth-century tombstone styles in the 1920s and 1930s, and it produced some very attractive designs. Several of them are in the Laughlin plot. The three above share a weeping-willow design patterned after folk-art tombstones of a hundred years earlier.
This later tombstone is made in the same shape as the others, but with a different decorative scheme.
In the same plot are some stones with bronze plaques commemorating Henry B. Laughlin and his two wives.
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Laughlin Monument, Allegheny Cemetery
The earliest Laughlin buried here died in 1882, but old Pa Pitt would guess that the family monument might be about a decade later. It is a sober classical base with a statue of Hope carrying the compact portable anchor she sometimes travels with.
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Shepherd Shaft, Allegheny Cemetery
A marble shaft in the style of the middle 1800s. The inscriptions are mostly legible, except for Jane Shepherd’s, which was probably the last added:
JOHN SHEPHERD
BORN IN IRELAND
DIED APR. 5, 1851
AGED 50 YEARSJANE
WIFE OF
JOHN SHEPHERD
BORN ———-
DIED — 17, 1877
AGED — YEARSJOHN, JR.
SON OF
JOHN & JANE SHEPHERD
BORN DEC. 16, 1826
DIED FEB. 3, 1862
AGED 26 YEARSThe younger John Shepherd died at the age of 26 during the Civil War, and it is natural to wonder whether he was killed in battle; but since no mention is made of service or sacrifice, he may have died of natural causes.
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Aull–Martin Monument, Homewood Cemetery
A granite monument with a crumbling marble statue on top; it was probably allegorical, but one of the arms would have held the key to the allegory, and both are gone. If old Pa Pitt had to guess, he would suggest that this was a statue of Hope, with the left arm holding up an anchor and the right pointing heavenward. This is certainly a good demonstration of the different aging properties of the two kinds of stone.
The statue may date from 1878, the year the cemetery opened, when the first Martin was buried here; old Pa Pitt suspects that the base is later, replacing an earlier base that had been damaged or become illegible. The individual gravestones in front of the monument are matching in style, and look like the style of the early twentieth century, though they include dates back to 1878. Father Pitt’s guess is that the original base bore inscriptions for all the Martins and Aulls buried up to the time of its replacement.
