A well-preserved tombstone in the “poster style,” as Father Pitt calls it, that was popular in the 1840s and 1850s. This one adds a very woodcutty weeping willow.
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Bay Psalm Book Window, Allegheny Cemetery Mausoleum
This window commemorates the famous Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British America. Everyone learned to sing these rhymed versions of the Psalms, because it was not legal under the rule of the Puritans to sing anything else.
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Brackenridge Circle, Prospect Cemetery
Henry Marie Brackenridge, son of the famous Hugh Henry Brackenridge, founded the borough of Brackenridge, and his family has an honored place in the middle of the circle at the entrance to Prospect Cemetery.
The obelisk once bore a number of inscriptions, but they are almost obliterated by time.
Henry Marie’s own grave is marked by a very modest headstone. Father Pitt was not able to read the epitaph, although it might be clearer in morning light.
Cornelia Brackenridge McKelvy, on the other hand, who died in 1882 at the age of 29, has a very expensive grave with a life-size statue. Is it meant to be a portrait of the deceased?
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White Family Plot, Oak Spring Cemetery
Oak Spring Cemetery in Canonsburg has a number of slab stones elevated into table-like structures—an arrangement common in some old cemeteries. Obviously the props under these stones are newer than the stones, but they may have replaced older ones that were original. Old Pa Pitt simply doesn’t know whether these slab stones were always elevated or whether graveyard caretakers elevated them later, when they began to vanish under the ground.
SACRED
to the
MEMORY OF
SAMUEL WHITE
Who departed this life
May 12th 1837, In the
82nd year of his
age.Samuel White, Sr. was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He married a considerably younger woman named Mary:
SACRED
to the
MEMORY
of
MARY WHITE
wife of
SAMUEL WHITE
DIED
JUNE 12th, 1841 in the
76th year of her age.In the short time between the death of Samuel in 1837 and the death of Mary in 1841, a new fashion in tombstones had swept over Western Pennsylvania. Samuel’s is a simple slab stone of the sort that had been made here since the late 1700s, but Mary’s is in what Father Pitt calls the “poster style,” with each line in a different style of lettering, like an advertising poster of the same era.
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Anthony H. Newell Grave, Homewood Cemetery
An unusual design: a full-length grave with a kind of miniature Corinthian temple as the headstone.
