MARGARETA
daughter of
SAMUEL & SARAH
LINHART
died Dec. 10, 1845
Aged 1 Year
5. Mos. 10 Ds.
A good example of what Father Pitt calls the “poster style” that became popular in the 1840s and 1850s: a plain rectangle on which the inscription is engraved in a wide variety of lettering styles, like an advertising poster of the same era.
A young and slightly bored-looking angel holds a banner with the words “In Memoriam.” It is an unusually good piece of sculpture. The monument may have been put up in 1911, when Ida May Haudenshield died.
This is a fine piece of work in the engraved-title-page style of the 1850s, but cut in the native stone (sandstone, Father Pitt believes, but he is happy to be corrected by someone better informed on the subject of rocks) that by this time had almost been abandoned in favor of limestone and marble. If it remains intact, the native stone preserves an inscription indefinitely, so that we can appreciate every flourish wrought by this talented artist.
These particularly fine monuments are very unusual: conscious imitations of the tombstones of a century or more before, but in a very 1930s style. The craftsman is too skillful to imitate the natural irregularity of our early stonecutters’ work; he has to resort to deliberate irregularities, such as occasional capital letters stuck in among the minuscules.
Edward Rynearson was principal of Fifth Avenue High School, Uptown. In 1921, he founded the National Honor Society, which he obviously regarded as his crowning achievement as an educator.
Among the windows in the Allegheny Cemetery Mausoleum or “Temple of Memories” are several devoted to famous works of literature and music. This one illustrates Wagner’s Parsifal. The stained glass in the mausoleum was done by the Willet studio of Philadelphia and the Hunt studio of Pittsburgh; Father Pitt does not know which one did this window.
