The Voegtly Cemetery in Troy Hill has an unusually fine wrought-iron fence and gate—and, because the ironworker left his name in the iron itself, we know exactly who is responsible for it.
-
-
John Edward McIntyre Monument, St. Joseph Cemetery
A typical zinc monument adapted to Catholic tastes by adding a big cross on top. It remembers a seventeen-year-old boy who died in 1892; it may have been bought with the intention of adding other McIntyres as they moved in, but no other names were ever added, and most of the monument is taken up with the interchangeable filler designs offered in the monument company’s catalogue.
-
Voegtly Obelisk, Voegtly Cemetery
Father Pitt assumes that this is a descendant or other relative of the Voegtly who donated the land for the original Voegtly Church in Dutchtown, whose name this cemetery perpetuates. The name of Mathias Voegtly is still quite visible, but the rest of the inscription is badly eroded. We can just make out the name of Elizabeth Voegtly, but the rest is difficult.
However, the graves of the Voegtlys are also marked with expensive granite memorials, and though they are overgrown with wild grapes (you can see the mound of grape vines to the right of the obelisk), Father Pitt pushed back the grapes enough to collect these data:Mathias Voegtly: Born November 26, 1811; died January 17, 1884
Elizabeth Voegtly: Born July 28, 1805; died October 2, 1890.
-
Sossong Angel, St. Joseph Cemetery
“Sossong” is not a very common name, yet in this small cemetery in Glendale (Scott Township) there are at least four different Sossong family plots. It must have been a large interconnected group of cousins. This particular plot has a marble angel as its guardian, possibly erected in 1893 when Philipp Sossong died. The angel is well preserved, though the left hand and part of the scroll with the family name are missing.
The Sossongs’ descendants still keep up this plot, and all the Sossongs buried here have relatively recent granite headstones, possibly to replace inscriptions that became illegible. One of them was a priest, Fr. William B. Sossong, who was born in 1891, but for whom no death date has been filled in.
Old Pa Pitt liked this angel well enough to come twice in the same day and photograph it in two different lights. That is how dedicated he is to bringing you the finest possible illustrations.
-
Giehll and Weber Monument, St. Joseph Cemetery
Here is an interesting little document of the American immigrant experience from a small cemetery in the Glendale neighborhood of Scott Township. Father Pitt reconstructs the story this way:When Adam Giehll died in 1911, his wife Anna M. (Anna Maria? Very likely, since this is a Catholic cemetery) bought a monument with space for his name, her name, and the name of her mother, Anna M. Weber. The birth and death dates of Adam and his mother-in-law were filled in, but—as is commonly done when a living spouse buys the monument—Anna M. Giehll’s death date was left as a blank line, ready to be cut when the time came. (You can see the rougher, less skillful cutting of her death date quite clearly on the stone.)
So far the whole thing is written in German. But when Anna M. Giehll died sixteen and a half years after her husband, her death date was filled in in English—the only line of English on the stone.
For this German Catholic family, then, the line between German and English was somewhere around the First World War—which is hardly surprising. Probably the children of Adam and Anna spoke English as their first language. This is the pattern Father Pitt sees in current immigrants to Pittsburgh: the first generation speaks the language of home and only broken English, but the second generation grows up speaking English and is perhaps only marginally fluent in the parents’ language.
