A typical Egyptian temple, except perhaps that it is rather grander than usual. It was built in 1913, and we can see the elements that almost invariably mark the Egyptianness of the style: the sloping sides and the lotus columns. Over the entrance we almost always find a winged sun disk or scarab entwined by serpents.
The picture above is huge if you click on it: there’s plenty of detail to appreciate, but be aware that clicking on it will cost you about twelve and a half megabytes.
This triple tombstone, the only one of its kind from its era that Father Pitt has ever seen, remembers three Allison children who all died in January of 1836. The cause of death is not stated, but it must have been some childhood disease that carried them off one after another. Scarlet fever is a likely candidate.
Only about half this tombstone is visible above ground—enough to tell us the name and death date (1832), and to show us that the stone itself was a very attractive piece of folk art.
Somehow the stonecutter managed to run out of room twice while cutting the name “Templeton” into this stone for a young wife who died at the age of twenty-eight. (“Consort” simply means “wife”; it was strongly believed among rural folk in the early nineteenth century that “consort” was a much more elegant word.) This Gothic style of tombstone became popular at about this time; there are several examples in the cemetery.
David Reed was one of the early settlers in the Canonsburg area, according to the cemetery’s Web site; we know that he was here by at least 1779. He hosted George Washington at his house, which was awfully considerate of him, considering that Washington had come to take his house away. George was a big-time real-estate speculator, and he had claimed huge tracts of land in what was, to him, Augusta County, Virginia. (The area south of the Ohio River was still fitfully disputed between Virginia and Pennsylvania until after 1800.) The Reeds and many other settlers had moved here on the strength of other claims to the same land, and politely told Washington they would await the decision of the court. Courts ultimately ruled in favor of Washington, but the settlers moved only a short distance, close enough to walk to their little log church and be buried in its churchyard.
Ann’s tombstone is well preserved; David’s is damaged, but enough of the inscription remains to tell us that he died in December of 1829, fifty years after his first appearance in the records as an elder of the church.
