Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Angels

  • Bayer Angel, St. Mary’s Cemetery, Kennedy Township

    A marble recording angel whose businesslike attitude suggests to Father Pitt that she is checking boxes on a printed form. There are no inscriptions on the monument and no Bayer grave markers near it, so Father Pitt cannot date it except to say that it looks like the sort of thing that would have been put up in the beginning of the twentieth century. It is even possible that the plot was never used; we have seen examples of families that bought cemetery plots and put up monuments to themselves, and then moved elsewhere.

  • 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.

  • Magdalena Pfeil Monument, South Side Cemetery

    A marble monument in what we might call folk-romantic style. The recording angel has been eroded by pollution and time, but it does not look as though it was ever a very skillful carving, Nevertheless, the whole effect of the monument is very pleasing.

    The epitaph (a poem commonly found on monuments of the era) reads:

    Dear mother, rest in quiet sleep,
    While friends in sorrow o’er thee weep,
    And here their heartfelt offerings bring
    And near thy grave thy requiem sing.

  • Stevens Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    According to the cemetery’s Web site, this is probably the monument for Verlinda Stevens, who died in 1872. The marble is so badly eroded that we cannot read any of the inscriptions, but even—or perhaps especially—in this state it is quite picturesque.

  • S. H. McCain Angel, Highwood Cemetery

    An angel in front of a rustic stone cross, probably erected in about 1890. The angel is a bit chunkily carved, but a more delicate angel would clash with the ruggedness of the rustic cross and boulder-like base.