An unusually elaborate stone by a talented local artisan whose talents would soon be rendered irrelevant by the growth of a more centralized monument industry.
IN MEMORY OF
HECTOR
McFADDEN
Who departed
this life Decr 12th
1834 aged 65
years
—
He was just
And honest
And a friend
To the poor.
No Christian could ask for a finer epitaph than that.
The letters are formed very well, but here (as in many other early-settler tombstones) we see that marking out the inscription in advance was not part of the stonecutter’s method. He runs out of space for the name of the deceased, and then again on the next line for the name of the town Canonsburgh (which we no longer spell with an H). He also left out the R in “MEMORY,” and the heading SACRED to the IN MEMOY OF is very decorative but grammatically nonsense.
This transcription preserves the eccentric spelling of the original:
SACRED
to the
IN MEMOY OF
—
ROBERT PATTERSON
Merchant of Canonsburgh
Who departed this life
January 31st A. D. 1833
in the 29th year of his age
—
He was a man of temperance and moral habits
as a man of buissness he was unrivell’d
as a friend he was truly candid and sincere
as a husband and parent [he was] kind & affec[tionate]
Father Pitt took this picture in 1999 with an Argus C3. The Chartiers Hill Cemetery is notable for interesting epitaphs.
HERE SLEEPS IN DEATH
NANCY MARSHALL
Who died July 2nd 1833
aged 40 years
Her equal is gone before her but her superior will never follow as a WIFE MOTHER and FRIEND.
—
My flesh shall slumber in the ground,
Till the last trumpet’s joyful sound,
Then burst the chains with sweet surprise
And in my SAVIOURS image rise.
This epitaph is the last stanza of Isaac Watts’ metrical version of Psalm 17.
Old Pa Pitt took this picture on black-and-white film in 1999 with an Argus C3, which captured a very legible image in spite of strong backlighting.
A marble obelisk for a family of early settlers in the Chartiers Valley, where the family has taken full advantage of all the surfaces offered for inscription. The cemetery opened in 1861, so it is probable that family members who died before then have not been interred here, but are remembered here as part of family tradition.
Broken but still mostly legible, except where the stone has flaked away toward the right. We are almost certain of the surname “Henry,” because the stone lies near several other members of the Henry family. Here is how we reconstruct the inscription:
[In]
MEMORY OF
Elizabeth Hen[ry]
who departed t[his life]
June 10th 1839 in t[he –]
Year of her a[ge.]
—
Esteemed Deaugh[ter,]
this silent grave
Love and respect [?]
shall ever have.
This epitaph, such as it is, seems to be an original composition; Father Pitt has not found it anywhere else on the Web. The spelling “deaughter” is not unusual for Western Pennsylvania tombstones.
