Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Early Settlers

  • Joseph and Jane Porter Tombstones, Union Cemetery

    Joseph Porter tombstone with Union Church in the background

    Joseph Porter served as a private in the Revolutionary War, perhaps beginning when he was a teenager. When he died in 1843 at the good old age of 83, he was given a hand-crafted tombstone by a traditional local craftsman—a craft that would soon die out even way out here in the wilds of Robinson Township. Unfortunately much of the inscription is obliterated, but the church has taken care to mark all the graves of its Revolutionary War veterans.

    Marker for Private Joseph Porter
    Joseph Porter tombstone

    When Joseph’s wife Jane died in 1857 at the age of 86, the old hand-crafted stones were out of style, and all the old craftsmen were retired or dead. She was given a tombstone in what old Pa Pitt calls the “poster style,” popular in the middle nineteenth century, which mixes different styles of lettering after the manner of posters of the same period.

    Jane Porter tombstone

  • Jenny O’Neal Tombstone, Concord Presbyterian Cemetery

    One of the early settlers of the Carrick area. We are not absolutely sure of the first name, since the first letter of it is obliterated. “Jenny” is by far the most likely possibility. Here is Father Pitt’s transcription, which is partly speculative:

    IN MEMORY OF
    JENNY O’NEAL
    who departed this life
    —— 20th, A.D. 1836
    [Aged — years and —] months

    Below, a black-and-white picture with a different camera.

  • Hector McFadden Tombstone, Chartiers Hill Cemetery

    Hector McFadden tombstone

    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.

  • Robert Patterson Tombstone, Chartiers Hill Cemetery

    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.

  • Nancy Marshall Tombstone, Chartiers Hill Cemetery

    Nancy Marshall tombstone

    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.