Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Early Settlers

  • Peters Creek Baptist Church Cemetery

    This is the burying ground of a Baptist church that dates back to Colonial times: it claims a foundation date of 1773. Some Revolutionary War veterans are buried here.

  • Kerr Monument, Trinity Churchyard

    Hidden on the left side of the cathedral is a narrow arm of the churchyard with a few old monuments, with the massive bulk of the Oliver Building towering over them. Most people who visit Trinity Churchyard never find their way to this side of it, but it’s worth a few moments of contemplation.

  • Some Amateur Tombstones in Brush Creek Cemetery

    HERE
    RESTETH IN GOD
    CHRISTINA WEGL
    WAS BORN 23 MAY 18—
    DIED 23 DEC. 1811

    [The birth date is obscured in the picture. Sorry about that.]

    Is “amateur” the word we are looking for? There are tombstones in the Brush Creek Cemetery that are remarkable works of folk art—and then there are these, some of which appear to have been made by craftsmen who were quite good at scratching letters in stone, but none of which seem to rise to the level of professional stonecutting.

    There were a fair number of Germans among the early settlers. Some of the families have some of their tombstones in English and others in German. Father Pitt earnestly solicits corrections to his German translations.

    J. W.
    B. 1718
    D. 1802

    The plaque gives the name of this Revolutionary War veteran as John Wagle; he is buried near Christina Wegl, and Wagle and Wegl are almost certainly different ways of spelling the same name.

    IN
    MEMORY
    OF
    PHILIP SMITH
    HE WAS BORN 1743
    AND DIED 1824
    AGED 76

    HERE LIES
    LUDWIG KAEMMERER
    DIED JANUARY
    21ST 1808 AGED
    90 YEARS

    Old Pa Pitt is assuming that the line over the M indicates a doubled letter.

    HERE LIES
    MAGDALENA
    KAEMMERIN DIED
    JUNE 12th IN THE
    YEAR 1794 AGED 26

    If this was installed when Magdalena died, then this is one of the earliest legible tombstones in the area.

    IN
    MEMORY
    OF
    LUDWIG
    KEMERER Junr. HE
    WAS BORN AD 1749
    DEPARDET THIS
    LIFE 1817 AGE —

    This seems to be the work of the same stonecutter—perhaps a family member—who did the two German stones above. Note the different spelling of “Kemerer” in English.

    HERE LIES
    J. CONRAD SCHIDLER
    HE & ELISABETH HIS
    WIFE BORE 10
    CHILDREN HIS PARENTS
    ANDREAS & MARGARET
    HE DIED APRIL 20th
    1796 AGED 58 YEARS
    Text John Chap. II V. 25

    PAUL EBERHART

    ELISABETH
    LINSENBIGLER

  • Thomas and Jennet McNary Grave, Oak Spring Cemetery

    An elevated slab for a Revolutionary War veteran and his wife. The two inscriptions were certainly done by the same craftsman, but from subtle differences in the thicknesses and forms of the letters it looks as though they may have been done at different times, suggesting that Jennet’s was added to Thomas’ already existing stone.

    IN
    Memory of
    THOMAS Mc NARY Esqr.
    Who departed this life on the
    9th of July A.D. 1820 in the 76th
    year of his age.
    —
    IN
    Memory of
    JENNET Mc NARY
    Consort of
    THOMAS Mc NARY
    Who departed this life on the
    15th of April A.D. 1828 in the 84th
    year of her age.

  • White Family Plot, Oak Spring Cemetery

    Oak Spring Cemetery in Canonsburg has a number of slab stones elevated into table-like structures—an arrangement common in some old cemeteries. Obviously the props under these stones are newer than the stones, but they may have replaced older ones that were original. Old Pa Pitt simply doesn’t know whether these slab stones were always elevated or whether graveyard caretakers elevated them later, when they began to vanish under the ground.

    SACRED
    to the
    MEMORY OF
    SAMUEL WHITE
    Who departed this life
    May 12th 1837, In the
    82nd year of his
    age.

    Samuel White, Sr. was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He married a considerably younger woman named Mary:

    SACRED
    to the
    MEMORY
    of
    MARY WHITE
    wife of
    SAMUEL WHITE
    DIED
    JUNE 12th, 1841 in the
    76th year of her age.

    In the short time between the death of Samuel in 1837 and the death of Mary in 1841, a new fashion in tombstones had swept over Western Pennsylvania. Samuel’s is a simple slab stone of the sort that had been made here since the late 1700s, but Mary’s is in what Father Pitt calls the “poster style,” with each line in a different style of lettering, like an advertising poster of the same era.